The City of Light is doing everything to ensure that the brilliance of this year's XXXIII Olympic Games overshadows all previous spectacular openings of this most massive world competition. Can't you also see in that, in that ambition, the spirit of competition between cities and states in the long continuity of holding the games. Because the political aspect of this kind of spectacle has always played a significant role. The French capital has hosted the Olympic Games twice so far, in 1900 and 1924, and in that fact it justifiably finds its own challenge to make this year's games surpass the previous ones in all the details of the complex and demanding task.
It goes without saying how important propaganda tools are for such events. In this sense, the interest in the upcoming event on July 26 contributed to a certain extent to the poster as an art medium in the service of affirming this world sports spectacle. The main goal of the poster as an artistic discipline for mass communication is to attract attention or, as it is colloquially said, to "get" the consumer of information so that he becomes interested in what is offered to him by this medium of public communication. Judging by the reactions of the public, the author of this year's Olympic Games poster is a French illustrator Ugo Gattoni generally speaking, he successfully completed his task. The purpose of the poster has been achieved. A lot of interest was aroused. But that is only the surface dimension of the complex topic that needed to be visualized.
The public, professional and lay, was divided by opposing opinions for and against artistic solution or concept of approved posters and their versions by the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games. The author of the poster, it seems, somewhat reluctantly defended his concept, his freedom of artistic interpretation of this great theme. Of course, it is the legitimate right of every artist to express himself freely in the medium he deals with. In defense of his concept, Gattoni points out that he "composed two posters in one, so that both work independently, but it is an overall compositional work." It may be a bad translation from the French language of the artist's statement, but one can guess what Gattoni wanted to say. He is more precise when he says that his "goal was not to objectively show the buildings as they are, to be faithful to the original, but so that we can imagine them at first glance while projecting them into a surreal festive universe". Those who defend the visual design of the poster emphasize, among other things, the author's "playful artistic interpretation", while others see an unacceptable insult to Christian tradition by eliminating the cross from the dome of the Home for the Invalids and one of the most valuable symbols of Paris, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and also omitting the French flag. Respecting the right to the opinions and positions of both opposing parties, I believe that the poster was not realized at the level of the given topic.
The colorful compositions saturated with chopped figurative elements, historical buildings as symbols of a recognizable environment in a bright color as a whole gives the impression that it is a game in the most superficial sense of the word. Paris has become Disneyland in colorful Olympic attire. As if the author of the poster of the Olympic Games took it literally in the sense of games for fun in an urban environment. It seems that the city is more important than what will happen in it. That poetics of infantile imagination is far from the essential characteristic of what the Olympic Games should be, which they actually are today. Therefore, what happens in competitive disciplines is far from the concept and meaning of the word "game". The old slogan of the Olympic Games "Faster, Higher, Stronger" enriched by the subsequent addition of the word "together" is essentially a harsh imperative imposed on all competing groups. The goals are set high. The competitors' physical and psychological limits are stretched to the limit. The notion of a game is far from that of Kantian liberation from goals, a game for mere entertainment for an audience of millions in the "global village" as suggested by the posters of a prominent designer. The reverse side of the slogan "Citius, Altius, Fortius - Comminus" also has the dark side of the spectacle of sports disciplines. In order to surpass previously achieved records of other or personal achievements, competitors used stimulants, the so-called doping. Although in such cases individuals are adequately sanctioned, by taking away the obtained awards, this need to reach the given goal had fatal consequences for the organism.
The seriousness of this kind of problem is special for sportswomen who, by consuming dangerous substances such as stanozol, risk giving birth to malformed children, as, unfortunately, there have been recorded cases. The competitor's organism sacrifices itself in order to, with the strength and beauty of the body, manifesting the power of physical endurance and mental stability through spectacular scenes of elegance, speed, skill, strength and vitality, amaze the world with top results. Of course, there is a positive basis in the nature of this kind of competition, which may have previously existed with the aforementioned slogan "Faster, more, stronger", set an example and generally stimulated the human being through the symbolism of sports competitions that in everyday life one should fight, be active, have a motivation to achieve of the desired goal. But don't the words seem a bit naive today? Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, written as the principle of the games: "It is not important to win but to participate, it is not important to triumph but to fight" is it not a matter of "winning but fighting"? Despite their positive basis, these slogans still sound unconvincing today. Because everything is subordinated to the triumph, the fight for Olympic glory. The only and most important goal and ambition of every participant in the Olympic competition. The term game takes on a naive meaning, it loses its former meaning. That's why it seems to me that the posters for this year's XXXIII Olympic Games in Paris, with all their cultivated and playful artistry, are a naive presentation that is more suitable for benign sports entertainment than competitive rigor and relentless ambition for new records.
At the end of this concise opinion on the controversial posters by Ugo Gottonia, which, as written, are also a kind of dedication to the jubilee centenary of the "First Surrealist Manifesto", I would like to say that I am not sure how enthusiastic the spiritual father of surrealism would be with such a tribute, considering that André Breton reproached Joan Miró the infantility of his painterly expression or even earlier as the author of "Nađe" often emphasized that "Beauty must be convulsive or it will not exist". That is why the concept of games, or sports games, as suggested by the selected posters, is the opposite of what a true Olympic competition is - both beautiful and painful at the same time.
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