Visual Inquiry - Olympic Images: An Interdisciplinary Approach, May 2022

In 1972, worldwide political unrest caused major national division among nations. With the Olympics on the horizon, the games committee had made it their mission to use this event to promote worldwide unity and peace. 1972 marked the first time Germany had hosted the Olympic Games since the Second World War, which put Germany in the unique position to use this event to express a new more peaceful identity. One way that the Olympic committee decided to promote their new vision of Germany was through a heavy narrative between sports and art. They pursued this goal by commissioning several notable artists to complete works for this particular year, most notably Josef Albers and Jacob Lawrence. This year allowed for a new age of Olympic art as the Olympic committee intentionally sought out relevant artists to help design the promotional art for the games. This essay discusses how Germany strategically choose these specific artists to share how the Olympics were moving from traditional advertising to fine art, and how they used these artworks as propaganda to better shape the perception of Germany.

Antenarratives are the building blocks of stories and exist before a story’s characters, setting, actions, plots or morals can be shared with a clear beginning, middle and end. Antenarratives are also what provide the potential for those elements to be combined into something recognized as a story. The posters produced by the International Olympic Committee commemorating the Olympic Games are an example of visual antenarratives. Scholars in a variety of disciplines have called for greater attention paid to organizational images and improved methodologies for analysing visual data. This essay reviews the development of antenarrative theory, applies that theory to specific artefacts, and invites scholars and teachers to deconstruct them as part of research or classroom instruction.

This article argues that a logic model is an effective analytical tool to examine the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics as an exercise in soft power. Specifically, it uses a logic model as a guide to emphasize how the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics provided a structure to share values and culture with the intention to influence. Although this is not an evaluative inquiry, the evaluative framework lends itself to identifying the resources required for the creation of the opening ceremony and the formal presentation. For instance, a review of interurban competition (competition between cities or regions that attract economic activities), management and boycotts as inputs of the Los Angeles Games reveal the presentation of American culture and values during the Olympic opening ceremony. The purpose of this article is to implement a logic model as means for understanding the cultural programming of the Olympics by first identifying the unique inputs for the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics and analysing the visual presentation of the opening ceremony.

As students are establishing themselves in an increasingly visual culture, images should be harnessed as important pedagogical tools for applying concepts and increasing student engagement. When students are given opportunities to analyse images in the classroom context, they become more aware of the variety of visual texts, from advertisements to websites, that frequently command their attention. This single-class activity employs visual texts as a site of inquiry for critique and application of persuasive strategies in an undergraduate level classroom. It is designed to help students explore applications of the concepts of image-based advertising and syntactic indeterminacy through a critical analysis of art posters from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Students role-play ‘becoming the judge’ on the International Olympic Committee as they seek to select and provide rationale for the poster that best communicates the ideals of the Olympic Games.

Olympic art has been just as central to the modern games as sport itself. Originally intended to be a competition, art in the Olympics has shifted purposes through the years and eventually became a tool for interpretation, celebration and communication about the sport and the unique cultural contexts in which they are held. A number of modern and contemporary notables have contributed artwork in the twentieth century and one of the most notable examples was modern artist Robert Rauschenberg’s (1925–2008) poster for the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles, CA, entitled ‘Star in Motion’.