Thanks to the discovery of previously unpublished archives - from the collection of the artist Émile Gilliéron - and the re-examination of emblematic works, this work returns to the political context and the issues at stake in the creation of modern Olympism.
It thus allows us to analyze the making of the first Olympic iconography. The reader will then understand how this reinvention is based on an oriented combination of ancient sources (texts, images and vestiges), making modern Olympism a collective but effective illusion.

The work also recalls that Paris, three times Olympic capital (1900, 1924, 2024), was the cradle where the idea of modern Olympicism was born in 1894.

This reinvention, which is also based on a manipulation of sources, has led to national or international deviations, exclusions or stereotypes of which classical studies have in a certain way been the victims.
All of the texts that make up this volume provide the keys to understanding the little-known history of modern Olympics. Through its original material and its original angle of approach, this catalogue is aimed at everyone and allows you to explore the modern Olympic Games, their genesis and their meaning.

Exhibition « Olympism Modern Invention, Ancient Legacy » from 24 April to 16 September 2024 at the Musée du Louvre.

French

336 pages
Co-publishing Éditions Hazan / Louvre éditions