The cultural legacy of Olympic posters

Abstract

By the time of the London Olympic Games in 2012, posters – officially commissioned in one way or another by host cities – will have been used to promote the forthcoming occasion for 100 years. But existing as more than material artefacts with a use value in advertising, these posters can be considered as artistic offerings with an intrinsic aesthetic value. To state this is not unproblematic, as posters can also be embroiled in the political controversies that accompany the holding of the Olympic Games in particular cities at particular points of those cities' histories. And in nearly all cases of Olympic celebration, posters may be seen to serve an ideological/nationalistic function. Yet, opportunity to view and appreciate a comprehensive range of Olympic posters and associated imagery from the time of the first modern Games in 1896 – afforded by a 2008 exhibition held in London – gives idea as to how posters may be used to reignite the prospect of the ‘marriage of art and sport’ desired by Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Movement.

Introduction

This essay considers the cultural significance of Olympic posters. It was written during the Olympiad year of 2008, when the Games were celebrated in Beijing, China. The essay was inspired by the exhibition A Century of Olympic Posters displayed at the Victoria and Albert (V&A), Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green, London, between the 17 May and 7 September. A book based on the exhibition was prepared by the curator Margaret Timmers, and subsequent references in this essay to posters from the exhibition are from copies of them in this accompanying volume.1 The essay attempts to argue that through Olympic posters the ‘marriage’ between art and sport, the return of the Greek ideal envisioned by the key founder of the modern Olympic Games Pierre de Coubertin, can be approximated. This is not to say that posters per se will perform this role. The argument is made that only posters of intrinsic artistic value can re-establish de Coubertin's desired link. This is to be recognized as a highly subjective argument, a point made clear enough to the author during feedback discussion following oral presentations of versions of this essay on two occasions.2 This important caveat notwithstanding, the essay goes on to argue for the return of art posters ‘inspired by sport’ as a means of re-establishing the ideal of sport and art in concert within the realm of culture.

The ‘purpose’ of Olympic posters

A promotional blurb for the Olympic Posters exhibition provides the following summary:

Since the early twentieth century, posters have heralded the Olympic Games, whetting our appetite and shaping our expectations of the event that is to come. With their broad popular appeal, and ability to project eye-catching and memorable imagery, posters have offered an ideal means of communication for the Games. Since the pioneering Stockholm Games of 19123 first exploited the full potential of an internationally-distributed Olympic poster, they have been a vital element in the planning process. They played a key role in publicity campaigns as interest in the event burgeoned in the post-war years, and became an essential part of sophisticated visual design programmes, as supremely exemplified by the posters generated for Mexico City 1968 and Munich 1972.4

As is the case with any effective promotional piece for an exhibition with an educational purpose, a number of questions arise from the brief definitional sketch. Here we are given the idea that the poster has a primarily utilitarian function – i.e. to advertise the forthcoming Olympic Games to be held in whichever city according to the four year cycle. But the mention of ‘eye-catching and memorable imagery’ suggests visual desirability and hence aesthetic appeal. In the poster, then, do we witness the utilitarian and aesthetic item being as one? This question pertains not only to Olympic posters, but to posters in general. Nor is this a matter of new enquiry. With the proliferation of posters in public spaces towards the end of the nineteenth century no less an artistic authority than John Ruskin quipped ironically: ‘The fresco-painting of the bill-sticker is likely, so far as I see, to become the principal Fine Art of Modern Europe.’ Pleased or otherwise, Ruskin was noting how posters were taking art beyond the exclusive confines of galleries and into public spaces such as the streetcar. This can be seen within related artwork, such as George William Joy's The Bayswater Omnibus (1895).5

Yet, the view has prevailed for some critics that advertising is the enemy of art and clearly, from this perspective, the aesthetic pretension of the poster is tenuous at best. But surely this is not the case for those Olympic posters that have been designed by recognized artists? The aforementioned poster for the Stockholm Olympic Games of 1912, designed by member of the Swedish Royal Academy, Olle Hjortzberg, provides an interesting example for such consideration. ‘Hjortzberg was a decorative painter well known for his murals of church interiors.’6 He was also a passionate believer in the poster as art form, being a member of the ‘Artistic Posters’ society. Hjortzberg's poster for Stockholm 1912 is described by Timmers as follows:

His composition represented a parade of nations, each athlete bearing a billowing flag – with Sweden's at the forefront – and marching towards the common goal of the Olympic Games. It was also a celebration of the nude male body as an ideal, a symbol of athletic perfection in the classical tradition.7

However, the original design was altered from a totally observable naked male body to the version we see with the male subject's genitalia festooned with streamers. Within the traditions of western art, Hjortzberg's naked male body is uncontroversial, yet in the context of a poster heralding the modern Olympic Games it was regarded as beyond the pale. Even the amended version was challenged as indecent. For example, it was withdrawn from a railway station in Holland for being ‘in the highest degree immoral’.8 The Hjortzberg controversy indicates that the poster as art classification is not unproblematic. Hjortzberg worked within an artistic or cultural convention that he soon found to clash with social conventions of the early twentieth century.

The display of all art occurs, in one way or another, within sets of social relations. But art is traditionally regarded as existing above, if not beyond, the social realm. Thus the distinction, certainly within the German and English intellectual traditions, between culture and civilization or even more simply, as Raymond Williams put it, between culture and society.9 In this western formulation, art should ultimately serve no utilitarian purpose and thus may we speak of ‘art for art's sake’.10 The poster, as already noted, serves a decidedly utilitarian purpose and in this sense exists primarily within the social realm. But may we stretch the parameters to speak of ‘posters for art's sake’? This question is raised and answered in the affirmative by Dawn Ades in her essay appearing in Timmers's earlier edited collection The Power of the Poster.11 Importantly, what are we getting at when we ask such a question? Being concerned with advertising an event, the poster might be seen as essentially ephemeral in character. Posters also give the impression of being insubstantial in physical quality. Appearing on billboards or walls on cheap paper they are readily damaged and disappear before too long. Unlike the items we usually regard as art they do not seem to stand the test of time, either in terms of aesthetic fascination or material existence. If we may speak of ‘posters for art's sake’, then surely posters must be able to be appreciated for purely aesthetic reasons. The Century of Olympic Posters exhibition helps our consideration in this regard.

Posters for art's sake?

The essay has already described the Century of Olympic Posters exhibition serving an educative role. Its very location within the V&A Museum of Childhood suggests the objective to provide an educational opportunity for young people to learn about the history of posters pertaining to the modern Olympic Games. This purposive role may be described as utilitarian but, it can be argued, this need not detract from the possibilities of artistic appreciation. In personal terms, I look back to my own visit to the exhibition as a highly rewarding educational experience and also one of artistic appreciation such as I may enjoy upon visiting other exhibitions more conventionally defined as involving a display of art. I have indicated in my introduction that I fully accept the adage – running from the Greeks through to Shakespeare and onto Hume – that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, this pertaining as much to the aesthetic appreciation of objects as it does to our opinion on the looks of fellow humans. With this declared I can draw attention to some of the posters I especially enjoyed looking at, without need of attempting an objective investigation or analysis as to why. Posters I remember being of aesthetic appeal upon the occasion of my visit include Hjortzberg's Stockholm poster, Martha Van Kuyck's poster for the Antwerp 1920 Games,12 Jean Droit's poster for the Paris 1924 Games13 and Ilimari Sysimetsa's poster for the 1952 Helsinki Games.14 Each of these posters I looked at for several minutes and came back to observe at length on a second round through the exhibition.

Also amongst my favourites on the day were Franz Wurbel's poster for the 1936 Berlin Games and Ludwig Hohlwein's poster for the 1936 Winter Olympics, the latter sponsored by the German Railway Publicity Bureau.15 A stated appreciation of the 1936 posters is perhaps provocative given the historical association of the respective Games with Hitler's National Socialist Regime. The artistic appreciation of Wurbel's and Hohlwein's posters is perhaps as problematic as an appreciation of Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia. Writing in the 1970s, Susan Sontag declared Olympia to be an ‘official production’ of Hitler's regime rather than of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and, therefore, not appreciable beyond its infamous political context.16 Might the same be said for the posters by Wurbels and Hohlwein? As Timmers claims:

the 1936 Berlin Games offered Hitler a supreme opportunity to promote his regime's prestige on a world stage … not only to invest the Third Reich with the pomp and glamour of the modern Games but, by appropriating and inventing images from antiquity, to associate it symbolically with the grandeur of the Roman Empire and the glories of the classical world.17

After an initial failure to find a suitable poster via an open competitive process that has become familiar in the lead-up to Olympic Games, Wurbel's design was selected from amongst a small group of drafts latterly commissioned directly by the publicity committee. Wurbel's image of a gigantic golden coloured athletic victor rising above the Brandenburg Gate was regarded as in keeping with the ‘heroic realist’ style favoured by Hitler.18

Hohlwein's poster is, perhaps, even more provocative in its possible promotion of Germanic superiority. As Timmer asks in her analysis of the poster featuring an apparently victorious Olympic skier, are we viewing ‘the Aryan archetype of physical strength and perfection, his right arm raised as a Nazi salute’?19 Hohlwein's association with the political powers of the day in Germany was longstanding. He had made a living by preparing propaganda posters for the German government during the First World War and from 1933 became a declared supporter of National Socialism, and was assumedly untroubled by his 1936 poster being used as a vehicle of political propaganda. Nevertheless, Hohlwein was widely regarded as a leading poster designer in the first half of the twentieth century and Timmers's description of his artistic significance is interestingly read in separation from the non-aesthetic judgements that intervene in an assessment of his character and political liaisons: ‘Influenced by the distinguished British poster artists The Beggarstaffs and by contemporary art movements in France and England, he created a style characterised by asymmetry, block-like interlocking shapes, high tonal contrasts and bold lettering.’20 As Bell-Villada suggests, attraction to artworks directly associable with Nazism pushes the ‘Art for Art's Sake’ belief to its limits.21 A similar point was made by Walter Benjamin in the Epilogue to his famous paper ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, first published in 1935/36. However, Benjamin is warning against the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti's aestheticizing of war, regarding this – prophetically given his time of writing – as the frightening logical endpoint of fascism's tendency to introduce ‘aesthetics into political life’.22 The posters of Wurbel and Hohlwein and, for that matter, Riefenstahl's Olympia, have more to do with the ‘politicizing of art’ that Benjamin explicitly associated with Communism.23

Posters and politics

The political usage of art posters by the Soviet Union has a significant history; several examples from the duration of the Soviet Union's lifespan as a nation are held in the Sergio Grigorian Collection.24 Images displaying athleticism and sport began to appear in the mid to late 1940s and, gauging from the aforementioned collection, continued as a popular form of visual propaganda into the 1960s, alongside emerging images of popular enticement such as those of Soviet cosmonauts. The Soviet Union became the first communist nation to hold the summer Olympic Games, the XXIInd, in Moscow in 1980. These Games coincided with the final era of the Cold War and a particular period of heightened tension following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Alan Tomlinson notes Olympic posters' move away from ‘recourse to aggressively nationalist interests or human bodily stereotypes’ following the Wurbel and Hohlwein posters of 1936.25 This change is reflected in the posters for the Moscow 1980 Games. Despite the tendency for the post-Second World War Soviet poster to portray well muscled young male and female athletes, such imagery is largely missing from the posters of 1980. However, this is not to say imagery of Soviet nationhood is absent from the commissioned posters including the ‘official poster’.26 With regard to the latter, featuring the emblem for those Games designed by Russian artist Vladimir Arsentyev, Timmers comments: ‘Arsentyev's concept of parallel lines above the Olympic symbol could be interpreted as five sports tracks and the unity of the sports movement, and also as the silhouette of one of Moscow's Kremlin towers topped by a red five-pointed star.’27 This is a more subtle means of nationalist expression than the bold variant that reached its zenith with the 1936 posters, but nationalist expression all the same.

It would therefore be facile to accredit to the Germans the monopoly in using the Olympic poster as a vehicle for political propaganda. Given the involvement of national and regional governments and municipal councils in the bidding for, and hosting of, the Olympic Games, posters advertising the Games necessarily carry an ideological message. Olympic posters have always served such purpose to some extent. Having looked at the example from Moscow 1980 we do well to regard the example from the subsequent 1984 Olympic Games hosted by Los Angeles. The poster, designed by prominent artist Robert Rauschenburg (often associated with the pop-art movement)28 came from a series of ‘fine art posters’ commissioned by the Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee (LAOOC). As described by Timmers, the central image draws upon the Los Angeles ‘Star in Motion’ emblem with ‘interlocking stars crossed by horizontal stripes that appear to set the stars in motion’.29 A collage of photographic images is inserted into the stars. Some of the images depict sporting activity, others random snaps of people that seem to give view to the diversity of American society. The overall image may be read as one of dynamism and progress – a positive statement, perhaps, on the American way. It is unlikely that Rauschenburg, an artist of some complexity, would have intended such a simple interpretation of his work. But then even rather apparent anti-nationalist cultural offerings, such as Bruce Springsteen's song ‘Born in the USA’ have been appropriated for flag waving glorification. By putting his poster design forward to the LAOOC Rauschenburg would have been aware of the usage to which it would be put. But again, we broach the issue of a distinction between aesthetic, political and utilitarian statuses.

The most deliberate political usage of posters in association with the Olympic Games occurs with what might be referred to as the anti-poster. In some cases this involves making mockery of the official Olympic posters, this is particularly so in circumstances where the Olympic Games are held in nations under human rights scrutiny for one reason or another. Perusal of the internet will readily reveal images drawing on the official poster for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to make a point of protest against those games being held in China. An earlier example of an anti-poster was that by Mexican militant artist Adolfo Mexiac.30 In the lead up to the 1968 Games in Mexico City student protests against the high level of public spending on the Olympics in a relatively impoverished nation were heavy-handedly quashed by the police and the army. The message from Mexiac's striking poster featuring a gagged protester is clear enough, the inscription of USA on the padlock fastening the chain to the protesters mouth indicting the political influence of the USA along with Mexico's governmental authority.

In one case a poster has been used as a means of diffusing protest anticipated by the organizers prior to the staging of an Olympic Games. White Australia's terrible record of the treatment of its indigenous Aboriginal people was always likely to be raised as a point of protest from the time that nation's largest city Sydney was awarded the 2000 Games in 1993. The poster ‘Peace Roo’,31 designed by David Lancashire, could hardly have been expected to quell criticism and protest, but it represented a clear attempt by the organizers to present a symbol of the Games as an occasion of racial reconciliation where white and black Australia come together and the olive branch is finally accepted. However, given that the Australian Prime Minister of the time continued to refuse to apologize to the Aboriginal people for the misdeeds since white settlement, any symbolic gesture such as that of the Lancashire poster rang hollow. And we remember other forms of symbolic protest such as the leading Australian rock band Midnight Oil – the lead singer of which is now a federal government minister – displaying the word ‘sorry’ on their clothing during their performance at the Games' closing ceremony.

Posters and the Cultural Olympiad

In the final section of this essay Olympic posters are discussed in relation to what has become known as the ‘Cultural Olympiad’. My reflections on the Cultural Olympiad has benefited from reading essays by Beatriz Garcia and David Inglis, which appear in a recent edition of The International Journal of Cultural Policy on the theme of sport, cultural policy and urban regeneration.32

As is well-known, the word Olympism was used by Pierre de Coubertin to capture his sense of an eternal humanistic spirit. De Coubertin defined Olympism as a highpoint in the ‘cult of humanity’ where men strive to the limits of their imperfections. It is in this humanly based sense of excellence that they aspire to heroism. He, of course, drew this understanding from notions of how the Ancient Olympic Games in Greece had been conducted according to the Heroic ideal.33 A book published in 1896 on the first modern Olympic Games shows on its front cover an image of the goddess Athena looking favourably towards the modern Athens of the day.34 According to Inglis:

when de Coubertin established the modern Olympics he was concerned not only to revive the games as a purely sporting event, but also to rekindle what he took to be the entirety of the ancient Olympic festival. Ancient Greek social structure and culture was, of course, nowhere near as differentiated and divided into autonomous realms as was the Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The original Olympics had in fact begun in the sixth century BCE as a singing contest dedicated to the god Apollo; athletics competitions were only added at a later date. Thus the totality of the ancient Olympics in their heyday was characterised by a cultural complex of ‘arts’ and ‘sports’ (although these terms themselves are modern signifiers which point to differentiated social spheres the like of which did not exist at this time) … Consequently, when de Coubertin sought to rekindle the ‘Olympic spirit’ in modernity, his aim was to ‘take up the ethos of the panegyris from the classical festival – a festive assembly in which the entire people came together to participate in religious rites, sporting competitions and artistic performance’. On this vision, not only were the arts to be present at each Olympiad, they were the central means of expression of its core values, namely the pursuit of excellence (in a wide range of human endeavours) on the one hand, and a fostering of harmonious relations between nations on the other. In effect de Coubertin was proposing a form of Olympiad which was quintessentially ‘modern’ in that the values it promoted were secular, but which retained, against the powerful differentiating tendencies of modernity, key elements of the undifferentiated complex of sports and arts which had characterised ancient Greek experience. The modern Olympics were to be based upon an alliance of ‘athletes, artists and spectators’, the former two groups having come in modernity not only to be socially separated from each other, but also to be mutual antagonists, the one group championing the physical values of the body – sportive prowess, physical strength, and so on – and the other upholding the intellectual values of the mind and the soul. Ancient Greek culture had not made such a profound distinction between mind and body that modern culture did, and de Coubertin's attempt to resurrect the Olympics as a fusion of the sportive and the artistic was self-consciously an endeavour to heal what he, and many others of the time, thought of as a damaging rift in both human social organisation and the individual human being's sense of self.35

Yet, de Coubertin was more than a dewy-eyed romantic for ancient life. He knew that the cultural past of ancient times could not be replicated within the modern festival but, as suggested, believed that an increasingly industrialized world could benefit greatly from re-familiarization with, and aspiration to, the cultural spirit of the past. The problem, as Inglis notes, is that the ‘structural differentiation’ of the modern world had come to bear more rigidly on cultural life than de Coubertin had accounted for.

In short, the argument is that increasingly complex patterns of life in industrial times, including forms of culture, become differentiated and separate. Within this process cultural life is engulfed within the social realm and the differentiation that occurs is socially rather than culturally determined. Significantly, parallel historical trends impact upon how differentiation is played out. In regard to the arts and sport differentiation, the mind/body dichotomy became paramount. The mind/body dualism debate, of course, dates back to ancient times, but took a particularly sociological turn in industrial times with the increasing division between labour and other tasks. Activities within leisure life, as in work, were more than ever viewed as the mind and body differentiated. Accordingly, sport becomes seen as a primarily physical activity, art as a primarily mental activity. The social evaluation of these differentiated activities became inextricably linked to class – generally speaking and thus not exclusively – mental pursuits to the middle class, and physical pursuits to the working class. Furthermore, the tendency for the term culture to be associated with the arts and, hence, the bourgeoisie meant sport being demarcated outside the realm of culture.

The argument of Inglis, amongst others, is that the relationship between sport and the arts has suffered from this modern differentiation and this becomes most apparent when we recognize the disjuncture between the Games of the Olympiad and the Cultural Olympiad. To an extent, this view is supported by Garcia who, as a scholar actively involved in policy discussion, suggests that Games organizers need to return to a holistic humanism whereby Olympic sport and the cultural programme are seen as being an essentially united endeavour rather than two separate components needing to be yoked together. When the sport/culture nexus is looked at in this way the cultural core of the nexus goes unrecognized and the cultural or artistic programme tends to be regarded – whatever rhetoric might be bandied about – as primarily a corporate operation focussed on presenting the host city in what the organizers perceive to be the best possible light to an international audience, especially via the mass media. According to Garcia:

Rather than separate identities that must be ‘blended’, sport, culture and education should be seen as dimensions of the very same principle. The sports and recreation science literature understands sport as a cultural manifestation and an activity through which education takes place. Thus, it is not possible to understand the concept of sport or Olympic sport, without reference to the concepts of culture and education. For this reason, the concept of a cultural programme separated from the sporting and educative programmes seems to be redundant. One would expect all of them to be integrated and perceived accordingly by everybody involved within the Olympic experience, from athletes to coaches, organisers and spectators. However, the lack of an integrated sporting cultural discourse perceived as such by average Olympic audiences and promoted as such by Olympic organisers, supporters and media, reveals that the idea of a perfect and evident integration of these concepts within people's minds is far from being a reality.36

Where Garcia diverges from Inglis is that she traces the disjuncture between the sport and cultural programmes of the Olympic occasion back to de Coubertin himself. She uses his phrase ‘sport plus culture’ to indicate that, despite his undoubted humanistic intentions, he must carry some responsibility for the way in which the cultural programme developed but grew apart from sport at the very outset.37 The first major endeavour to bring art into the modern Olympic occasion was an Advisory Conference titled ‘Incorporation of the Fine Arts in the Olympic Games and Everyday Life’, held in Paris in 1906. The conference was largely de Coubertin's initiative and, even at this early stage, he met with resistance. Parisian sport writers ridiculed de Coubertin's talk of a grand marriage and reunification of mind and muscle, sport and art. His idea of a ‘pentathlon of the muses’ in the form of an Olympic competition for the arts, comprising music composition, literature, sculpture, painting and architecture, did not occur until the Olympics of 1912. But even then the organizers of the Stockholm Games were reputedly lukewarm about an arts competition.38 Richard Stanton's book The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions gives a detailed account of the correspondence between de Coubertin and the Stockholm organizers.39 From this correspondence it is apparent that de Coubertin was of the view that the planned arts competition was not receiving the level of support he believed it warranted.

Posters ‘inspired by sport’

Towards a conclusion, and in bringing the discussion explicitly back to Olympic posters, it is useful to note that de Coubertin's idea for an art competition involved awarding art works in the various fields that were directly ‘inspired by sport’. Indeed, the emphasis on art inspired by sport was spelt out in invitations to the Art Competitions by organizing committees and was encoded in the Regulations of the Contests Literary and Artistic for 1912.40 However, momentum gathered over the years for a shift from the holding of arts competitions to the arts festivals. This idea was strongly supported by Avery Brundage when he became President of the IOC in 1952.41 In a ‘circular’ published in July 1953 Brundage set out the case as to why he believed that Olympic arts competitions had seen their day. One reason was that the arts awards tended to go to professional artists and Brundage saw this as being at odds with the amateur ethos of the Olympic Games. He further believed that the criteria for judging were necessarily arbitrary. To quote Brundage: ‘even if the competition is limited to sport buildings, how can you compare the design for a stadium with that of a metropolitan athletic club … or a swimming pool?’ In regard to literature, Brundage noted that there was not just a problem in dealing with the assessment of different genres but also entries in various languages. To quote him, ‘Who is there that understands all these languages and can compare the entries?’42

By the Melbourne Olympic Games of 1956 the arts competition was officially replaced by an ‘Arts Festival’ and related events were held at locations such as the Victorian National Gallery, the Melbourne Public Library, the Botanic Gardens and the Melbourne Town Hall.43 In each category the displays had more to do with showcasing Australian art than with celebrating art ‘inspired by sport’ in the de Coubertin tradition. Indeed, the closest the Arts Festival seemed to come to this was a symphony concert held inside the architecturally praised Olympic Swimming Pool.44 Although the cultural programming for subsequent Olympic Games has been significant, since Barcelona 1992 involving the staging of events over the four years in the lead up to the Olympics, the sport and art marriage promoted by the early arts competitions seems to be lost. It may well be the case that the games and the cultural programme of the Olympic occasion attract largely different audiences.

But, against pessimism and resignation, might Olympic posters hold something of an answer to the sport/art unification quandary. Competition has been used as the method to arrive at a decision for the selection of official posters, but my suggestion here is not for a poster competition in the manner of the old arts competition. Rather, it is for a poster festival in the manner of artists being invited to design posters specifically ‘inspired by sport’. A memorable example along these lines was the series of posters published in conjunction with the Munich Games of 1972. Planned from the outset in 1967, the Munich organizing committee adopted the view that high-art could indeed be carried in poster form. They set out, ‘to engage the best [international] artists’ in a poster series that would ‘relate artistic activity to the Olympic Games’.45 Five series containing seven posters each were produced. Some versions of posters were produced on high quality paper – these were done by way of limited edition aiming at a collectors' market. The artists were selected by an appointed art commission and artists who would deliver avant-garde work were deliberately targeted. Artists contributing to this series included David Hockney, Tom Wesselmann, Jacob Lawrence, Horst Antes, Max Bill and Eduardo Chillida.46 Artwork more accessible to a sports audience was presented in what was called the ‘sports series’ of posters that offered images of 21 different sport activities. Included in this series was the official poster for the Munich 1972 Games, featuring ‘a photographic modification of the architectural model for the Munich Olympic Stadium’.47

The works in the Munich 1972 Olympic art poster series were clearly challenging but, as Timmers suggests, may be as good a material example of the art and sport marriage that we have in association with an Olympic Games.48 I conclude by suggesting that this example be recalled to provide renewed inspiration for how the sport/art relationship may be reconciled. Specifically, then, it is proposed that commissioned artwork, ‘inspired by sport’, in the form of posters be commissioned by Olympic organizing committees or the cultural planning sub-committees thereof. This would be best done not just via the production and circulation of high quality prints but with the original poster artwork being put on display in a location in close proximity to, if not within, the main Olympic stadium. Beside each poster would be a short narrative by the artist giving some explanation of the work and its relationship to sport. Such a display, in keeping with the Munich example, would exhibit sport-inspired artistic posters as well as a series of individual ‘sport’ posters. This seems a promising way of getting the idea of the essential sport/art nexus (both art and sport as culture) across to a general audience. People may still end up not appreciating artwork such as Horst Antes' rather abstract offering in 1972, saying that it in no way reminds them of sport, but at least, in the context of the type of exhibition proposed, they may come some way to engaging with it and considering its aesthetic possibilities – art inspired by sport and a re-appreciation of the sport/art relationship inspired by posters.

Notes

¹ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters. I am grateful to Margaret Timmers for taking the time to talk to me about the exhibition and for encouraging my presentation of this paper to the ‘Documenting the Beijing Olympics’ conference at SOAS, University of London, September 12–13, 2008.

² Another version of the paper, ‘The Aesthetic Significance of Olympic Posters to the “Cultural Olympiad”’, was presented in the Sport and Leisure Cultures seminar series at the University of Brighton, March 23, 2009. I am especially grateful to Professor Jonathan Woodham for his critically constructive comments made in discussion following this presentation.

³ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, see poster on page 20.

⁴ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, see posters on pages 78 and 88.

⁵ Timmers, ‘Introduction’, 8–10.

⁶ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 21.

⁷ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 21

⁸ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 21

⁹ Williams, Culture and Society.

¹⁰ The ‘art for art's sake’ ethos was expounded by the critic Walter Pater and developed rhetorically by Oscar Wilde. For a summary of their articulations see Bell-Villada, Art For Art's Sake, 73–96.

¹¹ Ades, ‘Posters for Art's Sake’.

¹² Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 30.

¹³ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 32.

¹⁴ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 60. Sysimetsa's poster was originally prepared for the 1940 Olympic Games, which were scheduled for Helsinki. However, due to the disruption and delay caused by the Second World War, the Games did not come to Helsinki until 1952 and it was at this time that Sysimetsa's poster was officially used.

¹⁵ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 43, 46.

¹⁶ Sontag, ‘Fascinating Fascism’.

¹⁷ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 45.

¹⁸ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 45

¹⁹ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 45

²⁰ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 45

²¹ Bell-Villada, Art For Art's Sake, 6.

²² Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’, 64.

²³ Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’, 64

²⁴ Lafont, Soviet Poster.

²⁵ Tomlinson, ‘Sport and Design’, 121.

²⁶ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 99.

²⁷ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 99

²⁸ Osterwold, Pop Art, 145–55.

²⁹ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 102.

³⁰ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 77.

³¹ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 122.

³² Garcia, ‘One Hundred Years’; Inglis, ‘Cultural agonistes’.

³³ Hughson, ‘The Global Triumph’, 135.

³⁴ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 14.

³⁵ Inglis, ‘Cultural agonistes’, 455–6.

³⁶ Garcia, ‘One Hundred Years’, 366.

³⁷ Garcia, ‘One Hundred Years’, 366

³⁸ Garcia, ‘One Hundred Years’, 366, 368.

³⁹ Stanton, Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, 30–49.

⁴⁰ Stanton, Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, 34.

⁴¹ Stanton, Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, 241.

⁴² Stanton, Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, 244.

⁴³ The Arts Festival of the Olympic Games Melbourne .

⁴⁴ The prominent Australian architect and cultural critic Robin Boyd regarded the Melbourne Olympic Pool as being ‘the first fairy story of Australian building’. See Serle, Robin Boyd, 148.

⁴⁵ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 82. Another important poster project occurred in conjunction with the next Olympic Games, Montreal 1976. The Artists-Athletes Coalition for the Celebration of the 1976 Olympics, chaired by Olympic athlete and now leading sport scholar Bruce Kidd, sponsored the production of posters and related works intended to ‘educate the Canadian public about de Coubertin's vision of bringing sport and art together’ (Ibid., 95).

⁴⁶ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 84–7.

⁴⁷ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 88–9.

⁴⁸ Timmers, Century of Olympic Posters, 83.