The aim of this paper is to examine the history of the “Art Competitions” in the modern Olympic Games, and thus to cast a new light on the boundary problem between art and sport.

Pierre de Coubertin, the principal founder of the modern Olympic Games, held up an ideal of reunification of muscle and mind, and proposed to introduce five competitions of art – in architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature – within the course of the Olympic Games. Then the “Art Competitions” were successfully held in seven Olympiads from 1912 to 1948; but they were replaced by the “Art Exhibitions” without medals from the 1952 Helsinki Olympic onward.

In spite of Coubertin’s personal enthusiasm for art, some of the IOC members remained skeptical of the Art Competitions, mainly because they seemed incompatible with the amateursm policy of the Olympic Games: most participants therein were professional artists, and the prizewinning artworks were often traded openly at high prices. Added to these issues, art was condemned for lack of the qualification to rank with the Olympic sports, from the viewpoints that it has no uniform rules and no clear criteria for evaluation like athletic competitions, and that prizewinning artists are generally much older than sport athletes, in violation of the Olympic ideal of “youthfulness.”

The introduction and abolition of the Olympic Art Competitions thus suggests the fundamental discrepancy in cultural and social status between art and sport, while our attention is too often directed solely to their alikeness or affinity.