Paris 1924 is as much about social history as art and is all the better for it. There is flickering film of the opening ceremony and grey stills of the spartan athletes' village; there are running shoes and tennis rackets, medals and programmes. None of it is the least bit dry, thanks in part to some of the best labelling I've read in a long time. The curators combine fact, anecdote and opinion in a refreshingly down-to-earth style: this is probably the only occasion you are likely to see the word 'ballsy' in the Fitzwilliam Museum. They counteract the floating elegance of a silk tennis dress by pointing out the sweat stains, a bobsleigh is brought to life with the gossipy titbit that Daphne du Maurier's war-hero future husband was injured competing in just such an unwieldy and weighty wooden contraption. Johnny Weissmuller's extraordinary Olympic record is balanced by a gem of an article from Movie Maker 1932 listing his myriad masculine perfections.
The labelling is just one aspect of a cleverly designed show. Much use is made of blown-up images, too often the fall-back of lazy curation but here a ghostly presence hovering behind the displays. The oversized image of 'Flying Finn' Paavlo Nurmi training in nothing but the briefest of pouches and ballet-like running shoes, hovers like a shadow behind the almost identically posed sculpture of The Athlete by Renée Sintenis. Both have a gravity defying lightness, an elegant fragility alongside the propulsive strength that drives them forward. Turn round and you get a cut through to the iconic St Andrews beach sequence at the start of Chariots of Fire, again with a sculpture -Wäinö Aaltonen's image of Nurmi - intervening. It is one of the best pieces of exhibition design I've seen this year. The addition of the Vangelis film music might ben too much for some, but it is restrained and only intermittently audible, a knowing nod rather than intrusive annoyance. The large middle room uses an Olympic ring to split the space, generating dynamism and visual interest albeit at the expense of some oddly dingy corners. And throughout you are presented with a neat balance of size and shape, with varied objects, levels and methods of display, keeping everything fresh. The consequence is that in the course of a relatively small space you find out about gender, class, race, sexuality, commercialisation, popular culture and politics almost without noticing. The Paris Olympics of 1924 are no more than a starting point.
Art is woven throughout, from copies of ancient Greek athletes and antique vases which disprove the myth of the ideal physique, to examples of those who actually competed in de Coubertin's cultural olympiad. Not an afterthought or an illustration, it tells its own narratives: the divide between modernism and tradition, the aestheticism of the human body and the perennial difficulty of rendering movement in static form. The examples might unkindly be described as mixed. Robert Delaunay's Runners and George Grosz Gymnast would never be classed as among their major works and Jean Jacoby's clunky Sport Studies paintings do little more than justify the dropping of art from Olympic competition. Alongside these, however, you have the famous - the oxymoronic static weight of Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space - and the less familiar - Jan Sluijters The Boxer Rolf is slumped in expressionist exhaustion against a jagged blur which makes you feel punch-drunk. Helen Wills is minimised in wire by Alexander Calder and maximised as a staring icon by Diego Rivera.
'Paris 1924' is not curated by art historians, but by two genuine enthusiasts, one a German scholar, one a classicist. It is perhaps that which gives this exhibition such a light yet deft touch. Everything is nuanced, and as a viewer you are gently nudged into pivoting your opinion. Just as you cheer the success of working class Lucy Morton winning Britain's only swimming gold in the 200m breaststroke, having being involved in a car crash on the way pool, you are told that she was reduced to performing at Blackpool Tower Circus. The subtlety is never better than in the investigation of the Diskobolus. Nazi fetishisation of the athletic Aryan physique is a silent menace throughout the show, and here the purposing and repurposing of the iconic Greek sculpture succinctly juxtaposes Johnny Weissmuller and a Leni Riefenstahl still, before bringing things right up to date with a ten euro coin designed for Paris 2024. It is all you need. The Fitzwilliam Museum can usually be relied on to produce interesting, well-designed exhibitions, to give us unusual perspectives. 'Paris 1924' is one of their best.
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