Olympics and Art

As Paris prepares for the 2024 Olympics, let us recall not only athletic achievements but also artistic victories. Indeed, Luxembourg earned its first gold medal through the artist Jean Jacoby, not an athlete.

Exactly one hundred years ago, the Luxembourger won the gold medal in the painting category at the Olympic art competitions conceived by Pierre de Coubertin as the “Pentathlon of the Muses”.

The Olympic Games and their images

Inspired by classicist ideals, the first modern Olympic Games were created in 1896. Pierre de Coubertin played a central role in reviving the mythical Games of Olympia. His vision of sport as a means of promoting education, peace and international relations led to the creation of the modern Olympic Movement.

Technological advances in photography and printing techniques at the end of the 19^th century, as well as the growing importance of visual communication, made images an important tool for spreading Olympic ideas. The first posters, commemorative stamps and trophies for the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens were designed by the Swiss artist Émile Gilliéron. His drawings drew on the ideas of scholars who established the connection between the modern and ancient Olympic Games. Both Gilliéron’s artwork and the new Olympic disciplines were inspired by Attic vase paintings. Scholars studied these vases, had models recreate the athletes’ poses and movements, and documented the results in photographic sequences. These photographs directly informed the revival of discus throwing, which had previously been little known to the general public.

The arts at the Olympic Games

In 1904, ten years after the founding of the International Olympic Committee and the revival of the Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin proposed including the arts in the Games programme. His vision of introducing competitions in architecture, sculpture, painting, literature and music was first put into practice at the V Olympiad in Stockholm in 1912. Three Olympiads later, at the Games in Paris in 1924, 23 nations were already competing with a total of 189 works. Jean Jacoby won the gold medal in painting for his works Eckball, Start and Rugby. Four years later, at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, Jacoby was awarded another medal, this time for his charcoal drawing on the theme of “Rugby” in the Drawings and Watercolours section. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam displayed a total of 1,150 works by numerous artists, helping to establish sport as an aesthetic and cultural phenomenon. However, it was Jean Jacoby who shaped a new, modern iconography of sport.

Jacoby’s dramatic moment

The lithograph Plaquage Rugby is part of an Olympic portfolio published by the Imprimerie Strasbourgeoise after 1924 and illustrates the particular visual impact of his sports depictions. While Olympic iconography had previously been characterised by static representations, Jacoby showed athletes in action. His ability to capture the dynamics, movement and aesthetics of sport established Jacoby’s international success in the iconography of sport.

Born in Hollerich in 1891, Jean Jacoby trained as a drawing teacher at the municipal school of applied arts in Strasbourg. Between 1912 and 1918, he taught at the Lewin-Funcke-School in Berlin. Alongside this, Jacoby developed his passion for sport and deepened his interest in depicting the human body in motion. Jacoby used various media and styles for his sports representations; he won his first Olympic medal for paintings in the realist style. Afterwards, he specialised in freehand drawings. In the 1920s, he worked as an artistic adviser for the Imprimerie Strasbourgeoise and began reproducing his own works as prints.

Plaquage Rugby is an excellent example of Jacoby’s iconography of sport: it shows two rugby players performing what is known as a tackle, a key moment in the game which has particular strategic significance due to its technical precision, strict safety rules and the high physical and mental demands it places on players. Tackles serve to restrict the opposing team’s space and alter the dynamics of the game. Jacoby depicts the moment of the attack, in which the tackler positions himself low, stops his opponent with his shoulder and wraps his arms around the opponent’s hips. It is this dramatic moment that Jacoby captures, thereby reflecting not only the considerable physical effort involved, but also the character and mental demands of rugby.

The lithograph’s line drawing, hatching and shading bear the traces of a charcoal drawing. Jacoby sketches the scene with a few powerful lines and strong dramatic effects. The darkest, most forceful lines are concentrated on the point of contact of the shoulder – the epicentre of energy and emotional force. The still upright player with the ball is drawn with hatching in different directions and shades, while all of the attacker’s strokes run in the same direction, emphasising his rapid, powerful movement.

Following his successes at the Paris Olympic Games, Jacoby worked as a pen-and-ink reporter for the Berlin-based Ullstein Verlag. After the end of inflation, the capital began to prosper. Berlin had the flair of a major international city and was a centre for advances in technology and new mass media. Jacoby was an image editor and provided numerous drawings on sport, but also on technological progress in aviation and automobiles – subjects that reflected his fascination with speed, the central theme of the 1920s.

This article was originally published in German. The English version was translated using AI and reviewed by the author.