It will not be easy to forget the Paris Olympics. Those unrepeatable locations, the magic of the brazier in the gardens of the Tuileries, the participation of a young, cheerful, enthusiastic audience, able to be passionate about any event, the performances of characters such as Céline Dion, Tom Cruise, the thousand personal and political stories often blossoming around the five circles will remain a lively, eccentric, and provocative fever that will accompany us for long months.
But from Paris, a little concealed, is shared a fascinating and persuasive idea: reintroduce culture to the Olympics, starting with the next edition of Los Angeles in 2028.
The stimulus comes from Pharrell Williams, creative director of Louis Vuitton, a powerful testimonial. Recalling the thought of Pierre De Coubertin, historian and pedagogue, inventor of the modern Olympic Games, it is sufficient to recall that from 1912 to 1948, alongside sports competitions, the Olympics were also artistic disciplines.
Five categories: architecture, literature, painting, sculpture, music. All in the spirit of Olympia when the fine arts blended harmoniously with sport with its educational and pedagogical substrate recognized for centuries. One single, obvious predisposition: all the works had to be inspired by the sporting gesture, according to a natural-inspired canon of beauty.
It was so also a hundred years ago, in 1924, right in Paris for an edition artistically memorable. The jury, then led by Igor Stravinsky, decided on 193 participating artists. But the slow decay of the binomial between art and sport found, over time, its viruses in that strident dichotomy between professionalism and amateurism which, for years, poisoned the Olympic wells, then bringing itself to its end after the end of the second post-war period.
Today, after this Gordian knot has been placed in the attic, already since 1985, it is not clear why the splendor of an extraordinary binomial cannot be proposed again.
Pharrell Williams has chosen an iconic location to advance the hypothesis: the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the incredible creation of Frank Gehry that constitutes one of the most modern and prestigious architectural brands worldwide. A pre-opening Olympic evening with the participation of, among others, Steven Spielberg, Mick Jagger, Charlize Theron, Serena Williams, and James LeBron.
In reality, at least officially, it was a matter of raising funds for the Olympic team of political refugees. In fact, as Pharrell Williams, an Olympic champion in Saint-Denis, then told the Associated Press, it was a matter of reviving the role and presence of culture in the Olympic panorama, also in view of the many requests that now constantly come from the world of sponsors.
In summary, given the traditional success of the Olympics, overcoming the useless fence of amateurism, art can find on such occasions a way to exalt itself, to recover its centrality, bringing back under the eyes of the world. Recovering in the binomial between art and sport the ecstatic, classic, precious dimension of its ancient past.
