OLYMPIC MEDALS FOR ART

 

For decades, beginning with the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, the Olympics included competitions in painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature — a pentathlon of the Muses, as Pierre de Coubertin, the founder and leader of the modern Olympics, called them.

From now on they will be part of each Olympiad, on a par with the athletic competitions, Coubertin said.

Thousands of artists, some of them famous, most of them not, submitted works. More than 150 Olympic arts medals were awarded, the same medals that athletes received. At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, 400,000 people visited the monthlong exhibition of entries.

As the Olympics return to Paris this summer, thousands of gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded — all for sport, none for arts.

In Lausanne, Switzerland, home of the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic Museum has a secured storage area in the basement. Curators oversee thousands of pieces of sports equipment, uniforms, medals, documents, torches, trophies — and art work.

But the only gold medal-winning paintings in the hidden collection are the two colorful pieces of a triptych that earned newspaper illustrator Jean Jacoby, of Luxembourg, first place in 1924. One represents soccer, the other rugby. The whereabouts of the third oil painting, depicting the start of a foot race, is unknown.

The Liffey Swim, an oil painting by Jack Butler Yeats, hangs in Room 14 of the National Gallery of Ireland, in Dublin.

He is a huge figure here, Brendan Rooney, the National Gallery's head curator, said. The museum owns dozens of his works — and his 1924 silver medal.

In 1923, the same year that his brother, the poet William Butler Yeats, earned the Nobel Prize in Literature, and just as Ireland was becoming independent, Yeats painted a modern scene depicting a swimming race down the Liffey River, through the heart of Dublin.

To read the complete article, see:
They Used to Award Olympic Medals for Art? (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/us/paris-olympics-arts-medals.html)

The Dutch architect who designed a brick-clad Olympic stadium for the 1928 Games in Amsterdam won an unlikely award: an Olympic gold medal. Alongside athletes competing for gold, silver and bronze medals in gymnastics, diving, and wrestling, De Stijl designer Jan Wils was awarded first place in the category of architecture. Stranger still: the award was given specifically for his work on the very stadium hosting that year's Olympic Games.

Jan Wils was not given the only arts award at the event: that same year, dozens of other designers and artists won Olympic medals for everything from town planning to painting. In total, over 1,000 works were submitted in arts categories from 18 countries.

Though many people today have never heard of this art competition component, it was an integral part of the Olympic Games starting in 1908 and its exhibits were paired with sporting events in the Summer Olympics for decades to follow.

To read the complete article, see:
Olympic Architects: Forgotten Gold Medals Awarded for the Arts (https://99percentinvisible.org/article/olympic-architects-forgotten-gold-medals-awarded-arts/)

Medals were awarded in five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. At first, the categories were general but they were later divided into specific categories such as literature in a drama, lyric or epic; orchestral and instrumental music, solo and chorus singing; drawings, graphic arts and paintings; statues, reliefs, medals, plaques and medallions. Even architecture made an appearance on the programme, with its own town planning category.

One fun fact is that in certain circumstances medals were not awarded. If the judges were unable to determine a champion, they might only award a bronze medal.

A total of 33 people participated in the inaugural art competition in 1912, with gold medals awarded in all five categories. Judges were only allowed to score works that had never been exhibited anywhere else, and those that were dedicated to sports. De Coubertin himself participated in a literature competition in Stockholm under a pseudonym. His "Ode to Sport" received a gold medal.

One interesting fact from the 1912 Games was that the USA's Walter Winans, winner of an Olympic gold medal in shooting just four years earlier, became the Olympic champion in sculpture. In Sweden, he also won a silver medal in shooting. Other than Winans, only one person has won medals in both art and sports competitions, with the Hungarian swimmer Alfred Hajos winning two golds at Athens 1896, followed some years later by a silver medal in architecture.

To read the complete article, see:
Look to the past: When Olympic medals were awarded for architecture, music and literature (https://olympics.com/en/news/look-to-the-past-when-olympic-medals-were-awarded-for-architecture-music-and-lit)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web