During the opening parade, they would not clash with the athletes, the high-level artists of the very young French Art Federation (it was born in 2019) follow the same codes as the sportsmen, including clothing. Their tracksuits and jerseys are provided by Le Coq Sportif. They are blue, of course, and marked FFA.
But what would they be doing there? To regain a place they occupied between 1912 and 1948. During the Summer Olympics, the program included the “pentathlon of the muses”. The “major arts” constituted the five disciplines: painting, music, sculpture, architecture and literature.
Commonalities between art and sport
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, was at the initiative of this mix. “Art and sport have things in common, notes Cédric Brandilly, president of the French Art Federation. In archery, for example, some will be interested in the objective, others in the gesture. So why couldn’t we mix artistic and sporting performances in the same Olympiad??”
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Trials to be determined
“We do not want a caricature of what Baron Pierre de Coubertin did,” warns the president of the FFA. The five major arts might not all be included, others might appear, such as photography, dance…
“Should we integrate the cinema? This is a question that arose as early as 1924.”
Adrian Abline (National Technical Director of the FFA)
Adrien Abline, the national technical director of the FFA, has already, in his plastic arts doctoral thesis, defended at La Sorbonne in 2019, established a bridge with sport. By devoting a chapter to Zinédine Zidane!
The FFA recruits artists
The French Art Federation, which currently has 200 members, is seeking to network the territory. It is not yet represented, for example, in Centre-Val de Loire and little in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. It therefore invites high-level artists to take their membership on the website of the French Art Federation. The license is free.
Already works of art to the credit of the FFA
The federation already has several works of art to its credit, such as this “food court, agro-football trend” (vegetable garden bounded by goals on which appear the lines of a football field) planted in Cahors.
The “food field, agro-football trend” on which vegetables will grow, in Cahors. Photo FFA.
As part of the Podium 213 project, the FFA wishes to carry out public interviews with sports-artists. With Luc Abalo, winger of the French handball team but also a painter or with Guillaume Martin, the philosopher of the peloton, cyclist and author of plays for example.
The coach’s technical sheets
The coach, Pierre Monjaret, prepares his team for a possible reception at the Elysée. “Members of the FFA will be in the background while the politicians sing their praises. A moving moment, certainly, but muscularly painful,” he warns. In a technical sheet, he offers stretching exercises to prepare for it.
Part of the France team, accompanied by coach (left) Pierre Monjaret. Photo FFA.
The artistic prize list of the Olympic Games from 1912 to 1948
The French Art Federation has examined the prize list of the pentathlon of the muses, from 1912 to 1948. And it is rather singular.
No gold. Sometimes no gold medal was awarded in a discipline. Only the second and third steps of the podium were occupied.
Among the pioneers. A medal was awarded to a woman, the painter Henriette Brossin de Polanska, in Antwerp, in 1920. It should be noted that the first women’s Olympic medal dates from 1900 and that Baron Pierre de Coubertin was completely hostile to women’s sport.
Versatile. Participants obtained a title in artistic and sporting events. This is the case of Walter Winans (USA), Olympic champion in sculpture and vice-champion in running deer shooting in Stockholm in 1912. We can also mention the Hungarian Alfred Hajos, silver medalist in architecture in 1924. He had won gold at the 1896 Athens games in the 100 meter and 1,200 meter freestyle events!
The medal to an imaginary tandem. In 1912, the gold medal for literature went to the German duo Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, but the real author was… Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
Prestigious jury. A prestigious jury was formed for the 1924 Paris Olympics. It included the writer Paul Valéry, the composers Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel (they did not award any medals) or the architect Henri Sauvage, to whom we owe in part the splendid building of La Samaritaine, in Paris.
Philippe Abline
