Trek Y-Foil

Don't forget the Sugino OX801D crankset.

If I were doing a show about the art of the bicycle it would probably be a piece with some sort of video animation projected on spinning bicycle wheels. Powered by a big block V8 with a blower. OR play with a car crusher and a huge amount of really nice bikes to make canvases to paint pictures of ideal autocentric non ped/cyclist metropolisis, surrounded by an envelope or air curtain of pure fresh mountain air. OR have viewer interactive stationary bikes with sound, light and spray foam inundation. Definitely something that would be called insane or a waste by many. You did say money was no object.

This is me working on a project that I rode a bicycle a couple hundred miles to get to. It was my buddys studio, we do collaborative video projected onto textile sculptures. I was always pretty relaxed after riding two one hundred mile days. the structure in the front is one of our video canvases. Most of my sculpture that I make just to make, is designed with the idea of transporting it to location by bike, but it has no bicycle imagery itself.

Without a doubt, Dewey is my favorite on aesthetic theory. But your quote is a good example of his main point, art depends on context of the object and the user/viewer/"experiencer" of the object. While there are those who feel the contrary, in our current culture, a bicycle is not art. It "could be" art, but it isn't. And most definately, the 1,000 critics in NYC who are the world's arbiters of what is art or not, would not consider a bike as art.

Just out of curiosity, is your citys new statue art? I have talked with some who maintain it is. Some who think it isn't. And a few who just got all sputtery and refused to or became unable to talk. But the subject is a cultural fixture. I got a lot out of Dewey, But taking something out of something involves what you take into it. I see a brick wall and I see art. Not the art of bricklaying, but the art of human hand, and patina. And if the right person where to take a peice of that wall and put it in a gallery in NY, with the right conceptual BS most of those 1000 critics would buy it hook line and S.

I actually addressed the question of "what is art?" in an article published in 1984... in a journal called Crescat Scientia. I dare anyone to find it.

Basically, to be a "work of art" displayed in a museum, the rules are, you have to name the artist ("anonymous" will do), give it a title ("untitled" will do) and display it. That's all it takes. Whatever qualities it may have, or lack, as a work of art, are completely beside the point. It is generally considered appropriate for the artist named to have contributed in some way to the creation of the work of art; but this is not necessary.

The chain ring on my Norman is not a work of art. It is a bicycle component. If I took it off the bike, mounted it on the wall, and put a little tag next to it saying "Chain ring, designer unknown, chromed steel, English, ca 1950" then it would be a work of art.

Whether it's any good or not, that's for the critics to decide.

I think it's perhaps the primary job of the artist to present the familiar in a new light. So to take something as common as a bicycle and render it as art would be, in my opinion, chiefly contextual in nature. A rear derailleur is just a mechanism; put a half-dozen Nuovo Record derailleurs in shadowboxes and play with the lighting, and you have something that is definitely artistic in nature, if not actually Art.

]I am given to understand that rough brick walls and hardwood floors and halogen spotlights help provide context as well, in addition to very well-dressed people with lots of money.

I just saw that at MOMA in New York.

I believe that Marcel Duchamps "bicycle wheel" was first created in 1913. The original was lost, but Duchamp recreated the peice in the early fiftys, declaring it as viable as the first. that is the one(I am pretty sure)that is on display at the MOMA. I actualy think that there were several made by Duchamp. I did fail numerous art history courses, That means that I had to take them over and over, so I actualy picked some stuff up.

that one looks like its been there a long time.

Yup, still no takers though.

Art is a Ricardo Pinnacle

I think it would be interesting to replace some parts of well know works of art with bicycle parts. The melting clocks with wheels for example, a cubist representation of a bicycle, an impressionist bike race. Come to think of it, I can hardly think of any exhibit at the Tate modern that wouldn't be better with bikes in it.

One of Dewey's central points is that the apparently vast gap between "art" - as a "special" realm with it's own, set-aside special venues - and the "everyday" is a cultural construct that glorifies one while tending to denigrate the other. And it is of course in the professional interest of the many art critics to sustain that gap. But if we're too quick to assign objects to the categories deemed culturally "correct" - e.g. "art" and "craft," then we're likely to miss or fail to appreciate the fact that art also permeates (or at least has the potential to permeate) the everyday. Not to say that art museums aren't sites where the richest experiences can be had. But this should send us back into the everyday world with an enhanced experience of our everyday surroundings and the objects in them - including a heightened sense of the artfulness with which those objects are conceived (or a sense of the extent to which this artfulness is lacking). Dewey is interested in thinking "across the grain" of trite dichotomies like "art" vs. "craft" in order to foster fresh seeing and experiencing. Like Augustine discovering the divine everywhere in the created world, we should be finding our workaday world rife with artistry, and interacting with it artistically. The museum and the home should be kindred places, and not positioned on opposite sides of a gulf, with one side the subject of admiration and the other of resignation.
Which is why "arting up" bikes is unnecessary. It attempts to remove bicycles from their usual realm of experience in order to "elevate" them to some more glorified aesthetic status. Or to juxtapose bicycles with commonly accepted art concepts in ways that come across as contrived or strained.
I'm more interested in opportunities to see how bicycles are conceived, made, and enjoyed "artistically," in the sense of how the maker thinks through the process, chooses materials, interacts with those materials in a refined manner, guided by years of muscle memory, etc. Not to say bicycles are necessarily art in the same sense as the paintings in the Frick - because they're not conceived as "art" in that intentional sense, and they're of course primarily functional and secondarily aesthetic. Their aesthetic enjoyment will therefore not have the same yield. But the "art" is already in the bike. It doesn't necessarily have to be "tacked" on in a way that, in my view, unhelpfully sustains that "art" vs. "everyday" duality.

I agree completely. You can find a level of art in everything. But at what level does it become "art"? That is defined by society, not just one person, although "officially", those 1000 critics have a lot of sway. And in today's society, a bicycle is not art.

Personally, while I find it garish and cheap, I'd call it pop art. Poorly executed pop art, but art nonetheless. And yes, anything can become art, especially with the help of those 1000 critics.


BTW, way back in design school, at Thanksgiving, the local professional design society held a contest for us students. We were to design the "essense of a turkey". I built a brick wall, about 3' x 3'. I then cut out a silouette of a turkey, placed it against the wall and spray painted black around the perimeter of the silouette. I removed the silouette. I took the wall to the contest and said my turkey was in an atomic blast and all that was left was its essense. I won first prize, a $150 gift certificate at the local art supply store. I bet if I checked, I still have a slide (yes, I'm that old) of that piece.

So why not help people see it as art? Why not challenge the societal assumptions? Isn't that one of the roles "art" has sometimes played?

Incidentally, I was at the Met not that long ago, and there was a lot of stuff in there that doesn't necessarily fit the cultural definition of "high art." Including an excellent exhibit of guitars.

Quite honestly, I would see that as a futile exercise. I'd have an easier time convincing people NASCAR is art.

I'm a charter inductee of the "Futile Exercise Hall Of Fame."

Thinking like that will get you a government grant.

It's not?


Hmm, bicycle as art.

Where for art thou, bicycle?
The bike, thou art wheeled transport.
While aesthetically pleasing
Made to make travel be easing
It has many a beautiful part.

If you can find art in that, you can find art in NASCAR.

Wow, what an interesting discussion this has turned into! As a professor of art history and studio art, I can certainly appreciate the several references to Dewey as well as the apparent fact that a good number of folks from the visual art world have an affinity for C&V bicycles. My own thinking somewhat parallels that of Dissanayake's view that current thinking in the visual arts is concerned with giving art back to life rather than relegating it - as we have for the past few centuries - to the remote world of the museum or concert hall, experienced only by the elite. What is intriguing - to me, at least - about the bicycle "as art" is in the way that we, as humans behave, deliberately setting out, in the words of Dissanayake, "to make things special" or extra-ordinary. We could certainly create a perfectly functional two-wheeled transportation device, completely devoid of lugs or chrome or paint or any of the other things that make a bicycle "special." (For that matter, we certainly have done so!) But it brings joy to many of us as enthusiasts and riders to be in contact with those that are made special. Call it art. Call it craft. Call it anything you like. Overwhelmingly, that which we make special is considered to have some degree of importance to us, both collectively and as individuals. To me, that is the interesting part of this question: the shared common experience and bond of the bicycle, the appeal of a well designed component or an excellent fender line, the aesthetic experience of discovery upon a ride. Yes, in my mind there is very definitely something that can be called "the art of the bicycle" but it may be something much different for each of us. I've never had much use for distinguishing between "high" art and anything else, frankly - and this might be part of the appeal of vintage cycling to me in all honesty: as I think I've said before, it seems like a wonderful bridge of form and function.

I don't know what this exhibition will be - or even if it will become a reality. What I'm certain of, though, is that there is more than enough fodder to generate ten completely different shows of the same title, and all with completely different focus in each iteration - and the art critics be hanged!

Yeah, I have lots of slides as well, and by the time I was in Grad, they were passe. Its sad that all my 35mm documentation can now be surpassed by my 200 dollar bar of soap sized cannon. Well almost.

Agree that is pop art, but I would change my route if I lived in Chicago and had to go by it every day. A friend of mine says that she has done that. Yet next time I am up there I will probably go and get my picture taken with it. Then on to the Institute to visit Excavation.

Oh, and you won't have to do much convincing about nascar. The only problem would be getting all the fans to wear french cuffs or little black dresses to the race, and the vendors might not like all the little crackers and brie in the hot sun.

I are just a engineer/scientist with no artistic edjukashun (other than being a musician for longer than I've done anything else except eat and breathe). Yes, it is a fascinating discussion though a bit esoteric for me. Still, I grok a few points made here: Art to me happens when it enhances my experience beyond mere utility. I, or anyone else, may not notice it and or be "enhanced" at all, but it may still enhance the experience of someone else.

Which is why I mentioned chrome a few zillion posts ago, as flippant as that note may have seemed. The point, and what AZORCH appears to be saying, is that the art part comes when some feature of design exceeds the merely necessary. No bike needs chrome fork tips just as no building facade needs gargoyles or archways. Lugs as a necessary part of frame construction can still be made pretty or ugly.

What hasn't be mentioned yet (I think) is that the simple act of riding a bike can be art. It enhances life, produces wondrous visual input, lifts the spirit, etc. But it is ephemeral, a moment-by-moment experience which dissolves into memories as soon as it happens. You can't hang it on a wall except in pictures or in the physical componentry which makes it possible. That may be why you folks are having such a hard time coming to terms with the concept of "bicycle as art". What we really experience as bicycle art has no iconic element beyond the bike itself or using bike parts in an artificial creation.

I'll go back to being a enjuneer now.

The art/craft distinction is less interesting to me than the business of curating a bicycle based art show. A more practical question I would want to answer early on is what kind of artifact is to be displayed. There seem to be three largely discrete groups (though there is some cross over): first; bicycles and components themselves; second, art inspired by bicycles and bike riding (fine art such as the painting of the Mariposa, bike & component ads, racing posters, e.g.); third, art that uses bicycle parts or imagery (Picasso, Duchamps and many others). There is also bicycle ballet & acrobatics, and videos of people like Danny MacAskill at work could certainly be considered art.

The recent MAD bicycle show in NY focused tightly on six builders of custom bikes and their products, and was stronger for limiting the scope in this way.