Culture flash: Olympic Games

This week's news in the artsIf history tells us anything it is, first, that art about sport is usually a bad idea, and secondly, that artists never learn this. The Olympic Games have always been a tempting subject. Big jumps, taut thighs, twanging javelins: few artists can behold these marvels without feeling the urge to inadequately recreate them.The Theban poet Pindar and his rival Bacchylides , who both wrote victory odes in the fifth century BCE, were surely not the first to get sucked in. A...

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