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The Olympics Used to Have a Fine Arts Category!?
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Fine Arts: The Forgotten Olympic Event HOW THIS OLYMPIC CATEGORY CAME TO BE FORGOTTEN
We know the Olympics as one of the most popular sporting events in the world, if not the most popular. With competitions like track and field, figure skating, gymnastics, Ping-Pong, and volleyball, there is an athletic event for almost everyone. But once upon a time, Olympians used to compete in the fine arts. That’s right — in the early 1900s, the Olympics held competitions in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music! Initiated in 1896 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the modern Olympics we know today struggled to adopt the arts into their competing categories. This worldwide event was stressful for the cities that hosted it, and local organizers had no interest in putting together competitions for writing and music, let alone finding people to compete in such categories.
However, as the 1800s rolled into the 20th century, Baron Pierre de Coubertin finally got his wish, and at the 1912 Stockholm Games, arts became an Olympic category. However, there was one caveat. All art submissions had to be about sports. Participants submitted works like a modernized stadium blueprint in the architecture category, a song for Olympic winners in the music category, a painting of the different winter Olympic sports in the painting category, and a poem to celebrate sports in the literature category. Competitions in these art categories thrived until the 1940s when the Olympics was put on hold due to World War II. And when the Olympics returned, the International Olympics Committee had a new president, Avery Brundage. Brundage wanted the Olympics to represent “amateur athletics,” or sports
without the influence of money or power. And to him, the arts could be bought. Brundage said that since artists naturally rely on selling their creations for money, a gold medal from the Olympics could majorly inflate the value of their work, and these competitors could begin to get rich just by competing. This, in turn, would bring money into the games – artists would no longer be competing for the enjoyment of sports or pride in their country but out of a desire to strike it rich. After much debate on the committee, it was agreed that the art categories would be removed to preserve the event’s integrity. However, from this removal, the Cultural Olympiad was created, a noncompetitive version of the Olympic arts. So, next time you tune in to the Olympics, check out the many artists representing their countries at the Cultural Olympiad!
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