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The Olympics Used to Have an... Extraordinarily Weird Art Competition · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Who's that running towards the
0:33
Speaker 1: finish line? Why it's our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
0:40
Speaker 1: He goes, he's like a blur, He's like a flash,
0:43
Speaker 1: like a rocket, and I'm painting the whole thing. Is
0:46
Speaker 1: that go? Real? Real gold medal material? Almost said cold
0:50
Speaker 1: war material, but that's a different episode. I'm dead your
0:54
Speaker 1: knowl And today, ma'am, we're gonna talk about the Olympics
0:59
Speaker 1: with some help from our research associate Jeff, but not
1:02
Speaker 1: in a way that most people might think. Now you
1:05
Speaker 1: might have seen the title of this episode Olympic Visual Arts,
1:09
Speaker 1: and you might have pictured various Olympic mascots are branding,
1:14
Speaker 1: you know, the rings or what is his name? Is
1:16
Speaker 1: he a little guy for the Atlanta Olympics. Is now
1:20
Speaker 1: quite a collectible little fella. He kind of looks like
1:22
Speaker 1: a like a tear drop for something. It looks like
1:25
Speaker 1: you should be a mascot for like a water company
1:27
Speaker 1: or something. You know, yeah, I could go with water company.
1:30
Speaker 1: Maybe also an electric company, because sometimes blue is electricity
1:34
Speaker 1: and mask in the land of mascots. You know, it's
1:37
Speaker 1: it's funny because back, uh, not too long ago, we
1:41
Speaker 1: did an episode about former Olympic sports, Olympic sports of yesteryear,
1:47
Speaker 1: and it might surprise some of our fellow ridiculous historians
1:51
Speaker 1: to know that art used to be in the Olympics.
1:54
Speaker 1: That's right, folks, a rt art, not art. Garf uncle,
1:58
Speaker 1: We're not gonna plot twist you that way. No, we're
2:00
Speaker 1: not talking about Paul Simon either, nor are we talking
2:03
Speaker 1: about Olympic mascot art. We are talking about art as
2:08
Speaker 1: a sport sort of kind of per se. Yeah. Yeah.
2:13
Speaker 1: This comes to us in large part thanks to the
2:16
Speaker 1: work of Richard Stanton, the author of a book called
2:19
Speaker 1: The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions. Richard says, I first filmed
2:24
Speaker 1: out about it reading a history book when I came
2:26
Speaker 1: across a little comment about Olympic art competitions, and I said,
2:30
Speaker 1: what competitions. This sparked his curiosity, piqued his interest, and
2:36
Speaker 1: so he wrote the first and as far as we know,
2:39
Speaker 1: only English language book on the subject of Olympic art competitions. Right,
2:45
Speaker 1: some of the research we we dug through for this
2:48
Speaker 1: had Stanton digging doing some digging himself through boxes of
2:53
Speaker 1: records in the International Olympic Committee archives in Switzerland. And
2:58
Speaker 1: as everyone knows this with have very poor penmanship. It's
3:02
Speaker 1: the hallmark of of the country. Uh. Maybe that's not
3:05
Speaker 1: entirely true, but apparently some of these were kind of
3:08
Speaker 1: hard to read and did require a little bit of
3:10
Speaker 1: detective work and sort of piecing together the forgotten history
3:14
Speaker 1: of Olympic art competitions. Yeah, and this all goes back
3:19
Speaker 1: to an aristocrat, Baron de Cobalting. Uh. This guy was
3:25
Speaker 1: the founder of the International Olympic Committee and the modern
3:29
Speaker 1: Olympic Games as we know them today. And if he
3:31
Speaker 1: asked the Baron, he would say, look, one of the
3:35
Speaker 1: big important pieces of the Olympics, in my vision, is
3:40
Speaker 1: an art competition. Because he was consumed with this idea,
3:45
Speaker 1: this vision of what defined a true Olympian, and to him,
3:49
Speaker 1: a true Olympian is not just someone who could lift
3:52
Speaker 1: heavy weights or run very quickly or swim like a fish. No,
3:56
Speaker 1: they also were skilled in the classics, in music and literature.
4:01
Speaker 1: He thought the Olympics would be incomplete if they did
4:04
Speaker 1: not have some aspect of the arts. Yeah, because we
4:09
Speaker 1: kind of forget sometimes that the Olympics, in their original
4:14
Speaker 1: incarnation were meant to be a celebration of of the muse,
4:19
Speaker 1: you know, of all things creative, you know, dating back
4:22
Speaker 1: to ancient Greece, arts at sports were kind of considered
4:25
Speaker 1: another art form in and and of itself, celebrating the artistic
4:30
Speaker 1: expression of the human body itself. Yeah. Yeah, and I
4:34
Speaker 1: see a flex in there, Max. That's that's nice. Uh.
4:37
Speaker 1: I didn't know you were bringing guns to the show,
4:40
Speaker 1: but never don't bring don't bring a knife to the
4:43
Speaker 1: gun show. You always got to bring guns, right or
4:46
Speaker 1: the fantastic restaurant here in Atlanta guns show. The chefs
4:50
Speaker 1: have their own knives, so you don't need to bring them. Yeah.
4:58
Speaker 1: That was an awkward moment for me, but still a
5:01
Speaker 1: great night. So the guy the baron, right, he says,
5:06
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up out of whole cloth. I'm
5:08
Speaker 1: not coming from a vacuum here. This is something that
5:13
Speaker 1: calls back to the ancient days of the Olympics. As
5:15
Speaker 1: you mentioned, nol and I want there to be this
5:19
Speaker 1: strong connection between the athletes, the artist, and the spectators.
5:24
Speaker 1: So let's have art be part of the competitions. Uh,
5:30
Speaker 1: he said, I mean he talks about regaining the glory
5:35
Speaker 1: of the Olympics, right becoming bringing it back to life,
5:38
Speaker 1: back to reality, and he sees the fine arts combining
5:42
Speaker 1: harmoniously with the Games. This came up at the Olympic
5:47
Speaker 1: Congress in nineteen o six, but they said, you know,
5:51
Speaker 1: we don't have enough time this iteration. The Olympic Congress
5:55
Speaker 1: of nineteen o six was planning the eight Games in
5:59
Speaker 1: London and they said, look, Barren, we got your back,
6:02
Speaker 1: but we might have to kick the can down the
6:05
Speaker 1: road a bit here. And kicked the can they did
6:07
Speaker 1: down the road a handful of years to the nineteen
6:10
Speaker 1: twelve Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. And you know, as
6:16
Speaker 1: is the case, I think aren't X Games type sports
6:19
Speaker 1: now incorporated into the Olympics. There's I know that there are.
6:24
Speaker 1: They're always shake ups that get proposed, and sometimes these
6:29
Speaker 1: sports or changes to existing sports are more welcome than others.
6:35
Speaker 1: Like I think we were talking about fair with Max
6:38
Speaker 1: confirming that skateboarding is one but not all X Games. Right. Yeah,
6:42
Speaker 1: it's like some I can't remember off the top of
6:45
Speaker 1: my head, but I think they just added in park
6:48
Speaker 1: but for a while they didn't have half pipe, even
6:50
Speaker 1: though they had half pipe snowboarding in the Winter Olympics.
6:53
Speaker 1: I mean, my personal favorite sport, baseball, just got added
6:57
Speaker 1: back in with the most previous Olympics after being out
7:00
Speaker 1: for like two decades. Isn't constant flux what sports are in?
7:04
Speaker 1: What or not? Like obviously, like track and field is in.
7:07
Speaker 1: Like guys running fast and people swimming far, those are
7:11
Speaker 1: always in, but they change around a lot. Yeah, And
7:14
Speaker 1: such was the case with figuring out how to introduce
7:18
Speaker 1: art into the Olympic Games. So they kind of whittled
7:21
Speaker 1: it down to five categories, which were architecture, music, painting,
7:26
Speaker 1: literature and sculpture. And then of course they were later
7:30
Speaker 1: subdivided even further into things like drama for literature and
7:35
Speaker 1: um epic, which I guess would be like poetry, epic
7:37
Speaker 1: poetry or lyric literature. I imagine that a sort of song, yeah,
7:42
Speaker 1: or spoken word there were I saw the there was
7:47
Speaker 1: an Olympic, an Olympic event held in Canada, and one
7:50
Speaker 1: of the opening ceremonies a few years ago was this
7:53
Speaker 1: just tremendously well done spoken word poem. And I know
7:58
Speaker 1: spoken word gets a bad rap and folks. Yes, I'm
8:01
Speaker 1: the first to say that eight of it might be
8:04
Speaker 1: Ah swinging a miss for a lot of people, but
8:07
Speaker 1: that other is life changing level good. And this, this
8:12
Speaker 1: is a remnant of that idea, that attachment to the arts.
8:16
Speaker 1: They also started dividing music into orchestral and instrumental, solo
8:21
Speaker 1: and chorus singing or chorl And they also started looking
8:27
Speaker 1: into ways to separate visual arts paintings from graphic arts,
8:31
Speaker 1: drawings from paintings. This one surprised me. For sculpture, they
8:37
Speaker 1: didn't just say statues are different from reliefs. They also said,
8:42
Speaker 1: let's count medallion's why not? Maybe that's maybe you just
8:45
Speaker 1: made the best medallion. Conflict of interest though, right, perhaps
8:50
Speaker 1: what happens when a competitor makes a gold medal as
8:53
Speaker 1: their submission. That's very meta and it's funny because, I
8:57
Speaker 1: mean you could probably start to see where this becomes
9:01
Speaker 1: difficult to judge, I mean, in competitions, you know, exclusively
9:05
Speaker 1: for the arts, singing, music, literature, etcetera. It's not really
9:09
Speaker 1: a point system, you know, I mean, it's very subjective.
9:13
Speaker 1: So whereas sports, you know, are measured in measurable things
9:17
Speaker 1: like yards, ran or or time you know, achieved you
9:21
Speaker 1: know for a certain length, or points scored in a
9:24
Speaker 1: particular game that has like a standardized scoring system. That's
9:28
Speaker 1: not the case with painting, unless you're just doing speed painting.
9:32
Speaker 1: It's like who finishes first or whatever. It is much
9:35
Speaker 1: more of a subjective taste based kind of judging. Yeah. Yeah,
9:40
Speaker 1: And that's why, in certain circumstances, competitors might not even
9:45
Speaker 1: get a medal. If the judges looked around and they
9:49
Speaker 1: were unable to come to a consensus on their subjective
9:53
Speaker 1: opinions about a work of art, they might only award
9:57
Speaker 1: a bronze medal. And that's you know, that's very distinct
10:02
Speaker 1: from the way the rest of the Olympic events would go.
10:05
Speaker 1: As the kids say, they might be these were all
10:08
Speaker 1: pretty mid, so we'll just give out a bronze. Yeah,
10:11
Speaker 1: but good hustle everybody, and nice medallion. Also, your plaque
10:15
Speaker 1: is good. I just can't choose bronze medals for all.
10:24
Speaker 1: There were thirty three people who participated in the very
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Speaker 1: first Olympic art competition for the Modern Olympics in nineteen twelve,
10:33
Speaker 1: and that during the nineteen twelve competition, there was a
10:38
Speaker 1: gold medal awarded in all of the five categories. We're
10:42
Speaker 1: getting this research directly from the Olympic Olympics dot com,
10:47
Speaker 1: so they do quite a good job of of, you know,
10:50
Speaker 1: laying out all of the history of this very unusual
10:54
Speaker 1: period in the Olympic Games. Yeah, shout out to the
10:57
Speaker 1: author that Indra shasta Kova. So if you look at
11:01
Speaker 1: their history here, you'll see that there were some rules
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Speaker 1: for submissions, and if you've ever been in a writing competition,
11:10
Speaker 1: or you've ever submitted to a journal or something like that,
11:14
Speaker 1: then you'll recognize some of this. You might also run
11:16
Speaker 1: into it. In some gallery competitions, judges could only score
11:21
Speaker 1: works that had never been exhibited anywhere else, and they
11:25
Speaker 1: have also had to be dedicated to sports, so there's
11:29
Speaker 1: a theme to it. The baron himself, by the way,
11:33
Speaker 1: he participated in a literature competition under a pseudonym and
11:39
Speaker 1: his piece won a gold medal. Corruption. That's a little suspicious.
11:45
Speaker 1: Did you say the name of I love it It's
11:49
Speaker 1: to Sport, which, again, like I don't want to judge
11:54
Speaker 1: it just by the title. I haven't read it yet.
11:56
Speaker 1: Maybe it's amazing, but ow to Sport sounds a little
12:01
Speaker 1: on the nose for the gold medal. I'd love to
12:03
Speaker 1: see who else entered the literature competition. Correct, So fun
12:08
Speaker 1: fact from the nineteen twelve Games UM the United States entry,
12:13
Speaker 1: Walter Winnens won the win. Winnens won UH an Olympic
12:19
Speaker 1: gold medal in shooting four years prior. But then later
12:24
Speaker 1: I guess you had like a little side hustle as
12:26
Speaker 1: a sculptor. He became the Olympic gold medalist in that
12:31
Speaker 1: category in sculpture UH in Sweden. He'd also won an
12:35
Speaker 1: Olympic medal in shooting that same Games. Yeah, and then
12:40
Speaker 1: there is one other guy who won medals in art
12:44
Speaker 1: and sports, and that is Alfred Hajos from Hungary two
12:49
Speaker 1: gold medals in Athens in eighteen six and a few
12:52
Speaker 1: years later won the silver medal in architecture. Look, we
12:58
Speaker 1: know that most people hearing this today do not associate
13:03
Speaker 1: the athletic feats of the Olympics with the aesthetic feats
13:07
Speaker 1: of the art world. And back in Antwerp in the
13:11
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, the situation was kind of similar. The art
13:14
Speaker 1: competition didn't get a lot of press, didn't get a
13:17
Speaker 1: lot of attention, It didn't draw a ton of crowds.
13:20
Speaker 1: But this changed just a few years later when the
13:24
Speaker 1: Olympics went to Paris in nineteen. Well, it's also I mean,
13:28
Speaker 1: it's not no, no, no shade on on art or whatever,
13:32
Speaker 1: but it's not exactly the most captivating thing to exhibits
13:37
Speaker 1: in terms of a spectator. Um, you know, sport like
13:41
Speaker 1: these are obviously things that are presented and then displayed
13:44
Speaker 1: in some sort of gallery type situation, at least in
13:47
Speaker 1: terms of the visual arts. I don't know that we
13:49
Speaker 1: have any information about how we're the were the poems
13:52
Speaker 1: and the literature pieces read aloud by the writers like
13:57
Speaker 1: wild fighting, Oh no, weld swordfighting okay? On top uh?
14:03
Speaker 1: Galloping steeds, yes, yes, uh? And and uh the pages
14:08
Speaker 1: they were reading would be lit on fire. Uh No,
14:12
Speaker 1: we're just making up a really interesting competition. But this
14:15
Speaker 1: reminds me I want to shout out one of our uh,
14:17
Speaker 1: one of our friends on our Facebook page, ridiculous historians.
14:22
Speaker 1: Robin w hipped us to a real sport called chess boxing.
14:28
Speaker 1: You alternate rounds of rapid chess and rounds of boxing
14:32
Speaker 1: until someone wins in one of those categories. Oh that's
14:37
Speaker 1: so funny. I never knew that there's a Woo Tank
14:39
Speaker 1: Clan song called The Mystery of Chess Boxing, and um,
14:43
Speaker 1: I never knew what that was referring to until now.
14:47
Speaker 1: They don't actually say that in the in the in
14:49
Speaker 1: the lyrics at all, but that is the name of
14:52
Speaker 1: one of my favorite tracks off of the thirty six
14:55
Speaker 1: Chambers record. Nice. Yeah, And we don't know if they're
15:00
Speaker 1: talking about I think they're talking about applying a martial
15:05
Speaker 1: arts mentality to chess. I don't think they're talking about
15:09
Speaker 1: alternating rounds. But maybe they are connected, you know, maybe
15:12
Speaker 1: secretly some members of the Wu Tang clan our world
15:16
Speaker 1: class chess boxers. If so, we'd love to see a clip.
15:20
Speaker 1: Of course it's it's named after a kung fu film
15:23
Speaker 1: Hong Kong film from nineteen seventy nine directed by Joseph
15:27
Speaker 1: Koo called The Mystery of Chess Boxing. You know that
15:30
Speaker 1: the Wu Tang clan loved some some kung fu pictures.
15:33
Speaker 1: Of course, who doesn't I love kung fu movies as well.
15:37
Speaker 1: You know, I'd say I love kung fu movies as
15:39
Speaker 1: much as uh. The attendance of the Olympics in Paris,
15:45
Speaker 1: loved the art competition almost two hundred people submitted works
15:50
Speaker 1: of art, including three Soviet artists, and this was interesting
15:55
Speaker 1: because at the time the Soviet Union was not participating
16:00
Speaker 1: in the Olympics. There was some geopolitical tension. The jury, right,
16:05
Speaker 1: the judges for the art competition in the Paris Games
16:09
Speaker 1: was also um pretty creme de la creme. They were
16:12
Speaker 1: pretty posh. The first woman to receive the Nobel Prize
16:15
Speaker 1: in literature was there that Sweden's Selma lager Loaf. And
16:20
Speaker 1: then a famous Russian composer, the one and only Igor Stravinsky.
16:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, is Rights of Spring. Uh an episode unto
16:29
Speaker 1: itself in terms of the premiere of that piece that
16:31
Speaker 1: I believe caused some manner of riots because the music
16:36
Speaker 1: was just so stark and intense and in your face
16:39
Speaker 1: and you know, for lack of a better term, at
16:42
Speaker 1: the time modern, you know, it just wasn't the classical
16:44
Speaker 1: music was very formal and and meant to kind of
16:47
Speaker 1: stick to the hits and sort of the forms of
16:51
Speaker 1: of classical composers in history. And Stravinsky, with this kind
16:55
Speaker 1: of atonal, clashy, kind of very you know, storm and
16:59
Speaker 1: drawn kind of vibes, really turned that whole thing on
17:03
Speaker 1: his head, so very interesting to see. I'm not this
17:05
Speaker 1: must have been after he of course, this would have
17:07
Speaker 1: been after he was already established and kind of you know,
17:10
Speaker 1: got his bona fides and was no longer like this
17:12
Speaker 1: iconoclastic figure. Yeah, they weren't putting him as a member
17:16
Speaker 1: of a jury and then saying in a few years,
17:19
Speaker 1: this guy, he's gonna be a big deal. No, he
17:23
Speaker 1: had his stripes. Yeah, this this wholeso we see the
17:26
Speaker 1: art competition continuing to be popular. In the nineteen Games,
17:31
Speaker 1: which were in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. There were
17:34
Speaker 1: more than one thousand pieces of art exhibited in the
17:38
Speaker 1: Municipal Museum, something like eleven hundred and one of the
17:43
Speaker 1: participants there was Francis Paul Landowski. He won the Olympic
17:49
Speaker 1: gold medal for a sculpture of a boxer. He would
17:53
Speaker 1: later go on to create the famous, the world famous
17:58
Speaker 1: Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, which I
18:01
Speaker 1: have not seen in person, but I definitely I want
18:04
Speaker 1: to see, you know, it's on my bucket list. And
18:07
Speaker 1: the good news is it's so big that it's pretty
18:10
Speaker 1: easy to see. I can just kind of get to
18:12
Speaker 1: Rio and look up exactly. So here's the question, what
18:16
Speaker 1: happened to do this? You know, I mean it's not
18:19
Speaker 1: lost obviously because the Olympic Committee themselves are are writing
18:23
Speaker 1: about it. But this is certainly not of your average
18:25
Speaker 1: Olympic fan would know much about. So what happened? But
18:29
Speaker 1: where where did it go? Why did it fall out
18:32
Speaker 1: of favor? World War two? As yeah, so many great
18:38
Speaker 1: things of that time, you know, As you know, folks,
18:41
Speaker 1: the Olympics were put on hold in because there was
18:47
Speaker 1: a world war. Nearly all of the countries that would
18:50
Speaker 1: ordinarily participate in the Olympics were now participating in war.
18:55
Speaker 1: And when they came back after the close of the war,
18:59
Speaker 1: the competitions had another problem new management. The new president
19:05
Speaker 1: of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, was obsessed with amateurism.
19:13
Speaker 1: He was a rigid supporter of amateur athletics and he
19:17
Speaker 1: wanted Olympics, the Olympics to be pure. He thought they
19:20
Speaker 1: were swayed by the weight of money, which is, you know,
19:25
Speaker 1: a valid claim, but here's why it's spelled trouble for
19:30
Speaker 1: the art competition. So he likes amateurs. He hates money
19:34
Speaker 1: and nepotism, even though being president of the IOC is
19:38
Speaker 1: kind of a nepotistic position. Uh, he says, Look, artists
19:42
Speaker 1: have to sell their work to make a living, and
19:45
Speaker 1: winning an Olympic medal could theoretically be a big advertisement
19:51
Speaker 1: for that artists work. So you know what it reminds
19:55
Speaker 1: me of. It's like when people win the Great British
19:57
Speaker 1: Baking Show or the Great British Bake Off. There's not
20:00
Speaker 1: a cash prize, you know, they win like a bespoke
20:03
Speaker 1: crystal kind of cake platform. But honestly, the real prize
20:07
Speaker 1: is just the accolades that comes along with it, and
20:10
Speaker 1: most of the people that into the top three get
20:13
Speaker 1: some kind I maybe even the top ten, or just
20:15
Speaker 1: by participating in the show, they get a boost to
20:17
Speaker 1: their baking career and probably get enough cloud that they
20:20
Speaker 1: can open a successful bakery or you know, put out
20:22
Speaker 1: a cookbook or something like that. Yeah. No, I want
20:25
Speaker 1: to finish with the Brennage point because he's got He's
20:28
Speaker 1: got a couple of a couple of pros and CODs here.
20:31
Speaker 1: So he says, back in this post World War two
20:35
Speaker 1: environment that if someone wins a medal for artistic expression,
20:40
Speaker 1: then they're probably going to make bank off of it.
20:44
Speaker 1: Later down the line, he thinks it's an unwelcome commodification
20:48
Speaker 1: of the Olympics. But keep in mind that nowadays it's
20:52
Speaker 1: not uncommon for Olympic athletes to get huge merchandise steals,
20:58
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So that also that that's
21:02
Speaker 1: the that's very similar to the problem he said he
21:05
Speaker 1: had with art competitions in the Olympics. Further, here's the
21:10
Speaker 1: big con about it. He was a former Olympic artist.
21:16
Speaker 1: He entered a piece of literature in the nineteen thirty
21:19
Speaker 1: two Games. He didn't get a medal, he got an
21:23
Speaker 1: honorable mention, and then later in the nineteen forty eight
21:26
Speaker 1: Games he tried to shut down the whole art competition. Wow,
21:31
Speaker 1: a little bitter maybe, Yeah, it seems so honorable mention,
21:34
Speaker 1: that's that's that is enough to make someone have some
21:39
Speaker 1: sour grapes. That's like worse than lebronze. It's like I've
21:42
Speaker 1: always found that honorable mention this is such a borderline,
21:47
Speaker 1: backhanded compliment of a category, you know, I think, So,
21:50
Speaker 1: I mean, it's better than dishonorable mention, which I actually
21:53
Speaker 1: not being mentioned at all. Perhaps I got a dishonorable
21:57
Speaker 1: mention in uh in an art an essay competition once
22:01
Speaker 1: and I had no regrets because I disagreed with the
22:04
Speaker 1: premise of the competition. Do you remember the Invent America program?
22:08
Speaker 1: M hmm. It was a thing that was popular when
22:12
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I think it was like one
22:13
Speaker 1: of those presidential you know, like the Presidential Fitness Challenge
22:17
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was some kind of program for schools
22:20
Speaker 1: and it was called Invent America, and you know, kids
22:22
Speaker 1: would would make inventions and um, you know, you'd go
22:26
Speaker 1: onto semifinals and all of that stuff, and I think
22:28
Speaker 1: maybe ultimately you'd get some kind of patent. I can't
22:30
Speaker 1: remember what the ultimate goal was, but I got an
22:33
Speaker 1: honorable mention one year in the Invent American competition. I
22:36
Speaker 1: quote unquote invented something I called the bright Night toilet light,
22:40
Speaker 1: and it was a little clicky switch that would go
22:42
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the toilet seat so when you
22:44
Speaker 1: put it down, it would turn on a light so
22:46
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't fall into the toilet. Um, those are
22:49
Speaker 1: a thing though. Well, yeah, I guess that was ahead
22:51
Speaker 1: of my time. But uh, I only thought that was
22:53
Speaker 1: worthy of an honorable mention. So yeah, well, I mean,
22:57
Speaker 1: I'm still very proud of my dishonorable mention because that
23:01
Speaker 1: is malicious compliance at peak. Uh so so uh no,
23:06
Speaker 1: bad blood of course. Yeah, I used to. I used
23:08
Speaker 1: to do those I missed those competitions. I used to
23:11
Speaker 1: do those kind of things all the time. Yeah. Yeah,
23:15
Speaker 1: we all award ourselves prizes or are we gonna be like, yeah,
23:19
Speaker 1: go ahead, because the three of us um and then
23:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, we get like, I don't know other
23:24
Speaker 1: people involved. I I feel like we can get a Vogue,
23:26
Speaker 1: Obama and a wreath involved. Let's get everybody for ridiculous news,
23:30
Speaker 1: ridiculous crime, ridiculous romance. Let's get them in the competition,
23:35
Speaker 1: and let's decide ourselves, just just the three of us,
23:38
Speaker 1: and you listen, you along, folks, Let's decide to not
23:42
Speaker 1: give anyone a medal. Let's have everyone compete, and then
23:45
Speaker 1: let's do them like the art competence the Art jury
23:48
Speaker 1: did back then. All bronzes except for Strickland, who gets
23:51
Speaker 1: the dishonorable mentionable and a dishonorable discharge. And we will
23:57
Speaker 1: make it exclusively in the spoken word category. Why I
24:01
Speaker 1: will I will die on this hill? Okay, all right,
24:03
Speaker 1: and that's the title of your of your peace right.
24:06
Speaker 1: I will die on this hill, I will do yes,
24:10
Speaker 1: And indeed it's true. So this this, this fellow, you
24:14
Speaker 1: know that kind of through a wrench in the works,
24:18
Speaker 1: he essentially led to a serious discussion about the merits
24:23
Speaker 1: of the art competition and whether or not they should
24:25
Speaker 1: be you know, removed from the Games. Yeah. Eventually his
24:30
Speaker 1: position won the day, and it was decided that art
24:34
Speaker 1: competitions would be scrapped completely and they would be replaced
24:38
Speaker 1: by an exhibition, a non competitive exhibition, and this eventually
24:44
Speaker 1: became known as the Cultural Olympiad. And so there are
24:49
Speaker 1: no more winners of Olympic medals in the field of
24:53
Speaker 1: the arts for now, because, as we said, the Olympics
24:56
Speaker 1: seemed to always be undergoing some sort of evolution. One
25:00
Speaker 1: of the last medals awarded was a silver medal in
25:03
Speaker 1: n to John Copley, a British guy, for his engraving
25:09
Speaker 1: polo players. You could see there's a there's kind of
25:14
Speaker 1: a trend on simple titles here, you know what I mean,
25:17
Speaker 1: owed to sports polo players. The shot pushes the javelin thrower.
25:31
Speaker 1: This is cool because he was seventy three years old
25:36
Speaker 1: when he got this. This would have made him the
25:38
Speaker 1: oldest medal winner in all of Olympic history. But that's interesting. Yeah,
25:43
Speaker 1: but his victory didn't count. Well, okay, that that that
25:46
Speaker 1: being said, it does occur to me though, that by
25:49
Speaker 1: including the arts in this way, you are significantly broadening
25:52
Speaker 1: the range of ages that could you know, successfully compete
25:56
Speaker 1: in the quote unquote Olympics. Yeah, very young people could
26:01
Speaker 1: theoretically win, as could quite elderly people. But this is
26:04
Speaker 1: such a bummer to me. The one and fifty one
26:07
Speaker 1: medals that had been awarded were retroactively stricken from the record,
26:13
Speaker 1: so they don't This is important because it doesn't count
26:17
Speaker 1: for a country's total number of medals overall, which is
26:21
Speaker 1: a bummer. We learned about this thanks to Joseph Stromberg
26:25
Speaker 1: over at the Smithsonian Big fans of the Smithsonian. So
26:30
Speaker 1: this competition goes to the wayside in nineteen forty nine
26:34
Speaker 1: because the IOC says, all right, all these art contestants
26:40
Speaker 1: are professional artists, so this doesn't reflect what we see
26:44
Speaker 1: as the amateur status of the Olympics. And that's something
26:55
Speaker 1: again in the modern day I think most people would
26:58
Speaker 1: disagree with, right, like the you can. I guess you
27:02
Speaker 1: could say all figure skater is an amateur. Maybe, but
27:09
Speaker 1: these folks spend all their lives working to perform, to
27:14
Speaker 1: compete at the Olympics, and if it's the focus of
27:17
Speaker 1: your life, I feel like it's kind of difficult to
27:20
Speaker 1: call that person an amateur. I feel like it diminishes
27:23
Speaker 1: the work they're putting in. What do you guys think
27:25
Speaker 1: about that? Well, I could see them not counting towards
27:28
Speaker 1: the metal count because it is such a different category.
27:32
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is. It doesn't really reflect the
27:35
Speaker 1: athletic competitive prowess of a country. It seems to sort
27:39
Speaker 1: of not stack the deck necessarily, but skew the numbers
27:43
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know. So I definitely I feel that.
27:46
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean I think artists who won
27:49
Speaker 1: them should still be able to say Olympic award, Olympic
27:52
Speaker 1: medal winning artists, you know. Yeah, And art is also
27:55
Speaker 1: you know, to our point about subjectivity. This art competition
27:59
Speaker 1: didn't have the same quantitative metrics you could lean on,
28:04
Speaker 1: right if you're measuring four hundred yard dash or something,
28:08
Speaker 1: you can say, hey, this person finished first, and we
28:13
Speaker 1: know that because we looked at the time. You can't
28:15
Speaker 1: say this person finished fifth, but we're giving them the
28:19
Speaker 1: gold medal because there's just something beautiful about the way
28:23
Speaker 1: they run there like a gazelle, and aesthetically they're the winner.
28:27
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen in the world of sports. And yeah,
28:31
Speaker 1: to your point, like, I can see how it wouldn't
28:33
Speaker 1: count for the medals for that reason, but I don't
28:36
Speaker 1: think you should strike them from the record, remove them
28:39
Speaker 1: from history. Also, look, we started trying to look for
28:45
Speaker 1: some pieces, some examples of these works of art, and
28:49
Speaker 1: we found that a lot of the Olympic medal winning
28:54
Speaker 1: works have been lost to history. You can see the
28:58
Speaker 1: architectural projects they were getting medals for things like best
29:02
Speaker 1: town Planning basically. So it's tougher to get rid of
29:06
Speaker 1: some of that stuff than it is to say, lose
29:10
Speaker 1: a plaque or an engraving uha, or a medallion or
29:15
Speaker 1: a medallion. God, do you know what, I bet somebody
29:18
Speaker 1: has lost their Olympic medal. I bet somebody want it
29:21
Speaker 1: and then lost it. Right, A lot of people probably have, yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: like a championship ring. But up maybe it's like it's
29:28
Speaker 1: it's some pawn shop somewhere, you know, just floating right.
29:31
Speaker 1: Who knows there was some Olympian fell on hot times especially,
29:36
Speaker 1: but you're you're an amateur, so it's not gonna paid
29:39
Speaker 1: any money to do this. That's a good point. It
29:41
Speaker 1: is all about the the actual you know, artifact, the
29:44
Speaker 1: Olympic medal itself, which obviously carries some value or some
29:48
Speaker 1: some weight in terms of monetary you know, exchange. Right.
29:52
Speaker 1: But I could see someone perhaps uh, you know, hawking
29:56
Speaker 1: their Olympic medal because things didn't work out. Yeah, I
30:00
Speaker 1: can see that. I mean, you know, O. J. Simpson
30:03
Speaker 1: got in hot water when he had to get some
30:06
Speaker 1: of his trophies back, right, some of his accolades. Uh.
30:09
Speaker 1: And this this could happen with artists in this environment
30:13
Speaker 1: as well. We know you can still see some of
30:16
Speaker 1: these architectural projects. The Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam designed by
30:22
Speaker 1: an architect named Jan Wiles. He got the Olympic gold in.
30:27
Speaker 1: The Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale was designed by John
30:31
Speaker 1: Russell Pope. He got the silver in nineteen thirty two.
30:35
Speaker 1: Now he's best known for the Jefferson Memorial. And then
30:38
Speaker 1: there's also Richard Honwyers who got the bronze at the
30:43
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two Olympics for the Olympic Stadium. So we
30:47
Speaker 1: see multiple people got an Olympic medal in architecture for
30:52
Speaker 1: designing the Olympic Stadium. I think that's your path to victory. Yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: it would, it would definitely seem so. So fast forward
31:00
Speaker 1: just a little bit to the nineteen forty eight Games
31:03
Speaker 1: in London, which um boasted the last, the very last
31:08
Speaker 1: of the Olympic art medals. Finland seemed to lead the
31:13
Speaker 1: charge here with two gold medals, one silver and one bronze.
31:18
Speaker 1: And then, as we already said, it went the way
31:22
Speaker 1: of non competitive you know games adjacent exhibitions. Um. And
31:27
Speaker 1: that's still the case today, yeah, yeah, still Now there
31:31
Speaker 1: are art competitions in some form associated with the Olympics.
31:36
Speaker 1: Starting in two thousand four and going forward, the IOC
31:40
Speaker 1: has routinely held what they call a Sport and Art
31:44
Speaker 1: contest leading up to the Summer Games. For example, for
31:48
Speaker 1: the two thousand twelve contests, people sent in sculptures and
31:52
Speaker 1: graphic works on the following theme sport and the Olympic
31:57
Speaker 1: values of excellence, friendship and respect. They don't get medals,
32:01
Speaker 1: but they do get cash prizes, and if you are
32:05
Speaker 1: a crowd favorite or a judge's favorite, then your work
32:08
Speaker 1: gets displayed in London during the Games. So it's something nice. Yeah. Again,
32:13
Speaker 1: it just contributes to raising the profile of an artist
32:17
Speaker 1: and leading to perhaps more monetary success down the road
32:21
Speaker 1: because they become a little bit more of a hot commodity.
32:24
Speaker 1: But I would argue maybe it's sort of the equivalent
32:27
Speaker 1: of winning one of those like postage stamp illustration contests.
32:31
Speaker 1: You know, what's your what's your cool? But is it
32:35
Speaker 1: making superstar artists? You know? I would argue maybe now,
32:39
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know, and we'd have to be more connected,
32:42
Speaker 1: I think, to the international art world to understand, you know,
32:48
Speaker 1: who is the boss Scott here, who is the war
32:50
Speaker 1: hal and so on. But we do know a little
32:54
Speaker 1: bit more. We found some extra effects. Our buddy Jeff
32:57
Speaker 1: found some things that he just really wanted us to mention. First,
33:01
Speaker 1: the Olympic Game art competitions had a street name Pentathlon
33:06
Speaker 1: of the Muses. Oh my gosh, Yeah, that's fun. I
33:12
Speaker 1: like that because you know, full circle. Uh. The Olympics,
33:15
Speaker 1: in their original incarnation and as they originally intended, were
33:18
Speaker 1: a celebration of the gods and uh, you know the
33:22
Speaker 1: muses are an important part of that pantheon. Yeah, and
33:26
Speaker 1: then there's there's another one here, uh, the nineteen thirty
33:31
Speaker 1: six Games. There's a story that Jedi won't tell you.
33:34
Speaker 1: The government of Germany said they should add a film
33:38
Speaker 1: contest to ZIP Pentathlon. And already by thirty six you
33:43
Speaker 1: could tell that you're kind of had a bad vibe
33:46
Speaker 1: about German film and propaganda. So they said no, no, sorry, guys,
33:51
Speaker 1: that's a bridge too far. And that's not a ding
33:53
Speaker 1: on all the awesome German films of the early nineteen hundreds.
33:57
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if they were like, I know, you
34:00
Speaker 1: guys have a weird vibe. I feel like you're going
34:03
Speaker 1: to release some strange films not too long from now,
34:06
Speaker 1: so we'll skip it. That's just me speculating, you know.
34:10
Speaker 1: But nol could they Okay, if they couldn't get medals,
34:15
Speaker 1: but they could get cash prizes. What did they do
34:18
Speaker 1: with the art when they were done, Well, they were
34:20
Speaker 1: allowed to sell their works. They weren't auctioned in the exhibition.
34:24
Speaker 1: This wasn't like a bidding situation, but they were allowed
34:28
Speaker 1: to then remove their pieces from the exhibit and sell
34:31
Speaker 1: them independently. Nice. Yeah, at least for a time, And
34:35
Speaker 1: this was kind of controversial. The most successful Olympic artist
34:40
Speaker 1: was a painter from Luxembourg, Jean Jacobi, and he got
34:45
Speaker 1: two gold medals over the course of his career as
34:48
Speaker 1: an Olympic artist. You could also, this is an interesting thing.
34:52
Speaker 1: I didn't know, you could also submit works of art
34:56
Speaker 1: in multiple iterations. Not just like I'm not saying you
35:00
Speaker 1: could submit a piece of music and then also submit
35:04
Speaker 1: and engraving. I'm saying you could submit several works of
35:07
Speaker 1: art to the same category. So it's theoretically possible to
35:12
Speaker 1: do a full sweep. The gold medal goes to Max,
35:15
Speaker 1: the bronze medal goes to Max. After intense debate, the
35:18
Speaker 1: silver medal goes to Max. You know what I mean.
35:21
Speaker 1: That is still in the game, That seems because and
35:26
Speaker 1: there and all of his things are called the sport
35:30
Speaker 1: of run, which is very in line with those titles.
35:34
Speaker 1: I don't know, like nowadays, I still love all the
35:38
Speaker 1: artistic expression associated with especially the opening events for the Olympics,
35:43
Speaker 1: like the two thousand eight Olympics in China. Man Chef Kiss,
35:47
Speaker 1: that was amazing, right, and I hope that that stuff
35:52
Speaker 1: continues in the future, and I hope maybe we can
35:55
Speaker 1: lend some podcasts to the Olympics. And you know, I
35:58
Speaker 1: mean even people that are necessarily into the sporting aspect
36:01
Speaker 1: of the Olympics typically tune in for the opening ceremonies
36:05
Speaker 1: because there's such a you know, combination of art, music,
36:09
Speaker 1: and science. Remember the cloud seating thing that you know,
36:14
Speaker 1: So that really is to me a perfect kind of
36:17
Speaker 1: middle ground where it really is still highlighting and uh,
36:20
Speaker 1: you know, glorifying the arts, but again it's more of
36:24
Speaker 1: a presentation. It's more of a theatrical display rather than
36:27
Speaker 1: something that that needs to be judged. Well, I do
36:30
Speaker 1: want to kind of throw this out there, guys, because
36:32
Speaker 1: there is still some artistic competitions in the Olympics. I
36:36
Speaker 1: mean they are athletic artistic. Are you talking about curling? No, no, no,
36:41
Speaker 1: curling is not curling has a score based thing. But
36:43
Speaker 1: you're skating. Yeah, So we got figure skating, We got
36:46
Speaker 1: ice dancing as well, Olympics. I got a couple of
36:48
Speaker 1: Summer Olympics ones for us. We have equestrian horse dancing.
36:53
Speaker 1: Well that's dressage is a sub Yeah, we got artistic swimming.
37:00
Speaker 1: Is that like synchronized. Yeah, it's not called synchronized any longer.
37:04
Speaker 1: It's called not artistic, I believe. Uh, there's rhythmatic rhythmatic gymnastics.
37:08
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. And here's
37:11
Speaker 1: the one I had forgotten about. There is now one
37:13
Speaker 1: called breaking, like break dancing. It's funny that you mentioned
37:22
Speaker 1: these maximum I'm glad that you did, because these are
37:24
Speaker 1: also somewhat subjective in the panel of judges. Hold up
37:29
Speaker 1: like a number, you know, that is a there's a
37:31
Speaker 1: there's a scale, you know, I guess one to ten
37:34
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I think also you get extra points,
37:37
Speaker 1: you know, you have to you want to land a
37:39
Speaker 1: certain number of these tricks, you know, and that really
37:42
Speaker 1: affects your score. I mean, the beauty of it all,
37:45
Speaker 1: and the music and the costumes and all. I guess
37:48
Speaker 1: you know it's contributed that a little bit. But I mean,
37:50
Speaker 1: you're more likely to win if you land a bunch
37:53
Speaker 1: of like, you know, triple axles or whatever, these like
37:56
Speaker 1: really hard to pull off tricks are Yeah. And then also,
37:59
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe maybe it's better to say that the
38:03
Speaker 1: arts competitions were not kinesthetic in nature. So even these
38:08
Speaker 1: subjective uh performances or these subjective physical competitions are kind
38:14
Speaker 1: of aesthetic. They are people moving their bodies in space.
38:18
Speaker 1: Uh and this or horse or horse, yeah, or a
38:22
Speaker 1: really precise horse who I think is probably traumatized. I'm
38:27
Speaker 1: just gonna be honest, because that's not how horses normally walk.
38:31
Speaker 1: It's funny you bring up pressage because that became a
38:34
Speaker 1: running joke in uh Stuff they Don't Want you to
38:37
Speaker 1: Know show we recorded recently. I don't know why what
38:40
Speaker 1: about like like like like the what is the hobbies
38:42
Speaker 1: of failed dictators? Something like? Well, I know, when Romney
38:48
Speaker 1: was running for president back in twelve, The Daily Show
38:51
Speaker 1: caught on the fact that he had adressage horse and
38:53
Speaker 1: they had a lot of fun with that. Yeah, the
38:56
Speaker 1: Daily Show, And shout out to John Stewart Man. You know, hey,
39:00
Speaker 1: that guy. That guy deserves the Nobel Prize of some sort.
39:03
Speaker 1: And we hope that you enjoyed this episode, folks. No,
39:07
Speaker 1: this is something we asked at the end of another
39:09
Speaker 1: Olympics episode. What are some sports you think should be
39:13
Speaker 1: included in the Olympics that have yet to be included?
39:16
Speaker 1: What are some sports you believe should come back We
39:19
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear your thoughts. Find us on that
39:21
Speaker 1: Facebook page mentioned Ridiculous Historians. Thanks as always to our
39:25
Speaker 1: super producer Max Max. You are known curling enthusiasts, so
39:31
Speaker 1: I imagine that would be your Olympic sport of choice
39:34
Speaker 1: were you to compete. I'm gonna say that if I
39:37
Speaker 1: were competing the Olympics, I would go with breaking because
39:41
Speaker 1: back in the day it was actually pretty good at it. Nol.
39:43
Speaker 1: What about you if you were competing in an Olympic sport? Uh,
39:48
Speaker 1: finger skateboarding? Nice? Nice? Yeah, the skateboarding of kings. So
39:55
Speaker 1: let's see who else thinks to Thanks to you, sir,
39:57
Speaker 1: Thanks to Eve's Jeff Coats, Thanks to oh Alex Williams
40:01
Speaker 1: who composed this Olympic metal worthy track. Indeed, Christopher rosciotis
40:06
Speaker 1: here in spirit the quister. All the above, everyone our
40:10
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee are rogues. Gallery of Ridiculous Historians. We'll see
40:15
Speaker 1: you next time. Focus For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
40:24
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
40:27
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.