“The torch is coming home,” Tony Estanguet, director of the Paris Olympics, told a crowd of reporters and critics gathered in the Louvre's indoor sculpture garden on Tuesday. The sun streamed through the arched glass roof, illuminating a bronze statue of a discus thrower beneath a lapis-blue arch emblazoned with the words “L'Olympisme.”
Estanguet, a former Olympic champion, may have been talking about the 100th anniversary return of the Olympics to France. After arriving in Paris from Athens via several French overseas territories, the Olympic torch will be installed in the Jardin des Tuileries, just beyond the Louvre, whose grounds will also be part of this summer's marathon route . But the museum itself has a special connection to the birth of the modern Olympic Games, a relationship explored in the exhibition “Olympism: Modern inventions, ancient legacies”, which runs until September 16.
The exhibition features 120 works of art that show how the Greek quadrennial sporting event of the 8th century BC, dedicated to the worship of Zeus, influenced the development of the modern Olympic Games in the late 19th century. and crafts are on display. The first iteration of these new competitions was held in Athens in his 1896, but the French and French interest in antiquity played a major role, and in 1900 the competitions moved to Paris.
On the walls of the Louvre are portraits of six men, four of them French, who envisioned the reconstruction. For the aristocratic Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, it was sports education. For Greek Demetrius Vikelas, it was a combination of business and history. This somewhat bland introductory display gives way to a series of rooms focused on Olympic art, a combination of antique veneration and turn-of-the-century innovation.
Greek vases, plates, and cups from the 5th and 6th centuries BC represent classic images associated with ancient games, with deep roots in mythology. In “Lambros His Cup” (540-520 BC), a naked runner with a black figure on red earth, his muscular legs frozen in his stride, is shown in a wide ship. Run around. A cup from around 490 BC depicts a discus thrower surrounded by decorative motifs.
Many of these objects are from the Louvre's collection, and at a time when de Coubertin and his associates were absorbed in Olympic enthusiasm, it was the Louvre that pioneered the study of ancient Greek pottery. One of the curators was Edmond Potier. Potier's profile is depicted on his giant 1934 bronze medal, which hangs above a copy of his “Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum.” This is the definitive catalog of Greek vases in collections around the world, which began as an index to the Louvre's artefacts.
Hercules, the divine warrior believed to be the founder of the ancient Olympic Games, also figures prominently in the exhibition as the embodiment of supernatural power. The calyx krater (a tall bowl for mixing water and wine), dating from 515 BC to 10 BC, depicts Hercules, son of Zeus, fighting the giant Antawa. On the black ship, Hercules is naked, taut with red clay against a black background, grappling with a mighty enemy. Elsewhere, in a statue admired by Emile Gillieron, the official artist of the first Modern Games, he appears as a fat infant wrestling with a snake coiled over his body.
Gillieron's paintings for Olympic brochures, commemorative albums, and posters are displayed alongside sketches and studies for medals, plaques, and trophies. The artist also created images of wrestlers, discus throwers, torchbearers, and weightlifters for special edition stamps, and the color sheets are displayed in glass bottles as well as images of the statues that inspired them. It is also photographed on the back gallery wall. However, unlike the ancient pottery, these are his 20th century replicas made to aid research. What is new can sometimes seem old, and vice versa.
In these elegant but somewhat stolid arrangements hint at the more idiosyncratic aspects of the French reimagination of the Olympics. Created by photographer (and rival of Eadweard Muybridge) Etienne Jules Marais, Contact Sheet is an ancient Greek technique based on chronophotography, in which frames of movement are taken in quick succession, based on still postures. It shows how it was used to reconstruct the movements of athletes. Found in relics. Marie's still image shows a naked man spinning a disc in his hand, picking up speed and throwing it into the distance.
Nearby, in Jean Lobera's 1924 film The Olympic Games Practiced in Ancient Greece, the act of discus throwing is depicted as a slow-motion pantomime, with a modern-day Adonis, artistically dressed, dancing with the grace of a dancer. Throw the discus theatrically. Another shot shows a still life of his six javelin throwers, stopped mid-movement, passing from left to right, their arms trembling with effort as they maintain a motionless posture.
Attempts to include women in Olympic history don't really work. The main reason for this was the 1896 Athens Olympics, then her 1900 and 1924 Paris, 1908 London, 1912 Stockholm, and more. While other international sporting competitions developed, the Olympic Games continued to deny women full participation until 1928. (London 2012 was the first time all participating countries sent women to the Olympics, and this summer's Paris Games will have quotas to ensure an equal number of women.) Male participants also participated. . )
There was one video on display of women competing in the 1896 Olympics, but it was broken so we don't know what was shown. It was probably her two sports that female athletes can participate in: croquet or sailing. Elsewhere, on the curatorial spectrum, there were several films of her late 19th century choreographer Isadora Duncan dancing in the garden, who celebrated the neoclassical tradition. Several paintings and plates in the same exhibit depict Greek heroines, such as the winged goddess Nike flying or sowing seeds in a stadium, but the female allegories are not female.
The 1869 painting “The Soldiers of Marathon'' depicts the famous messenger running home, stripping off all unnecessary clothing and shoes along the way to announce his countrymen's victory over the invading Persians. It is. As soon as he broke the news, he collapsed and died.
This legend inspired French linguist and educator Michel Breard to conceive of the 46.2-mile marathon race as the ultimate test of physical fitness and the basis for the 1896 Olympic Games. In a dimly lit hallway of the Louvre, filled with artifacts and glittering replicas of trophies, his own design, the Silver Cup of Bréal, is highlighted on a small pedestal. Although it is a shining object of pure silver, it is modest and slender. Reeds and flowers swirl around its base, like the marshes of Marathon that thwarted Persian attacks.
“Olympism” has much to say about the ancient history admired by the modern French, whose Olympics will be held in Paris in July. The ancient games decreed that all hostilities must cease during the event. This sentiment, however utopian, can still be seen in the Olympic emblem with its five interlocking rings, designed by Coubertin more than a century ago. “These five of his rings represent his five regions of the world where Olympism has now won,” he wrote in his 1913 Olympic review. At the Louvre Museum, you too may be enchanted.
Olympism: a modern invention, an ancient legacy
At the Louvre Museum in Paris until September 16th. Louvre Museum.fr.
