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The artistic, cultural and educational display of the Olympic Games Jesús Castañón Rodríguez Initially, the modern Olympic movement has been linked to the Arts by means of the foundation of the International Olympic Committee in the Sorbona University (France), the promotion of the cultural dimension in the Olympic Congresses and the notification of artistic competitions during the celebration of the Games. The International Olympic Committee is born in the University The Congress which founded the International Olympic Committee was summoned by the Union of French Societies based on Athletic Sports in 1893 and its organization was coordinated by P. de Coubertin in Europe, C. Herbert in England and its colonies, and the teacher from Princeton University (United States) W. Milligan Sloane in America. It was celebrated in the Sorbona University from Paris (France) in June 17th, 1894 and it was supported by the Iberoamerican pedagogues from the National College in Uruguay an also from the University belonging to Oviedo. Culture and muscular high school Pierre de Coubertin didn’t conform only with giving Olympic movement an educational facet, but he also urged his cultural vein in the Olympic Congresses in 1894 from Paris, in 1897 from Le Havre, in 1905 from Brussels, in 1906 from Paris and in 1913 from Lausana. Also, he proposed the creation of a muscular high school, he tried to give the sports press a more intellectual nuance by means of including features about exterior politics and world-wide events, and the creation of an Institution of Olympic Studies in 1937. The Muses’ pentathlon While Coubertin lived, the Games were conceived as a youthful party, as a pedagogic mass meeting which centralizes the cult of the young people and the nations’ collective thought, and as an opportunity to generate and produce art. This last event entailed that in May 23rd, 1906, the International Olympic Committee summoned the Consultative Conference based on the Arts and Sport in the Comèdie Française with a goal: to study the way of including the Arts in order to embellish the dissemination of the Olympic Games. In the years 1912 and 1948, several competitions based on architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature were celebrated in the Olympic Games from Stockholm, Amberes, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Berlin and London. These artistic competitions based on sporting subjects, named by Coubertin the Muses’ pentathlon, included numerous curiosities, and among the most important ones we have how the International Olympic Committee’s president himself won the literary competition with Ode au Sport, a text written in German and French which threw into relief the noblest values based on sport. The president won this literary competition in 1912. The Cultural Olympiad The suppression of these competitions didn’t break the relationship sport-culture, but it made way for a more ambitious project: the Cultural Olympiad. In the Games from Melbourne and Sidney, the Olympic Games’ head-city has developed a program based on the interchange of cultural forms and sport which lasts four years: music, architecture, the creation of educational materials, artistic creations with the most innovative techniques, works made by students, exhibitions, biennial artistic activities… By the XXI century, the Forum EL COI and its cultural policy has established new ways of performance in the future: a new notion based on culture adapted to the modern societies’ needs; the organization of guidelines in the head-cities’ educational and cultural program; the fact that the national Olympic Committees must comply with the educational and cultural tasks or duties. These tasks come from the Olympic Letter; and last, but not least the intensification of the cultural and educational acts with interactive means in order to favor the direct connection between the International Olympic Committee and people who use Internet. This new philosophy was approved in the meetings 106 and 110 from the International Olympic Committee, and it has three main lines. First, the necessity for the interchange of the different ways or expressions of living through the Olympic movement as the most important of all cultures, that is, a culture’s culture. Second, an improvement in communication and the development based on networks to the global dissemination of the Olympic movement from institutions intended for information, academies and museums applying the resources belonging to the society of information and the new technologies. Third, the creation of didactic modules intended for primary and secondary education in order to throw into relief the human dignity’s values, the belief in freedom and the acceptance of the principle based on equality. The Olympic Games as an artistic, cultural and educational display To sum up, the alliance carried out with sport, culture and education, which defines the modern Olympic movement, has been a constant where muses, just like in the Ancient Games’ pentathlon, with renewal throw discuses and javelins filled with talent, they also strive to look for artistic and audacious styles, they develop races in order to strengthen the creative instinct and they also go in for the long jump in order to be further, and also to reach a higher and stronger point which allows them to look for the complete artistic creation. Bibliographical References CARTALIS,
Constantinos:"Olimpiada Cultural: asociación entre
deporte, cultura y educación", Revista Olímpica,
XXXI-32, Lausana, 2000, págs. 20-23. Traducción: María Elena Martín Pérez
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