The Art of the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad: Bell ringers of the world, unite and take over

Whilst technically spread over four years, and starting with the end of one edition of the Games and finishing at the closing ceremony of the next, this week has seen something of a relaunch of the  Cultural Olympiad for London 2012 and the London 2012 Festival programme. Perhaps the most eye catching, or ear splitting, highlight of which is Martin Creed's Work No 1197 which has campanologists of the world polishing their bells in excited expectation.

As part of this, a number of high profile artists have designed posters in celebration of the event, the seemingly omnipresent Martin Creed amongst them, and his effort is reproduced above. A slide show of them all, including efforts from Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Bridget Riley and Howard Hodgkin, can be viewed here. Its fair to say that these have come in for some criticism, some of the Daily Mail ultra reactionary variety (see Louise Eccles' A splodge of blue paint and coffee cup rings...Infant school art? No, posters for the London Olympics)  but a lot of the criticism seems to have picked up on the lack of an overt  identity linking it with the place the event is taking place. Certainly there are a number of previous examples that have made this link more explicit, see for example one of the posters for the 1948 Games that plays on some, frankly pretty obvious, London iconography.

Perhaps some of the Daily Mail readers were a bit perturbed that there weren't enough bowler hats, London taxis and red telephone boxes on the posters, but I liked them. At least they were not safe and cliched, and did celebrate some great contemporary British artists. It did however get me thinking about art and sport more generally, and also about cultural aspects of the Olympics. First anyone who has been on a tour at Camp Nou will have seen the art gallery, much of it inspired by a competition that is run by FC Barcelona (mes que un club) and the famous Miro poster. 

This is a famous example, but I am sure there are others. In the meantime, all of the posters for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics are not only available as poster prints at the reasonable price of £7 (all good stockists etc - but can only be bought with a VISA card on London 2012 site, but that's another story)  but also high end signed art prints of these have been made available from the admirable (I have bought some work from them in the past, but not London 2012 work) countereditions although these will be beyond many people's price range with the box set currently set at £11,000 but unavailable and Bridget Riley's piece already sold out.

The Olympics and the British Library

On a way back from a trip to the Olympic Stadium yesterday (note incongruous welcome sign above, viewed through electrified fencing and razor wire, with the picture taken shortly after my friend and colleague JP was chased away by a security guard!) I popped into the British Library. Whilst I am a Reader there and do occasionally visit other exhibitions, I had not visited the Treasures of the British Library exhibition before. It is a superb and wide ranging collection with lots of really interesting and important material. Lots of it was topical for me, I had been talking with my third year entertainment law students on the Wednesday on the links between technology and copyright law and the section on early printing was illuminating, also Haydn's music publishing contract from 1796 is currently on display - its a lot different to the ones we look at now its fair to say. Obviously the Magna Carta and early versions of the bible or Shakespeare's portfolio get a higher billing but there are some great treasures in there and its well worth a look. Its free, and open to all, all week. While I am talking of the British Library, I should also flag up their excellent Sport and Society site, of course I also have to declare a vested interest as Mark James and I have contributed a piece Consuming the Olympics to this site, and almost seamlessly, the British Library links back to this very blog!

Of centres and peripheries

 This week I was invited along to the launch of a new British Library initiative, Sport and Society. The Summer Olympics through the lens of social science. This is a really exciting development, as the site notes, it 'presents the Olympics as a global sporting event that tells us something about the way individuals, groups and institutions operate in society, and the ideas that drive them' and aims to highlight the British Library social science collection. At the  launch there were a number of very interesting presentations, including Andy Miah talking about some of the problems of saving and archiving alternative media representations of the Olympics, and tapping into some of the research he has conducted with Dr Beatriz Garcia, fore more details see his excellent website. All this talk of marginal voices reminded me of a recent conference in Malmo I attended, also tied into issues of margins and marginality, entitled Centres and Peripheries in Sport. This was an excellent conference arguing that areas at the periphery of sport ought to be reconfigured and reconstituted to reflect the importance of areas that have for too long been seen as marginal. Material from the conference will soon be posted on the website above and all the resources noted above have useful material about sport, society and the Olympics that are well worth consulting.