2024-03-05 16:12:28
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And you, are you a fan of Miyazaki? From Claude Ponti, Moebius, Hieronymus Bosch and Martin Handford, the father of albums searches and finds Where is Charlie? Proof that the media-artistic bet is successful, it is all these great figures of illustration that the press cited to decipher on Tuesday March 5 the posters of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games designed by Ugo Gattoni and unveiled the day before by the committee of organization of the Paris Games (Cojo). Like everyone else, Libération played and deciphered nine details that may have escaped you. With a wildcard sized tourist guide slash called Joachim Roncin, design director for Paris 2024.
The revised motto
It was a cry from the heart at night, upon discovering the double poster: “Han, poor people, they left a bad spelling mistake in the foreground.” Citius, altius, fortius floating in the turquoise waters of the diving board, OK we see, that’s the motto. But communing, there is a problem: either it is community, or it is communicating. Yes… but no actually. To be more inclusive, the IOC has in fact put it back and devise it before the Tokyo Olympics. In French, it became “Plus vite, plus haute, plus fort – Ensemble”. In English: “Faster, higher, stronger – Together”. And in Latin therefore “Citius, altius, fortius – Communiter”. it will teach us to sleep during Roman civilization lessons… “We could have just put a logo but it would have been a simple poster, not a story,” Roncin tells Libé. For him, Gattoni’s fresco will “set a precedent” a bit like the logo of the Mexico Olympics in 68, which became a marker for graphic designers around the world.
A flaming bottle
We admit that we also rubbed our eyes at the top of the Paralympic poster: what the hell was a bottle of Perrier fine bubbles (restaurant version) doing while splashing in the Mediterranean Sea at the end of a pier lined with a green and purple checkerboard? Simple answer within reach of all Olympiadophiles: because it is not a bottle of Perrier. Slightly more elaborate answer: it is the Olympic torch designed by Mathieu Lehanneur which is waiting for its flame.
Eco-friendly sobriety requires, the 2024 version torch is made of 100% recycled steel and only 2,000 will be manufactured for the torch relay, compared to 10,000 during the previous Olympics. This floating torch is one of Joachim Roncin’s favorite details in the fresco because Lehanneur “insisted a lot on symmetry synonymous with equality and parity and Ugo Gattoni drew the reflection of the other half of the torch in water waves. Design, illustration, values, everything comes together.
And the flame goes…
And who will bring the flame, which sleeps in Greece between two Olympics, to France on May 8? Well, the three-masted ship nestled at the top left of the Olympic version of the poster, not too far from Armel Le Cléac’h’s trimaran. We’re not joking at all: the Olympic flame will travel from Athens to Marseille by sea, aboard the Bélem, a ship built in the 19th century to transport cocoa beans between Brazil and France.
And the symbol will be beautiful since the boat, which paraded, among others, during the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth of England, is also an integration company: on board 16 sailors and around twenty young people who will cast off on April 27.
Where are the Phryges?
The presentation of these little stuffed animals, the shape of which inevitably evokes a clitoris, initially made people smile. Since then, we’ve gotten used to these little ones red phrygian caps that we are likely to see everywhere in the summer in the capital. The work of Ugo Gattoni is no exception: the designer slipped eight of them into his poster that the viewer is supposed to find. Good luck because if some Phryges are obvious (like the one that floats near the Eiffel Tower or the two stone statue versions welcoming the world) others are particularly well hidden.
You need a bionic eye to spot the mascot drawn on one of the spectators on the balcony at the bottom left of the poster (keyword: key ring) and really look carefully on the side of the skytrain or in the stands and the stands.
A cross made on the cross
This is a controversy that Cojo did not see coming and which he would have done without. As soon as the poster was presented at the Musée d’Orsay on Monday, the far right as well as certain Catholic figures protested at the disappearance of the cross at the top of the dome of the Invalides. For Marion Maréchal, we would seek to “hide what we are”, when François-Xavier Bellamy accuses the organizers of “denying France to the point of distorting reality to cancel its history”. Just that…
“When we produce something innovative, we expose ourselves to criticism,” says the design director of Paris 2024. “What I remember is that this artisanal poster is French know-how.” The designer also deflated the flights of the fascist sphere: “I am not trying to represent buildings in a conforming manner. I evoke them as they appear to me and without ulterior motives. There is absolutely no “will to de-Christianize anything,” thunders at Cojo headquarters. Les Invalides are not the only ones to have seen their architecture modified without the reactions being offended, like the Stade de France embedded like a donut on a pink Eiffel Tower or the Alexandre III bridge deprived of part of its statues.
The Parisian pigeon that is not one
Ah, but what a rich idea to have put a pigeon in the foreground, on the arm of the Corcovado Christ-style diver! With their feathers ranging from anthracite to silver, kisses, doves and woodpigeons have unwillingly become symbols of Paris given that there are more than 20,000 of them in the capital. Except that if you look closely, the bird is immaculately white.
And for good reason since, information obtained, it is a dove, a symbol of peace since Noah’s ark. World peace and harmony to which the Olympic Games are supposed to contribute every four years. We will talk about it again with the Ukrainian athletes but in the meantime, on the Olympic bestiary side, we can also go in search of the lions and pink flamingos hidden by Ugo Gattoni in Paris. “For the first time, we are in something that is not institutional. Today, we are in ready-made things whereas here we tickle the imagination and we are aimed at even the youngest,” says Joachim Roncin.
Exit Napoleon, hello women
In this crazy world, we play armchair tennis on the roof of the Arc de Triomphe. But that’s not all. Certainly it is the Parisian building where armistices and the victory of peace over war are celebrated, but its walls are rather in warlike mode with representations of the revolutionary wars and the victories of Napoleon I, from the Pont d’Arcole to Austerlitz.
Gattoni’s version is peaceful: the bas-reliefs represent the long march of women in general and the stages of the marathon between the Town Hall and Versailles in particular, explains Roncin.
20,024 amateurs for a five-star marathon
Behind a trail runner, Olympic flame in hand, there are dozens of them on the Alexandre III bridge. But don’t bother looking for the Kenyans Eliud Kipchoge or Peres Jepchirchir, the two reigning Olympic marathon champions. These characters are you and us. Finally we understand: Sunday runners who will have the opportunity, on August 10, at night, to swallow the 42 kilometers which will take them from Versailles to the Eiffel Tower via the Invalides or the Louvre. It’s called the “marathon for everyone”. A few hours after the pros, 20,024 amateurs will set off on the five-star track. A unique experience in which tens of thousands of people dream of participating and have been fighting for months to obtain a bib.
The first Paralympics in the spotlight
Why finally nestle, at the top right of the poster, a piece of cliff housing sports fields and precarious barracks? On a small arch we can read (if we squint) “Stoke Mandeville Games”. To accentuate the inclusive side of the Paris games, the illustrator therefore presented two posters which come together, a symbol of the union between the Olympics and the Paralympics, but also paid homage to this small English town where it all began, in a hospital, on the initiative of a German neurologist who wanted his paraplegic patients to recover more quickly thanks to sport.
At the beginning, in 1948, there were only archery and netball matches, a sort of armchair basketball, between hospital veterans, but the competition gradually became a regular event. and international. Before taking the name Paralympic Games for the first time in 1960 in Rome, where 23 nations and 400 athletes competed. At the end of the summer in Paris, there will be ten times more of them.
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