LONDON -- A gold medal for poetry? How about one for singing, painting, etching, or even city planning? It might sound comical, but these were all once competitive Olympic events.

And the cultural side of the Olympics still continues with the London 2012 Festival of more than 12,000, mostly free events across the U.K.

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Art, comedy, acrobatics, music, drama, film and fancy hats are all there for those in need of a little entertainment, artistic stimulation or simply a break from the sight of too much physical exertion.

It's just that they no longer hand out medals to those deemed to be the best.

More London 2012 coverage from NBCNews.com

But Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad of which the London 2012 Festival is the main event, said they had thought about bringing back competition to the arts.

"We did actually look at it. The [London] mayor, Boris Johnson, ... was interested in this idea of reviving the medals," she told NBCNews.com.

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But she added the International Olympic Committee was "not enthusiastic and, I guess, in the end neither was I."

"Artists love winning prizes, but there isn't an Oscar for third-best female actress," she said.

'New audiences'
Mackenzie said London 2012 had sought to boost the amount of culture associated with the Games to more closely reflect the Olympic movement's three pillars of sports, arts and education.

"I view this as a chance really to aim high ... and introduce new audiences to new artists," she said.

She enthused about a whole string of the events, including concerts featuring the likes of Jay-Z and Rihanna and the River of Music event; the modern dance of U.S. choreographer Elizabeth Streb and company, who created a human waterfall in London's Trafalgar Square; more than 70 productions of works by Shakespeare in 40 languages; and U.S. artist Zach Lieberman's project to light up Hadrian's Wall with illuminated balloons.

Dikaia Chatziefstathiou, an expert on the Olympic movement and its history who is based at the U.K.'s Canterbury Christ Church University, told NBCNews.com that the cultural side of the Olympic movement was now "only at the periphery" because of the high profile of the sporting events. 

She praised the "extremely rich and diverse” program of events in London so far, but added that "on the negative side … still the average person in the street doesn't really know" what the Cultural Olympiad is all about.

The idea that the Games is about more than sport dates back to Ancient Greece -- when the best sculptors were honored -- and the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, she said.

"It says a lot about Coubertin and how he understood aesthetics and how he valued the concept of beauty. He thought you can see beauty in sport and you can also see beauty in art, and those two shouldn't be separated, they should be linked," she said.

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Medals for artistic achievement were first awarded at the 1912 Stockholm Games and this continued until London 1948.

Team USA did particularly well at the 1932 Los Angeles Games, with three first prizes, four second prizes, one third prize and seven honorable mentions, according to page 764 of that event's official report. A watercolor entitled "Rodeo" -- pictured in the report -- by Lee Blair of the United States was among the winners.

Coubertin himself was one of the first artistic Olympians, Chatziefstathiou said.

"He wrote a poem called Ode au Sport [Ode to Sport] … in the 1912 Games. He submitted this poem with a pseudonym -- Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, as if it was by two people -- and he won the gold medal," she said.

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London 2012 organizers posted a video on YouTube summarizing the kind of events being held at the festival.

One eye-catching artwork is the aMAZEme installation by Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo at London's Southbank Centre, which is a maze made out of 250,000 books with walls of up to 8 feet high. The layout of the walls is based on the fingerprints of the late Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Saboya told NBCNews.com that when the maze, which has a Facebook page, is dismantled the books will be given to the charity Oxfam to help tackle global poverty and disease.

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He said arts and the Olympics had been “always associated … since the beginning of the concept of the Olympics.”

“I think the arts is something so important for our evolution and for our life-meaning,” Saboya said, saying he hoped people visiting the installation would be inspired to read or reread some of the books.

In the shadow of the Games, London celebrates

The London Hatwalk has seen famous statues in the city get a makeover. Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square, William Shakespeare in Leicester Square and 18 other statues can all be seen wearing designs from sone of Britain's top milliners such as Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy.

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"I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the heritage of British millinery and its contribution to our fair city than by dressing our most noble of statues, including our most heroic son, Nelson in creations dreamt up by our leading visionaries," London Mayor Boris Johnson said in a statement.

Many of the events are taking place outside London, including Prometheus Awakes by the Graeae Theatre Company and La Fura dels Baus in Stockton-on-Tees in northeast England Thursday.

Their version of the Greek myth about the human who stole the secret of fire from the gods promises the audience will "feel the earth move and the sky explode as a ten-meter-high (32 feet) Prometheus arises from the ground and creates fire and humanity in defiance of the God Zeus."

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Updated at 6:50 a.m. ET: LONDON -- An athlete steps up to take his throw -- except he is holding a missile, not a javelin; a pole vaulter soars high, but seems headed for a landing on a moldy mattress; an Olympic mascot's leg attracts some unwanted attention from a passing dog.

Banksy, whose works routinely sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and other street artists could hardly let the London 2012 Games go by without having their say -- despite the legal risks.

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While at least four graffiti artists have been arrested by police ahead of the Games -- then released on bail conditions designed to prevent them from making their mark near the venues -- London is full of art works ranging from crude and comical to heavy satire to straightforward celebration.

A piece by artist Jimmy C. is among the latter, a large spray-painted mural of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt's face with streaks of vibrant color radiating outwards on the side of a row of houses in Shoreditch, not far from the Olympic Park.

He could only afford the $1,500 cost of the painting after he sold more conventional artworks at a gallery show in Paris, France, and had some money left over from paying his rent.

"People pick up on a spiritual narrative in my paintings," he told NBCNews.com, explaining that when he went through art school painters like Caravaggio and Velazquez were among his favorites and may have influenced his work.

“Some street art is very quick, humorous and political …  I try to create more lasting things with human qualities that everyone can identify with," he added.

'A very charismatic guy'
East London resident Jimmy Cochran, 39, as he is known in ordinary life, admitted he didn't know too much about the Olympics before deciding to paint something. He said he'd asked friends in Britain and Australia, where he grew up, what they thought about the Games.

“He [Bolt] kept coming up in more ways than one,” he said. “I thought ‘OK, this is interesting.’ I looked him up online, looked at images of him and realized he was a very charismatic guy, a big personality. I was drawn by his features.”

He painted the image on a wall often used by street artists, but didn't ask permission from the owner, who Cochran said he had been told was in Greece.

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Unlike Cochran's picture, Banksy's works, which appeared on his website without any explanatory comment, have a clear political edge.

Banksy rose from being a small-scale street artist to an international star, whose work has fetched as much as $1.8 million at auction. 

He has always tried to keep his identity a secret, although the Daily Mail newspaper has claimed to have identified him and published a photograph that it said was believed to be him.

Banksy's piece showing a javelin thrower carrying a missile is entitled "Hackney [an East London borough] welcomes the Olympics," while the pole vaulter image is called "Going for Mold," according to a spokeswoman for the artist.

His spokeswoman, of Banksy's Pest Control operation, said the images did exist in the real world, but refused to say where they were. 

More London 2012 coverage from NBCNews.com

A dispute with a London graffiti legend known as King Robbo and perhaps some jealousy at Banksy's success mean some graffiti artists will paint over his work where they can find it, a London street art source told NBCNews.com.

For other street artists, the risk is mainly from the authorities.

Corporate clown lasted six days
An artist known as Mau Mau painted an image of Ronald McDonald with sponsors' names on his costume and an Olympic torch belching out black smoke over the Olympic rings on a wall in Ealing, West London. The local authorities painted over it six days later, he told NBCNews.com, despite the wall belonging to a friend of his.

Mau Mau said he came up with the idea after the Olympic torch relay went past his studio in the Devon area of western England and he "could barely see the torch" because of trucks emblazoned with corporate logos.

"I love to watch sport," Mau Mau said, refusing to give his real name. "I love to see Usain Bolt run the 100 meters … It's lovely to see lots of countries together competing.

"I don't see that as negative at all, it's more the branding side of things. I think it should be run more ethically… it should be more for the people and less about huge corporations," he added.

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Teddy Baden, 32, painted the image of one of the Olympic mascots and the overly amorous dog to poke fun at the Olympics in a "non-malicious" way, he said.

"It becomes such a serious thing sometimes," he said, adding that he hoped the image would appeal to the "English sense of humor."

"We always support the underdog in sport, and we can take a pop at things and have a laugh at ourselves ... it's just a bit of fun," he said.

'Welcome to London, it's gray'
Lee Bofkin, co-founder of Global Street Art, which finds walls that artists are allowed to paint and keeps an archive of images, told NBCNews.com that the "vast majority of [street] art has been satirical, sending up the Olympics, noting its heavy-handed corporate presence, and just sort of generally poking fun."

He expressed disappointment that some art had been painted over, citing a wall in Plaistow, East London, a popular spot for street artists that was until recently covered with art.

"A few weeks ago, it was completely painted gray," Bofkin said. "It's a shame. We're saying to tourists 'Welcome to London, it's gray,' rather than 'Welcome to London, it's colorful.'"

The Keep Britain Tidy campaign group once opposed all kinds of graffiti or unauthorized painting on buildings, but no longer.

“What we have a problem with is low-grade ‘tagging,’ that kind of graffiti … that’s just horrible and makes places look unloved,” Helen Bingham, a spokesperson for the group, told NBCNews.com. “We have less of a problem with Banksy-esque street art.”

She said ultimately local people should decide if they wanted an image preserved or removed, but admitted it was a tricky subject.

“One person’s art is another person’s abomination … of all the issues we deal with, it’s the most difficult," Bingham said.

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Updated at 10:05 a.m. ET: LONDON — On August 14, 1948, Ray Lumpp stood in London's Wembley Stadium. As "The Star-Spangled Banner" played and "Old Glory" fluttered in the breeze, an Olympic gold medal was placed round his neck.

"To be in the Olympics was a dream come true," Lumpp, 89, told NBCNews.com from his Long Island home. "To receive a gold medal … it still shines in my heart." 

In the aftermath of World War II, parts of London still lay in ruins, food was rationed and the "strictly amateur" athletes were put up in basic accommodation. But "The Austerity Games" remain a special event for people like Lumpp.

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In sharp contrast to 1948, the London 2012 Olympics has a total budget in excess of $17 billion, a sum greater than the GDP of many of the 200-plus competing nations. About 9 million tickets have been sold and a global TV audience of billions is expected to watch more than 10,000 athletes compete.

Amid the glorification of multi-millionaires competing in sports including basketball, tennis and soccer, the sea of corporate sponsorship and fortress-style security — has the Olympic spirit been forgotten? What would previous Olympians make of today’s event?

Would the Ancient Greeks — who staged the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C. — give their blessing or call down the wrath of Zeus? And what would the founder of the modern Games, French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, make of the demise of the amateur ethos?

Lumpp played in an era where, unlike today, amateurism was central to the Olympic ideal.

"Even if I just wanted to play professional basketball, I would have been removed from the American team — just by saying I wanted to be a pro, I would have been removed," Lumpp told NBCNews.com. "The Olympics was supposed to be for fun and games — no compensation."

"I was married with one child and one on the way. I was a gold medal Olympic champion, but I owed money," he said. "You couldn't have sponsors, you couldn't do this, you couldn't do that ... you have to live and you have to eat."

More London 2012 coverage from NBCNews.com

After Lumpp returned to the U.S., he signed a professional contract with the New York Knicks and was soon "out of hock."

'For the love of it'
While he said that the acceptance of professionals into the games was a good idea — meaning countries could send their best competitors and a level playing field for all — he added that "sometimes money is too important, you lose the ideals of the Games."

"The Games are about taking part, peace and understanding, and competing against one another, not fighting …  playing against each other for the love of it," he said.

"[In 1948] we had great admiration for the British people. Whatever they had, that was it … but whatever they had, they shared it and put on a great Games under the conditions,” he said.

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Lumpp said the success of the 1948 Games – the first since Munich 1936 in Hitler’s Germany — had been vital.

"After that 12-year period when there were no Olympics, it was important, very important, that the next Games be a success because it would affect the future of the Games … because people might say 'it's not worth it,' and it could fade away,” he said.

The gap between Games was somewhat longer when Coubertin hit upon the idea of recreating the evemt.

The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius had decreed in 393 A.D. that "pagan cults" such as the Olympic Games would no longer be permitted. Some 1,503 years later, the first modern event was held in Athens.

Modern Games born from war
Despite the emphasis on promoting global harmony, Coubertin’s big idea was born out of a war.

"It may be a little bit disappointing. You may think it's a product of peace," Dikaia Chatziefstathiou, an expert on the Olympics and an academic at Canterbury Christ Church University in England, told NBCNews.com.

France had not long been defeated in the 1870-1871 war against Prussia and there was concern that the country’s youth were "not very active," she said. "The French government worried that the army wasn't strong enough."

Coubertin, an expert on education, was brought in to shake things up and, on a fact-finding mission to England, he noted the emphasis on studying Ancient Greece and Rome at the country’s private schools, and was also impressed by the emphasis on sport and "muscular Christianity."

This, he thought, could be the answer to France’s diminished military might.

But the late 19^th century was also the so-called Age of Optimism when it was hoped that the world could put an end to war, disease and other great scourges. International movements such as the Scouts, the international Esperanto language, the YMCA and others sprang up "all about making society and the world a more peaceful place,” Chatziefstathiou said.

"He [Coubertin] came to the idea that actually sport can be used to have a peaceful celebration among the nations because he saw the power of sport,” Chatziefstathiou said. "He said 'Why not use sport and education to actually unite nations around the world?'"

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The idea caught the world’s imagination, but the first Olympiad in 1896 was a very different games to 2012 or even 1948.

There were no women. "He [Coubertin] really didn't want women to sweat. He didn't want women to have any physical exertion," Chatziefstathiou said, explaining this in terms of the social norms of the aristocracy of the time.

Also, most of the 1896 competitors were members of the upper classes and, if the right sort of person turned up, they just might find themselves allowed to take part.

George Stuart Robertson was one such athlete. He wrote an Ancient Greek ode that was recited at the end of the 1896 games and won a bronze medal in the doubles tennis. He also took part in the discus, which was perhaps a mistake, as he is still on record as achieving the worst-ever throw of about 27-and-a-half yards.

However -- in a sign of the Olympics' ability to break barriers — one of the heroes of 1896 was a Greek peasant called Spyros Louis, winner of the marathon.

"He became a big symbol of the Games … because without money, without preparation he came and ran in his traditional [Greek] clothing," Chatziefstathiou said.

While Coubertin subscribed to amateurism, she said she did not think he would not be appalled by the money in today’s Games. "If he saw that the movement wouldn't really survive without commercialism … I don't think he would be against commercialism with controls," she said.

Chatziefstathiou’s interest in the Games extends beyond the purely academic. She will be one of scores of dancers from all over the world in Friday's Opening Ceremony and was enthused by the "joy" among them at a practice held Monday.

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"If Coubertin came back [today], he would absolutely love the spirit of the people, and how many people of all ages, all nationalities are all there and enjoying it, and really actually believing it [the Olympic spirit]," she said.

Concerns over corruption, such as betting scandals, might be a worry, but Coubertin would be proud of how "his baby" had grown, she said.

"He wouldn't say 'Oh my God, this is a monstrosity' because he was so keen to keep the movement going," Chatziefstathiou said. "I think he would be absolutely over the moon."

The participation of women, however, might prove too big a step for a man of his background, she suggested. "I don't think he would like this. He would be able to adapt to many things, but this is a spectacle I don't think he would be keen to see."

Ancient Games: Naked and men-only
Most Ancient Greeks were similarly against women at the Olympic Games, and to a much greater degree. With the exception of the priestess of Demeter, who oversaw events for religious reasons, any woman found watching the events faced being killed.

However, at least one female spectator is said to have survived the experience.

Kallipateira, the mother of a boxer, sneaked in dressed as a man to watch her son compete, Armand D’Angour, a fellow and tutor in classics at Jesus College, Oxford University, told NBCNews.com.

"Then when her son wins, she jumps up with delight and gives herself away as a woman," he said.

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Summoned by the judges, she told them how sport was part of her and her family's life, saying "this is who I am." And the judges, D’Angour said, decided to let her off.

The idea of female athletes would have been shocking for most Greeks, "apart from one city state, which was Sparta," he said.

In Sparta, women had a degree of equality and were known to be "very sporty."

"Spartan women were considered to be women with six-packs —  strong, not necessarily beautiful, and quite scary," D’Angour said.

However, all Ancient Greeks would have been more in tune with the today’s Olympics when it came to ideas about money.

D’Angour said athletes were sponsored by their cities and spent years in training.

"And of course if they won, they were feted, celebrated and odes were written for them — an expensive business. They would be fed at public expense for the remainder of their lives. There was a lot of money in it," he added.

Flame 'nothing to do with Ancient Greece'
The amateur ideal or so-called “Corinthian spirit” was “a bit of an invention really,” D’Angour said.

Other modern inventions include the Olympic flame — "that’s nothing to do with Ancient Greece, it comes from the idea of the eternal flame in Rome" — and the Olympic rings, he said.

D’Angour, author of Ancient Greek odes to the Athens and London Olympics, said Ancient Greeks would be shocked by "the completely irreligious" nature of the modern games.

"Zeus, the head of their gods, was very much in the center of the games," he said. A central message was "as great as human beings strive to be, they can never be as great as the gods."

And they might also be disappointed that the athletes were wearing any clothes.

"They competed naked — you’d see a lot of dangly bits. We don’t really know the origins of that. One story says a competitor in a running race tripped over something he was wearing, and after that they decided everyone should go naked," D’Angour said.

"I think it was to do with a celebration of the body beautiful. They were keen on the beauty of the bodies, shining, oiled bodies with fantastic musculature and beautiful balance," he said.

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But overall D'Angour said he thought that any Ancient Greeks transported to London 2012 be pleasantly surprised.

"The ambition to do well, the striving to achieve excellence in a sport … Let’s say they got over the fact they were living in a different century, I think they would find it fairly familiar and would be excited," he said.

They might be a little bemused by events such as synchronized swimming, he said, but the 100 meters and the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, would likely be popular. But even Bolt would be measured against ancient heroes, whose true speed can only be guessed at.

"I think what they would feel is 'this chap [Bolt] is a bloody fast runner' but – because they didn’t have records —  they would say 'Diagoras,' —  who ran in 426 BC — 'was pretty good too, I can tell you,'" D’Angour said.

And there might be a few requests for one ancient favorite, chariot racing, to be restored.

"That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it?" D’Angour said. "Can you imagine? It'd be like Ben Hur all over again."

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