July 31, 2024 • 35 mins
In the first half of the 20th century, athletes weren't the only ones competing for Olympic glory. Today's episode takes us back to an era when artists, poets, and even city planners battled for medals — and the messy in-fighting that threatened to tear the art world apart.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Fireheart originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. I don't know about you,
but I've never actually met an Olympic medal winner. But
I can tell you where to find one without getting
slapped with a stocking charge. One Olympic winner hangs out
in New York City. No, not that New York City,
(00:36):
This New York City. This is Marine Park in South Brooklyn.
It's one of those New York neighborhoods that forget tourists.
Most Native New Yorkers have never visited. Compared to Manhattan,
Marine Park is another planet. It's nestled against a giant
(01:00):
salt marsh. Imagine tall grassy reeds nests of Osprey's a
gentle creek feeding into the Atlantic. On the edge of
that creek, that's where you'll find a silver medal Olympic
winner hanging out in a public park filled with cricket fields.
(01:23):
Another place you could find an Olympic medalist is a
quick train ride north up to New Haven, Connecticut, home
to Yale University. If you wander campus, you'll find Olympic
glory at the Paine Whitney Gymnasium. This is the second
largest gym in the world. It's got twelve acres of
(01:47):
indoor space, and like a lot of buildings at Yale,
it could easily be confused for a Gothic basilica. In fact,
locals affectionately call it the Cathedral of Sweat. And here's
the thing. I can't guarantee you'll find any Olympic medalists
in the but I can guarantee you'll be in the
(02:09):
presence of one, because the gym itself is an Olympic
medal winner. During the nineteen thirty two Olympic Games, the
pain Whitney Gymnasium and its designer, John Russell Pope won
the Olympic silver medal in the category of Architecture, Yes, architecture.
(02:36):
Oh and four years later, the architect Charles Downing Lay
won a silver medal in the category of City Design
for his plans to build you guessed it, the park
in Marine Park, Brooklyn. And if all that sounds weird,
that's okay. It's a little known fact that between nineteen
(02:59):
twelve and nineteen forty eight the Olympics hosted arts competitions. Architects,
pain writers, sculptors, composers all had a shot to compete
for Olympic glory. So if you weren't blessed with superior
athletic talent but always wanted to bring home the gold.
(03:22):
Today's episode is for you. Welcome to Very Special Episodes
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz and
this is Art of Gold, the Olympic art competitions.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hey everyone, this is Jason English. The Very Special Episodes
team is mostly scattered for the summer, but we wanted
to hold our very last episode of season one to
coincide with the Olympics. One tiny bit of news here
before we get you back to the episode. We've been
renewed for season two, which is very exciting. We feel
(03:59):
pretty good about our chances. The show has done pretty
well and continues to grow. For time, we were the
number one history podcast on Apple. Kind of like a
gold medal, I guess, but you never know. I think
I'm a pretty optimistic person, but I often assume the
worst when it comes to stuff like this. And I
really love making the show and working with Dana and
(04:21):
Zarin and producer Josh and story editor Marissa and our
incredible writers. But it turns out there's no reason to worry.
We'll be back with a whole new batch of stories
this fall. I believe October second we're targeting. Don't hold
me to that, but we'll be back in a couple months.
And that's enough about us. Let's get back to the Olympics.
(04:42):
We're going to take you back to a time when
you could win gold for something that didn't require insane
athletic ability.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I want to introduce you to the guy who invented
the modern Olympics. Pierre de Kuberton born in the eighteen sixties.
Kubertant was a French aristocrat. He was stuffy and reserved,
and frankly he looked the part I mean, you could
land an airplane on this guy's mustache. At some point
(05:12):
in the eighteen eighties, Kuberton became enamored with a new
fangled idea called physical education. At the time, there was
a growing school of thought that suggested athletic competition could
develop a young person's moral character. Proponents called it athletic chivalry,
(05:35):
and there were spiritual connotations too. Many argued that melding
muscle and mind could bring people closer to God. The YMCA,
which stands for Young Men's Christian Association, had been born
of a movement called muscular Christianity. Kuberton was in the
(05:56):
middle of all of this, and it reminded him of
something that only existed in the dusty pages of history books.
Centuries ago. The ancient Greeks had celebrated the same virtues
by putting on an athletic competition called the Olympics. The
(06:17):
ancient Games died out around the year three hundred and
ninety three, but Kubertant wondered, what if we brought it back.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
So it's the round eighteen ninety two to eighteen ninety
four that he makes his first pitches in favor of
the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That's Miles Osgoode.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I'm a lecturer at Stanford for the Structured Liberal Education Program,
where I teach literature and philosophy in our history.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Miles is also an expert on the Olympic art competitions.
He wrote his dissertation on the topic. He says that
when Cooperton first dreamed up the idea of reviving the
old Greek Olympics, he didn't receive much fanfare.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
This funny story of giving this big speech to a
bunch of French sports officials in eighteen ninety two at
the Sorbonne and trying to the case at the very
end of that speech that one of the things that
we should do is renovate the Olympic Games. And he
gets kind of a polite applause, but nobody really They
think it's almost a figure of speech.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
The audience didn't think Kuberton was being serious. The speech flopped,
but Kuberton believed in his idea, so a couple years
later he presented it again, and this time with panache.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
He thinks, Okay, if I'm really going to get them
to imagine what this would really be like, I'm going
to need a little bit of pomp and pageantry.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Kubertan stood before an audience representing sports organizations from all
over the world. In an effort to capture their imaginations,
he tried to transport them back to ancient Greece. He
set the mood with a giant neoclassical mural in the background,
there was a musical performance of a long lost hymn
(08:02):
recently discovered in Greece, and then he gave his speach.
The trick worked. The audience was wrapped with attention, and
when it was finished, everyone in the room agreed to
create an organization called the International Olympic Committee. Just two
(08:23):
years later, in eighteen ninety six, the first modern Olympic
Games were held in Athens, Greece. It had cyclic fencing, gymnastics,
weightlifting and more. At the time it was the largest
international sporting event ever. But Kubertant he wasn't satisfied. Something
(08:46):
was missing. The ancient Olympic Games had something the modern
games didn't, and that, he said was art.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
In the time of splendire at Olympia, the oughts in
that is combined harmoniously with sport, assuring the grandeur the
Olympic Games. It must be the same in the future.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
To be true to the old Greek Games, Kubertown said,
the new Olympics needed art contests.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
There is only one difference between our Olympias and playing
sporting championship, and it is precisely the contest of art
as they existed in the Olympias of ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Kuberton lived by a Latin motto mens sana in kuppor
sano a sound body in a sound mind. He believed
the new Olympics should be the same.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Players of Sokka have lost all feelings for the beauty
of the classic authairs ends that the fact they have
won a fifteen one hundred meter race granders are runners
absolutely inept to turn a sentence into good French. Very well.
We raise the Italians for Kuberton.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The Olympics always had to be a pedagogical project for
sort of improving and broadening the minds of the youth
in addition to their bodies, and it was a political
project that was in line with his democratic values and internationalism.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
There was just one problem with Kubertan's vision. It was
factually wrong.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
At Olympia. It didn't have specifically the contests and awards
for artists as there might have been at some of
the minor games.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
The ancient Greeks hosted four different athletic festivals. There was
the big one, the Olympics, which honored Zeus, but they
also hosted the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games. My favorite,
by the way, is the Nemean Games because the winners
received a wreath made out of celery at these smaller games.
(10:57):
The Greeks indeed did host arts competitions.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So at the ancient Panthalantic Games there were these contests
known as the musikos ag On or you know, musical
competitions or artistic competitions.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The winners in the minor games, for instance, a celery
wearing flute player would get an invite to perform at
the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
So it was kind of a cultural festeral Olympia.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
There were artists everywhere. There were the winning musicians, of course,
but there were also sculptors who would memorialize the winning
athlete in stone, and there were lots of poets recording
the events in verse, including one guy named Pindar.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Pindar the famous poet of that period and of those games.
This meant reciting odes in celebration of victors at the games, just.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
As what is the most precious of all elements, just
as gold is the most valuable of all goods. And
just as the sun shines brought to then any other star,
so shines Olympia, putting all of the games into the shade.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Pindar also wrote poems for the winning athletes. He wrote
verses for Hippocles of Fessle, winner of the long foot race,
and a poem for Megacles of Athens for hitting the
finish line first with his chariot. And of course, who
can't forget his ode to a boy boxing champion.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
Son of Orchestrado's a jesse damos know certainly that for
thy boxing, I will lay a glory of sweet strains
upon thy crown of golden olive.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Much like how we play the winner's national anthem. After
an Olympic win. At the ancient Games, the athlete got
to hear Pindar's celebratory poems read out loud.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
He might have followed certain victors to their home cities
so that the home city could have a moment of
celebration and hear Pindar's ode.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So while Pierre de Cooper tomp might have been fuzzy
on the technical details of the old arts competitions, he
wanted the new Olympics to have the same merit, and
frankly he felt pretty strongly about it.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
We absolutely must organize our competition. If not Olympism, we'll fail.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
After all, Who knows, maybe a modern Pindar was out
there waiting to woo the world with his poems. So now,
at the turn of the twentieth century, Kubertant started working
to bring the arts into the Olympic fold. It was
frankly perfect timing one hundred and twenty years ago, artists
(13:41):
started to embrace the idea of turning art into a competition.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
There are a number of writers like Paula Deli who
start to think, oh, maybe the future of literature will
be that of a sport.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Art like sport, required effort and training. You had to
devote yourself to your craft, and like athletes, a little
bit of talent didn't hurt either. The world also felt smaller.
Writers and artists were starting to compare themselves more and
more to other artists across the globe, both dead and alive.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Writers thinking competitively about their relationship to the canon, or
to other stars at their time, or to the idea
of being a champion and challenger at the same time.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
All events, to say, Kuberton's idea to turn the Olympics
into an art and athletics competition had legs, so in
May nineteen oh six, he introduced the idea at a
conference Jentlement.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
We are gathered to Gazia in this dwelling to celebrate
a singular ceremony. We are to reunite in the brands
of legitimate ree lach a long divorced couple Muscle and mind.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Kubertant was going to combine muscle and mind the athletic competitions.
They'd be joined by what he called a pentathl of
the muses for artists, and to ensure the pentathlon was
a success, Kubertant would essentially create burner accounts. When Pierre
(15:23):
de Kubertant introduced his idea of arts contests at the Olympics,
not everybody was on board.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Kubertan met resistance in the early years to this idea.
He was trying to put out newspaper articles and magazine
articles and speeches in favor of an Olympic art program.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That again is Miles Osgood of Stanford, and he says
that Pierre de Kubertant would not be dissuaded. With his
site set on the nineteen twelve Games in Stockholm. He
kept pushing for the idea of arts competition, and the
arts they pushed back. Kubertant had trouble getting the world's
(16:05):
greatest artists to believe him. Look no further than the
gold medal winner of the nineteen twelve literature contest. The
winners two guys from France and Germany, George Harrod and
Martin Eschbach. They won the literature competition for this utterly
(16:26):
underwhelming poem.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Oh Sport, pleasure of the gods essence of life, You
appeared suddenly in the midst of the gray clearing which
arise with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant
messenger of a past age when mankind still smiled.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
It's an overblown and slightly ridiculous poem. It proceeds praising
sport over and over, so, oh Sport, you are beauty,
Oh Sport, you are piece. Oh Sport, you are for kundity,
where he gets into some of that problematic Lamarckian eugenics material.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
There's a whole section in the poem where the writers
talk about destroying quote unhealthy seed and correcting the flaws
which threaten its essential purity, which, looking back, is a
bit woof the whole eugenics thing aside, this poem highlighted
another big problem with the early Olympic art contests, like
(17:34):
come on, have you ever heard of the poet George
Horod and Martin Eshbach. Of course you haven't, because neither
of them was even real. The real author of the
poem was ahem Pierre de Coorbatan.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
In nineteen twelve, when kubertas submits a poem to the
Stockholm for the first Olympic art competitions. He decides to
conceal the fact that, as the founder of the Games,
it's him submitting a poem by using two pseudonyms.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
In other words, the original artistic contests were so poorly
attended and so underwhelming that the founder of the Olympics
boosted the numbers by entering himself into the competition, and
the competition was so bad he won gold, which today
(18:31):
might have been something of a scandal.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
It seems to have kind of gotten swept under the
rug somehow. I think he revealed it about seven years later.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
The fact that there was never any scandal, however, points
to just how low stakes those original arts contests were.
During these nineteen twelve Games, there were around just thirty
five entrants in all categories, and only four artists competed
(19:03):
in the painting contest. It wasn't a total failure, of course.
There were some big names in the fray. Jean Francois Rafalier,
a friend of the superstar French impressionist Edgar Degas, competed
but lost, and in the sculpture category, Rembrandt Bugatti, who
(19:24):
was then regarded as the next coming of Leonardo da Vinci,
also competed, oh and lost. An interesting twist that you
might enjoy for pub night trivia, Bugatti lost to an
American sculptor named Walter Winnins, who happens to be just
one of two people to have won an Olympic medal
(19:47):
in both art and athletics. Not only did his sculpture
win the gold, but years earlier he took home a
medal in pistol shooting. Anyway, over the next few years,
the Olympic art contests continued to sputter. In nineteen sixteen,
World War One interrupted the Games. There were no art
(20:11):
contests to be held, and during the nineteen twenty Games
in Antwerp, Belgium, the judging in the arts competition was
a bit shall we say biased.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
The art competitions were just an opportunity to celebrate local
Belgian artists. About six of the eleven who won medals
were Belgians.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
By now, Pierre de Corbetant was getting old. He announced
that the nineteen twenty four Games in his beloved home
of Paris would be his last to organize, and he
vowed to go out with a bang.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
There is a need for something else besides athletics and sport.
We wanted presence of national genius, the collaboration of the muses,
the Colta bute, all the display pertaining to the strong
symbolism incarnate in the past by the Olympic Games, and
which must continue to be represented in our modern times.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Kubertant and his underlings at the IOC threw everything they
had into attracting the best artistic talent. They notified the
ambassadors to foreign nations that there would be an arts contest.
They got the French Academy of Fine Arts to sign on.
They even invited artists to help draw up the rules
(21:31):
for competition. The move helped build hype for the Games,
and it turned the nineteen twenty four Olympics into a
bonafide artistic bonanza.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Nineteen twenty four is the pivot in a direction of
trying to attract more highbrow talent.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
This included some big name judges too.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
You've got Stravinsky, Bartalk and Revel and music. You've got Vardiri,
Aedith Wharton and Maurice maderlink in literature.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Now, this had a way of enhancing the talent entering
the contests artists realized, hey Stravinsky will hear my song,
or hey Edith Wharton will read my poem. They hopped
at the chance to have their work reviewed by household names.
People like Robert Graves, the famous British war poet, submitted
(22:25):
some verses. Jack B. Yates, arguably the most famous painter
in Irish history and the brother of poet William Butler.
Yates entered and won silver.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
You get these wonderful submissions by Anritamo de Long, whose
Olympic book was actually at the top of many people's list,
to win the Prigan cour kind of the equivalent of
the Pulitzer Prize. In France that year.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
In addition to the contests, there was a huge cultural
festival that brought in big name artists who, while not
competing for medals, were showing off their stuff for Olympic audiences.
Take for instance, this show at the Champs Elise.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Theater, including a collaboration of modernists Jean Cocteau, Darius Milo,
one of the members of Lesis, the six major composers
Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso, and the cubis Ari Laureent,
all contributing together to put on a ballet that is
about beachside athletes on the French Riviera.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
All of that's to say the nineteen twenty four arts
competition was a hit. The same was true a couple
years later in nineteen thirty two, when Los Angeles hosted.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Los Angeles globalizes the Olympics in a way that they
hadn't reached before. Now we're getting Japanese athletes and Japanese artists.
Now we're getting athletes and artists from Latin America.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The arts competitions were becoming more of an international phenomenon.
Galleries at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and
Art hosted eleven hundred artworks from five hundred and forty artists.
That includes I did pieces that are still relevant today,
pieces like Maunri Young's gold winning sculpture of two boxers
(24:15):
fighting today it's at the Smithsonian, or a metal winning
sculpture by Frederick Macmoney's celebrating the first transatlantic flight. Today
that work is at the MET. Visitors came to see
these and other works by the thousands.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
So all that leads to an exhibition that is attended
by almost four hundred thousand visitors, which is a scale
that hadn't been reached before.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
The Los Angeles Games were a triumph of Kuberton's original vision,
a spectacle of muscle and mind. And then the nineteen
thirty six Olympics happened in Berlin, Germany. France refused to
participate in the arts competitions. Britain too, so.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
The Nazis did not want the Olympics at first, right
Hitler at first wanted nothing to do with it. The
spirit of internationalism, the democratic spirit that Gubertin put forth,
did not seem at all in line with Nazi principles.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
But the Nazis changed their mind about that when they
realized that the Olympics could be distorted in their favor.
Because the Nazis noticed something about the previous Olympic Games.
Despite the big names, despite the glitz and glamour and
growing crowds, the artists who usually won the medals were
(25:43):
not pushing the envelope.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
All of these amateur or academic artists that competed and
won medals, their work looks a little bit boring or conservative,
or traditional, or just or in some case commercial. We're
just not very daring.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And that's because of Pierre de Corbetan Kubertant was an
aristocrat and by nature had something of a nineteenth century mindset,
which is a fancy way of saying he was a
fuddy duddy.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Always taking the safe route of Okay, here's a new
pindaric ode, or here's a new myronic classical sculpture, here's
another kind of nineteenth century Romantic or Impressionist painting. Nothing
that was really pushing the boundaries of the form.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The Olympics, in other words, were not a place where
the avant garde flourished, which played nicely into the Nazis' ideology.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
This is a period where the Nazis are already interested
in trying to distinguish what they deemed to be degenerate
art from state art and especially neoclassical art, and the
art competitions up to that point had already done a
pretty good job of showing those two art movements as
rivals and of upholding the more classical traditional standards of
(26:59):
nineteenth century aesthetics or neoclassical aesthetics. So in some ways
the art competitions were a good fit for what Gerbel's
and Hitler and the rest of the Nazi idealogues maybe
wanted to promote aesthetically.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
As a result, a lot of artists skipped the nineteen
thirty six Olympics entirely, which apparently was a smart move.
The judges seemed to favor conservative artworks from fascist leaning
countries anyway. Take the winner of the painting category, Rudolph
Hermann Eisenmenger, an Austrian who, in addition to having the
(27:37):
world's most Germanic sounding name, is most famous for his
work containing swastikas. In other words, the whole Nazi thing
made the nineteen thirty six arts contests a dud. The
next Olympics were originally slated for Japan, but World War
(27:58):
Two put the kaibosh on those plans, and in nineteen
forty four the Games got mixed again. By the time
the Games returned in nineteen forty eight in London, the
arts competitions had lost all momentum. The United States pulled
out entirely because of a lack of interest, and in
total there would be around two hundred fewer competitors in
(28:22):
nineteen forty eight. The result was an underwhelming contest. When
the Swiss architect Pierre Jeanree visited the Victoria and Albert
Museum to view the entries, he was disappointed.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
One looks around the galleries, one had to deplored yet
sence of most of the best known living artists.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
He wasn't the only one.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Commentator said, you know, oh, at the nineteen forty eight exhibition,
it would have been really nice to see a Matisse
or a broc or a Picasso. And the only thing
you can say to that is you kind of pushed
those artists away. Some of them were involved, you know,
some of them did. Some of them, like George Gross
or Walter Ropius, did compete in the competitions and didn't
win any medals. The others felt that, in some way
or another they were not welcome.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
The Olympics had proven over and over again that it
didn't reward groundbreaking artists. By nineteen forty eight, it had
built up an impressive list of snubs. These celebrated English
poet Robert Graves no medals, Walter Gropius, the guy who
literally invented the Bauhause School of art, nothing Koshiro Chi,
(29:33):
whose work is in the MoMA and the British Museum Zilch.
On top of that, Avery Brundage, the vice president and
soon to be President of the International Olympic Committee was
upset that none of the artists had been true amateurs.
One of the founding principles of Olympic competition was that
(29:54):
the participants were supposed to be amateur. So this was
a big deal.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
It was not appropriate to give medals to artists who
by and large were professionals at a time when athletes
couldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
For the winners, the Olympic Committee realized that many of
them were just okay.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
That there is also just a realization that the art
competitions have not done a great job of collecting really
superior art that will last the test of time, or
that represents the great flourishing of avant garde and modern
art of that period of nineteen twelve to nineteen forty eight.
And of course, the funny thing about that, to me
is that that art certainly existed and certainly was part
(30:36):
of the exhibitions, it was just never rewarded.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So the IOC made a decision, because the contestants in
the art competition were almost all professionals, there shouldn't be medals.
It should be an exhibition. Some people inside the IOC
fought to revive Kuberton's original vision, but it was futile.
In nineteen fifty four, Kuberton's vision for art contests in
(31:04):
the Olympics officially died. The contests became a footnote in
history books. Within a few decades, the Olympic Arts competitions
were practically forgotten. Many of the artworks went missing.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
A lot of Olympic artworks have been lost to time.
A lot of them probably aren't in a museum. They're
probably in some private collection, or they've just been lost
one way or another.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
In the late nineteen nineties, a guy named Richard Stanton
started to wonder where did they go? He visited Switzerland,
poured through the Olympic Museum archives and searched for relics
from the art contests. His book The Forgotten Olympic Art
Competitions is the source for all of our quotes from
(31:53):
Pierre de Coubertant. Then a few years later, our guest
Miles Osgood took up the mantle. For the last few
years he's been building a digital archive and database all
of the known artistic entries and winners.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Given that they are about three thousand artworks, and I
think I only have digital images of a few hundred
of those. I'm sure there are more to be found,
but I also wonder whether some will just permanently disappear.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Some of the art has turned up in weird places
for years. One statue of a discus thrower stood unceremoniously
near a highway exit ramp in New York City. Another
medal winner, made by a Disney illustrator, was donated to
a high school before it went missing. But Miles has
(32:45):
made some progress. So far. He's found twenty five texts
from the literature contests, plus two hundred and eighty five
individual images from the painting, sculpture, and architecture. Many of these,
the ones not in private collections, are housed at the
Olympic Study Center in low Zon, Switzerland.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
It's attached to a really lovely museum and just general
set of grounds right on Lake Geneva. So it's not
at all, you know, sort of a subterranean Indiana Jones
dusting off, you know, something that's crumbling under your fingertips.
It's very much the spirit of the original vision of
the Games of you know, let's study culture and run
(33:32):
around and practice sport in beautiful locations where the harmony
of the environment and the events happening on the microscale
are in some kind of alignment with one another. And
as part of those beautiful outdoor grounds where you would
go and eat your expensive Swiss sandwich, there are statues
all around you that are casts of some of the
(33:53):
Olympic artworks from the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If you want to see some Olympic artworks for yourself,
hop on a flight to Switzerland. And if that's too
long of a haul, there's usually room on the elliptical
at the Payne Whitney Jim at Yale.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
And with that, we've officially made it to the end
of season one. Thank you for joining us both today
and throughout the season. It's been an absolute blast making
this show. Like I said at the top, we're hard
at work on season two. Look for that in October.
If you need anything in these next few months, you
can email the show very Special episodes at gmail dot com.
(34:36):
I want to thank Dana and Zarin for agreeing to
do this in the first place and for being absolute pros.
I want to thank producer Josh for wrangling the ten
or twelve episodes we have going at any given time.
Story editor Marissa Brown, everyone who's writing and editing and researching,
Let's hit the credit to one more time. Very Special
(34:57):
Episodes is made by some very special people. The show
is hosted by Danish Swartz, Darren Burnett and me Jason English.
Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley. Our producer is
Josh Fisher. Our story editor is Marissa Brown. Editing and
sound designed by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and
(35:18):
mastering by the Heath Frasier. Original music by Elise McCoy.
Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley.
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia let Me Think. Today's voice
actors Jonathan Washington, Josh Fisher and Zaren Burnett. I'm your
executive producer. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart
(35:38):
Podcasts and We'll see all in October.
Fireheart originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original. I don't know about you,
but I've never actually met an Olympic medal winner. But
I can tell you where to find one without getting
slapped with a stocking charge. One Olympic winner hangs out
in New York City. No, not that New York City,
(00:36):
This New York City. This is Marine Park in South Brooklyn.
It's one of those New York neighborhoods that forget tourists.
Most Native New Yorkers have never visited. Compared to Manhattan,
Marine Park is another planet. It's nestled against a giant
(01:00):
salt marsh. Imagine tall grassy reeds nests of Osprey's a
gentle creek feeding into the Atlantic. On the edge of
that creek, that's where you'll find a silver medal Olympic
winner hanging out in a public park filled with cricket fields.
(01:23):
Another place you could find an Olympic medalist is a
quick train ride north up to New Haven, Connecticut, home
to Yale University. If you wander campus, you'll find Olympic
glory at the Paine Whitney Gymnasium. This is the second
largest gym in the world. It's got twelve acres of
(01:47):
indoor space, and like a lot of buildings at Yale,
it could easily be confused for a Gothic basilica. In fact,
locals affectionately call it the Cathedral of Sweat. And here's
the thing. I can't guarantee you'll find any Olympic medalists
in the but I can guarantee you'll be in the
(02:09):
presence of one, because the gym itself is an Olympic
medal winner. During the nineteen thirty two Olympic Games, the
pain Whitney Gymnasium and its designer, John Russell Pope won
the Olympic silver medal in the category of Architecture, Yes, architecture.
(02:36):
Oh and four years later, the architect Charles Downing Lay
won a silver medal in the category of City Design
for his plans to build you guessed it, the park
in Marine Park, Brooklyn. And if all that sounds weird,
that's okay. It's a little known fact that between nineteen
(02:59):
twelve and nineteen forty eight the Olympics hosted arts competitions. Architects,
pain writers, sculptors, composers all had a shot to compete
for Olympic glory. So if you weren't blessed with superior
athletic talent but always wanted to bring home the gold.
(03:22):
Today's episode is for you. Welcome to Very Special Episodes
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz and
this is Art of Gold, the Olympic art competitions.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hey everyone, this is Jason English. The Very Special Episodes
team is mostly scattered for the summer, but we wanted
to hold our very last episode of season one to
coincide with the Olympics. One tiny bit of news here
before we get you back to the episode. We've been
renewed for season two, which is very exciting. We feel
(03:59):
pretty good about our chances. The show has done pretty
well and continues to grow. For time, we were the
number one history podcast on Apple. Kind of like a
gold medal, I guess, but you never know. I think
I'm a pretty optimistic person, but I often assume the
worst when it comes to stuff like this. And I
really love making the show and working with Dana and
(04:21):
Zarin and producer Josh and story editor Marissa and our
incredible writers. But it turns out there's no reason to worry.
We'll be back with a whole new batch of stories
this fall. I believe October second we're targeting. Don't hold
me to that, but we'll be back in a couple months.
And that's enough about us. Let's get back to the Olympics.
(04:42):
We're going to take you back to a time when
you could win gold for something that didn't require insane
athletic ability.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I want to introduce you to the guy who invented
the modern Olympics. Pierre de Kuberton born in the eighteen sixties.
Kubertant was a French aristocrat. He was stuffy and reserved,
and frankly he looked the part I mean, you could
land an airplane on this guy's mustache. At some point
(05:12):
in the eighteen eighties, Kuberton became enamored with a new
fangled idea called physical education. At the time, there was
a growing school of thought that suggested athletic competition could
develop a young person's moral character. Proponents called it athletic chivalry,
(05:35):
and there were spiritual connotations too. Many argued that melding
muscle and mind could bring people closer to God. The YMCA,
which stands for Young Men's Christian Association, had been born
of a movement called muscular Christianity. Kuberton was in the
(05:56):
middle of all of this, and it reminded him of
something that only existed in the dusty pages of history books.
Centuries ago. The ancient Greeks had celebrated the same virtues
by putting on an athletic competition called the Olympics. The
(06:17):
ancient Games died out around the year three hundred and
ninety three, but Kubertant wondered, what if we brought it back.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
So it's the round eighteen ninety two to eighteen ninety
four that he makes his first pitches in favor of
the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That's Miles Osgoode.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I'm a lecturer at Stanford for the Structured Liberal Education Program,
where I teach literature and philosophy in our history.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Miles is also an expert on the Olympic art competitions.
He wrote his dissertation on the topic. He says that
when Cooperton first dreamed up the idea of reviving the
old Greek Olympics, he didn't receive much fanfare.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
This funny story of giving this big speech to a
bunch of French sports officials in eighteen ninety two at
the Sorbonne and trying to the case at the very
end of that speech that one of the things that
we should do is renovate the Olympic Games. And he
gets kind of a polite applause, but nobody really They
think it's almost a figure of speech.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
The audience didn't think Kuberton was being serious. The speech flopped,
but Kuberton believed in his idea, so a couple years
later he presented it again, and this time with panache.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
He thinks, Okay, if I'm really going to get them
to imagine what this would really be like, I'm going
to need a little bit of pomp and pageantry.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Kubertan stood before an audience representing sports organizations from all
over the world. In an effort to capture their imaginations,
he tried to transport them back to ancient Greece. He
set the mood with a giant neoclassical mural in the background,
there was a musical performance of a long lost hymn
(08:02):
recently discovered in Greece, and then he gave his speach.
The trick worked. The audience was wrapped with attention, and
when it was finished, everyone in the room agreed to
create an organization called the International Olympic Committee. Just two
(08:23):
years later, in eighteen ninety six, the first modern Olympic
Games were held in Athens, Greece. It had cyclic fencing, gymnastics,
weightlifting and more. At the time it was the largest
international sporting event ever. But Kubertant he wasn't satisfied. Something
(08:46):
was missing. The ancient Olympic Games had something the modern
games didn't, and that, he said was art.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
In the time of splendire at Olympia, the oughts in
that is combined harmoniously with sport, assuring the grandeur the
Olympic Games. It must be the same in the future.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
To be true to the old Greek Games, Kubertown said,
the new Olympics needed art contests.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
There is only one difference between our Olympias and playing
sporting championship, and it is precisely the contest of art
as they existed in the Olympias of ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Kuberton lived by a Latin motto mens sana in kuppor
sano a sound body in a sound mind. He believed
the new Olympics should be the same.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Players of Sokka have lost all feelings for the beauty
of the classic authairs ends that the fact they have
won a fifteen one hundred meter race granders are runners
absolutely inept to turn a sentence into good French. Very well.
We raise the Italians for Kuberton.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The Olympics always had to be a pedagogical project for
sort of improving and broadening the minds of the youth
in addition to their bodies, and it was a political
project that was in line with his democratic values and internationalism.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
There was just one problem with Kubertan's vision. It was
factually wrong.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
At Olympia. It didn't have specifically the contests and awards
for artists as there might have been at some of
the minor games.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
The ancient Greeks hosted four different athletic festivals. There was
the big one, the Olympics, which honored Zeus, but they
also hosted the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games. My favorite,
by the way, is the Nemean Games because the winners
received a wreath made out of celery at these smaller games.
(10:57):
The Greeks indeed did host arts competitions.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So at the ancient Panthalantic Games there were these contests
known as the musikos ag On or you know, musical
competitions or artistic competitions.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The winners in the minor games, for instance, a celery
wearing flute player would get an invite to perform at
the Olympics.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
So it was kind of a cultural festeral Olympia.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
There were artists everywhere. There were the winning musicians, of course,
but there were also sculptors who would memorialize the winning
athlete in stone, and there were lots of poets recording
the events in verse, including one guy named Pindar.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Pindar the famous poet of that period and of those games.
This meant reciting odes in celebration of victors at the games, just.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
As what is the most precious of all elements, just
as gold is the most valuable of all goods. And
just as the sun shines brought to then any other star,
so shines Olympia, putting all of the games into the shade.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Pindar also wrote poems for the winning athletes. He wrote
verses for Hippocles of Fessle, winner of the long foot race,
and a poem for Megacles of Athens for hitting the
finish line first with his chariot. And of course, who
can't forget his ode to a boy boxing champion.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
Son of Orchestrado's a jesse damos know certainly that for
thy boxing, I will lay a glory of sweet strains
upon thy crown of golden olive.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Much like how we play the winner's national anthem. After
an Olympic win. At the ancient Games, the athlete got
to hear Pindar's celebratory poems read out loud.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
He might have followed certain victors to their home cities
so that the home city could have a moment of
celebration and hear Pindar's ode.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
So while Pierre de Cooper tomp might have been fuzzy
on the technical details of the old arts competitions, he
wanted the new Olympics to have the same merit, and
frankly he felt pretty strongly about it.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
We absolutely must organize our competition. If not Olympism, we'll fail.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
After all, Who knows, maybe a modern Pindar was out
there waiting to woo the world with his poems. So now,
at the turn of the twentieth century, Kubertant started working
to bring the arts into the Olympic fold. It was
frankly perfect timing one hundred and twenty years ago, artists
(13:41):
started to embrace the idea of turning art into a competition.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
There are a number of writers like Paula Deli who
start to think, oh, maybe the future of literature will
be that of a sport.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Art like sport, required effort and training. You had to
devote yourself to your craft, and like athletes, a little
bit of talent didn't hurt either. The world also felt smaller.
Writers and artists were starting to compare themselves more and
more to other artists across the globe, both dead and alive.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Writers thinking competitively about their relationship to the canon, or
to other stars at their time, or to the idea
of being a champion and challenger at the same time.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
All events, to say, Kuberton's idea to turn the Olympics
into an art and athletics competition had legs, so in
May nineteen oh six, he introduced the idea at a
conference Jentlement.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
We are gathered to Gazia in this dwelling to celebrate
a singular ceremony. We are to reunite in the brands
of legitimate ree lach a long divorced couple Muscle and mind.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Kubertant was going to combine muscle and mind the athletic competitions.
They'd be joined by what he called a pentathl of
the muses for artists, and to ensure the pentathlon was
a success, Kubertant would essentially create burner accounts. When Pierre
(15:23):
de Kubertant introduced his idea of arts contests at the Olympics,
not everybody was on board.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Kubertan met resistance in the early years to this idea.
He was trying to put out newspaper articles and magazine
articles and speeches in favor of an Olympic art program.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That again is Miles Osgood of Stanford, and he says
that Pierre de Kubertant would not be dissuaded. With his
site set on the nineteen twelve Games in Stockholm. He
kept pushing for the idea of arts competition, and the
arts they pushed back. Kubertant had trouble getting the world's
(16:05):
greatest artists to believe him. Look no further than the
gold medal winner of the nineteen twelve literature contest. The
winners two guys from France and Germany, George Harrod and
Martin Eschbach. They won the literature competition for this utterly
(16:26):
underwhelming poem.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Oh Sport, pleasure of the gods essence of life, You
appeared suddenly in the midst of the gray clearing which
arise with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant
messenger of a past age when mankind still smiled.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
It's an overblown and slightly ridiculous poem. It proceeds praising
sport over and over, so, oh Sport, you are beauty,
Oh Sport, you are piece. Oh Sport, you are for kundity,
where he gets into some of that problematic Lamarckian eugenics material.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
There's a whole section in the poem where the writers
talk about destroying quote unhealthy seed and correcting the flaws
which threaten its essential purity, which, looking back, is a
bit woof the whole eugenics thing aside, this poem highlighted
another big problem with the early Olympic art contests, like
(17:34):
come on, have you ever heard of the poet George
Horod and Martin Eshbach. Of course you haven't, because neither
of them was even real. The real author of the
poem was ahem Pierre de Coorbatan.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
In nineteen twelve, when kubertas submits a poem to the
Stockholm for the first Olympic art competitions. He decides to
conceal the fact that, as the founder of the Games,
it's him submitting a poem by using two pseudonyms.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
In other words, the original artistic contests were so poorly
attended and so underwhelming that the founder of the Olympics
boosted the numbers by entering himself into the competition, and
the competition was so bad he won gold, which today
(18:31):
might have been something of a scandal.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
It seems to have kind of gotten swept under the
rug somehow. I think he revealed it about seven years later.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
The fact that there was never any scandal, however, points
to just how low stakes those original arts contests were.
During these nineteen twelve Games, there were around just thirty
five entrants in all categories, and only four artists competed
(19:03):
in the painting contest. It wasn't a total failure, of course.
There were some big names in the fray. Jean Francois Rafalier,
a friend of the superstar French impressionist Edgar Degas, competed
but lost, and in the sculpture category, Rembrandt Bugatti, who
(19:24):
was then regarded as the next coming of Leonardo da Vinci,
also competed, oh and lost. An interesting twist that you
might enjoy for pub night trivia, Bugatti lost to an
American sculptor named Walter Winnins, who happens to be just
one of two people to have won an Olympic medal
(19:47):
in both art and athletics. Not only did his sculpture
win the gold, but years earlier he took home a
medal in pistol shooting. Anyway, over the next few years,
the Olympic art contests continued to sputter. In nineteen sixteen,
World War One interrupted the Games. There were no art
(20:11):
contests to be held, and during the nineteen twenty Games
in Antwerp, Belgium, the judging in the arts competition was
a bit shall we say biased.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
The art competitions were just an opportunity to celebrate local
Belgian artists. About six of the eleven who won medals
were Belgians.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
By now, Pierre de Corbetant was getting old. He announced
that the nineteen twenty four Games in his beloved home
of Paris would be his last to organize, and he
vowed to go out with a bang.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
There is a need for something else besides athletics and sport.
We wanted presence of national genius, the collaboration of the muses,
the Colta bute, all the display pertaining to the strong
symbolism incarnate in the past by the Olympic Games, and
which must continue to be represented in our modern times.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Kubertant and his underlings at the IOC threw everything they
had into attracting the best artistic talent. They notified the
ambassadors to foreign nations that there would be an arts contest.
They got the French Academy of Fine Arts to sign on.
They even invited artists to help draw up the rules
(21:31):
for competition. The move helped build hype for the Games,
and it turned the nineteen twenty four Olympics into a
bonafide artistic bonanza.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Nineteen twenty four is the pivot in a direction of
trying to attract more highbrow talent.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
This included some big name judges too.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
You've got Stravinsky, Bartalk and Revel and music. You've got Vardiri,
Aedith Wharton and Maurice maderlink in literature.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Now, this had a way of enhancing the talent entering
the contests artists realized, hey Stravinsky will hear my song,
or hey Edith Wharton will read my poem. They hopped
at the chance to have their work reviewed by household names.
People like Robert Graves, the famous British war poet, submitted
(22:25):
some verses. Jack B. Yates, arguably the most famous painter
in Irish history and the brother of poet William Butler.
Yates entered and won silver.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
You get these wonderful submissions by Anritamo de Long, whose
Olympic book was actually at the top of many people's list,
to win the Prigan cour kind of the equivalent of
the Pulitzer Prize. In France that year.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
In addition to the contests, there was a huge cultural
festival that brought in big name artists who, while not
competing for medals, were showing off their stuff for Olympic audiences.
Take for instance, this show at the Champs Elise.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Theater, including a collaboration of modernists Jean Cocteau, Darius Milo,
one of the members of Lesis, the six major composers
Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso, and the cubis Ari Laureent,
all contributing together to put on a ballet that is
about beachside athletes on the French Riviera.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
All of that's to say the nineteen twenty four arts
competition was a hit. The same was true a couple
years later in nineteen thirty two, when Los Angeles hosted.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Los Angeles globalizes the Olympics in a way that they
hadn't reached before. Now we're getting Japanese athletes and Japanese artists.
Now we're getting athletes and artists from Latin America.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The arts competitions were becoming more of an international phenomenon.
Galleries at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and
Art hosted eleven hundred artworks from five hundred and forty artists.
That includes I did pieces that are still relevant today,
pieces like Maunri Young's gold winning sculpture of two boxers
(24:15):
fighting today it's at the Smithsonian, or a metal winning
sculpture by Frederick Macmoney's celebrating the first transatlantic flight. Today
that work is at the MET. Visitors came to see
these and other works by the thousands.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
So all that leads to an exhibition that is attended
by almost four hundred thousand visitors, which is a scale
that hadn't been reached before.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
The Los Angeles Games were a triumph of Kuberton's original vision,
a spectacle of muscle and mind. And then the nineteen
thirty six Olympics happened in Berlin, Germany. France refused to
participate in the arts competitions. Britain too, so.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
The Nazis did not want the Olympics at first, right
Hitler at first wanted nothing to do with it. The
spirit of internationalism, the democratic spirit that Gubertin put forth,
did not seem at all in line with Nazi principles.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
But the Nazis changed their mind about that when they
realized that the Olympics could be distorted in their favor.
Because the Nazis noticed something about the previous Olympic Games.
Despite the big names, despite the glitz and glamour and
growing crowds, the artists who usually won the medals were
(25:43):
not pushing the envelope.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
All of these amateur or academic artists that competed and
won medals, their work looks a little bit boring or conservative,
or traditional, or just or in some case commercial. We're
just not very daring.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And that's because of Pierre de Corbetan Kubertant was an
aristocrat and by nature had something of a nineteenth century mindset,
which is a fancy way of saying he was a
fuddy duddy.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Always taking the safe route of Okay, here's a new
pindaric ode, or here's a new myronic classical sculpture, here's
another kind of nineteenth century Romantic or Impressionist painting. Nothing
that was really pushing the boundaries of the form.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The Olympics, in other words, were not a place where
the avant garde flourished, which played nicely into the Nazis' ideology.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
This is a period where the Nazis are already interested
in trying to distinguish what they deemed to be degenerate
art from state art and especially neoclassical art, and the
art competitions up to that point had already done a
pretty good job of showing those two art movements as
rivals and of upholding the more classical traditional standards of
(26:59):
nineteenth century aesthetics or neoclassical aesthetics. So in some ways
the art competitions were a good fit for what Gerbel's
and Hitler and the rest of the Nazi idealogues maybe
wanted to promote aesthetically.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
As a result, a lot of artists skipped the nineteen
thirty six Olympics entirely, which apparently was a smart move.
The judges seemed to favor conservative artworks from fascist leaning
countries anyway. Take the winner of the painting category, Rudolph
Hermann Eisenmenger, an Austrian who, in addition to having the
(27:37):
world's most Germanic sounding name, is most famous for his
work containing swastikas. In other words, the whole Nazi thing
made the nineteen thirty six arts contests a dud. The
next Olympics were originally slated for Japan, but World War
(27:58):
Two put the kaibosh on those plans, and in nineteen
forty four the Games got mixed again. By the time
the Games returned in nineteen forty eight in London, the
arts competitions had lost all momentum. The United States pulled
out entirely because of a lack of interest, and in
total there would be around two hundred fewer competitors in
(28:22):
nineteen forty eight. The result was an underwhelming contest. When
the Swiss architect Pierre Jeanree visited the Victoria and Albert
Museum to view the entries, he was disappointed.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
One looks around the galleries, one had to deplored yet
sence of most of the best known living artists.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
He wasn't the only one.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Commentator said, you know, oh, at the nineteen forty eight exhibition,
it would have been really nice to see a Matisse
or a broc or a Picasso. And the only thing
you can say to that is you kind of pushed
those artists away. Some of them were involved, you know,
some of them did. Some of them, like George Gross
or Walter Ropius, did compete in the competitions and didn't
win any medals. The others felt that, in some way
or another they were not welcome.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
The Olympics had proven over and over again that it
didn't reward groundbreaking artists. By nineteen forty eight, it had
built up an impressive list of snubs. These celebrated English
poet Robert Graves no medals, Walter Gropius, the guy who
literally invented the Bauhause School of art, nothing Koshiro Chi,
(29:33):
whose work is in the MoMA and the British Museum Zilch.
On top of that, Avery Brundage, the vice president and
soon to be President of the International Olympic Committee was
upset that none of the artists had been true amateurs.
One of the founding principles of Olympic competition was that
(29:54):
the participants were supposed to be amateur. So this was
a big deal.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
It was not appropriate to give medals to artists who
by and large were professionals at a time when athletes
couldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
For the winners, the Olympic Committee realized that many of
them were just okay.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
That there is also just a realization that the art
competitions have not done a great job of collecting really
superior art that will last the test of time, or
that represents the great flourishing of avant garde and modern
art of that period of nineteen twelve to nineteen forty eight.
And of course, the funny thing about that, to me
is that that art certainly existed and certainly was part
(30:36):
of the exhibitions, it was just never rewarded.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So the IOC made a decision, because the contestants in
the art competition were almost all professionals, there shouldn't be medals.
It should be an exhibition. Some people inside the IOC
fought to revive Kuberton's original vision, but it was futile.
In nineteen fifty four, Kuberton's vision for art contests in
(31:04):
the Olympics officially died. The contests became a footnote in
history books. Within a few decades, the Olympic Arts competitions
were practically forgotten. Many of the artworks went missing.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
A lot of Olympic artworks have been lost to time.
A lot of them probably aren't in a museum. They're
probably in some private collection, or they've just been lost
one way or another.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
In the late nineteen nineties, a guy named Richard Stanton
started to wonder where did they go? He visited Switzerland,
poured through the Olympic Museum archives and searched for relics
from the art contests. His book The Forgotten Olympic Art
Competitions is the source for all of our quotes from
(31:53):
Pierre de Coubertant. Then a few years later, our guest
Miles Osgood took up the mantle. For the last few
years he's been building a digital archive and database all
of the known artistic entries and winners.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Given that they are about three thousand artworks, and I
think I only have digital images of a few hundred
of those. I'm sure there are more to be found,
but I also wonder whether some will just permanently disappear.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Some of the art has turned up in weird places
for years. One statue of a discus thrower stood unceremoniously
near a highway exit ramp in New York City. Another
medal winner, made by a Disney illustrator, was donated to
a high school before it went missing. But Miles has
(32:45):
made some progress. So far. He's found twenty five texts
from the literature contests, plus two hundred and eighty five
individual images from the painting, sculpture, and architecture. Many of these,
the ones not in private collections, are housed at the
Olympic Study Center in low Zon, Switzerland.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
It's attached to a really lovely museum and just general
set of grounds right on Lake Geneva. So it's not
at all, you know, sort of a subterranean Indiana Jones
dusting off, you know, something that's crumbling under your fingertips.
It's very much the spirit of the original vision of
the Games of you know, let's study culture and run
(33:32):
around and practice sport in beautiful locations where the harmony
of the environment and the events happening on the microscale
are in some kind of alignment with one another. And
as part of those beautiful outdoor grounds where you would
go and eat your expensive Swiss sandwich, there are statues
all around you that are casts of some of the
(33:53):
Olympic artworks from the early twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If you want to see some Olympic artworks for yourself,
hop on a flight to Switzerland. And if that's too
long of a haul, there's usually room on the elliptical
at the Payne Whitney Jim at Yale.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
And with that, we've officially made it to the end
of season one. Thank you for joining us both today
and throughout the season. It's been an absolute blast making
this show. Like I said at the top, we're hard
at work on season two. Look for that in October.
If you need anything in these next few months, you
can email the show very Special episodes at gmail dot com.
(34:36):
I want to thank Dana and Zarin for agreeing to
do this in the first place and for being absolute pros.
I want to thank producer Josh for wrangling the ten
or twelve episodes we have going at any given time.
Story editor Marissa Brown, everyone who's writing and editing and researching,
Let's hit the credit to one more time. Very Special
(34:57):
Episodes is made by some very special people. The show
is hosted by Danish Swartz, Darren Burnett and me Jason English.
Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley. Our producer is
Josh Fisher. Our story editor is Marissa Brown. Editing and
sound designed by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and
(35:18):
mastering by the Heath Frasier. Original music by Elise McCoy.
Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley.
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia let Me Think. Today's voice
actors Jonathan Washington, Josh Fisher and Zaren Burnett. I'm your
executive producer. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart
(35:38):
Podcasts and We'll see all in October.
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