Look to the past: When Olympic medals were awarded for architecture, music and literature
Did you know that until the middle of the 20th century art competitions were held at the Olympics? Find out how these competitions came to be part of the Games and why they aren’t still around today.
In Ancient Greece, art and sport went hand in hand, with the ideal way to achieve harmony considered to be by exercising both body and mind. When the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, laid out his plans for the future of the Games, he wanted there to be a strong connection between athletes, artists and spectators. And so, art competitions dedicated to sports began to appear on the Olympic programnme.
Writing in Le Figaro in 1904, De Coubertin said: "The time has come to take the next step, and to restore the Olympiad to its original beauty. In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again."
De Coubertin’s plan was discussed at the Olympic Congress of 1906, however, due to the short amount of time before the 1908 Games in London, the idea only came to fruition at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. At first, the Swedish art community expressed concern about how fairly such a competition could be judged, but eventually the events were added to the Olympic programme.
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.
Who had the most success
- German competitors won 24 medals, 12 of which were won at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Italian competitors won 14 medals in art Olympic events, with French competitors winning 13.
- Finland's Aale Tynni is the only woman to win an Olympic title in art (literature)
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.
At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, the art competition did not garner a great amount of attention. However, that all changed at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Some 193 participants submitted works including three Soviet artists, even though at the time the Soviet Union did not participate at the Games. The Paris Games also stood out due to the distinguished jury, which included the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, Sweden's Selma Lagerlöf, and the famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.
The popularity of the art competition continued at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam where more than 1,100 items were exhibited in the Municipal Museum. One of the participants at that Olympics, France’s Paul Landowski, won Olympic gold for a sculpture of a boxer. He is now best known for his work on the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
The arts competition continued to be a feature of the Olympics through to 1948. However, in 1949 the IOC congress concluded that since almost all contestants in the art competitions were professionals, it didn’t reflect the amateur status of the Olympics. The IOC attempted to revive art competitions at Helsinki 1952, but the idea was rejected by the hosts. In 1954, the competitions were once and for all replaced by art exhibitions.
Many works awarded with Olympic medals have been lost. Architectural projects are easiest to track, although not all have been built but some of the buildings definitely left their mark on history and are still in use today. For example, the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, designed by architect Jan Wils (Olympic gold in 1928), Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale University designed by architect John Russell Pope (Olympic silver in 1932), who is best known for his work on the Jefferson Memorial, or the Olympic Stadium in Wroclaw designed by architect Richard Konwiarz (bronze at the 1932 Olympics).
London 1948 saw the last of the Olympic art medals – in which Finland topped the table with two gold, one silver and one bronze – instead, a non-competitive art and cultural festival is now associated with each Games.