Art and Bikes #3
I was kindly asked recently to write a post that would be jointly hosted by both Culture Vulture and Leeds Inspired. It is to be the first in a series that they are putting together under the title of ‘The Art of Sport’ and I felt honoured when they asked me to write the first piece on bikes. Quite why they asked me is open to question as I don’t know much about art and am not a great rider, however I came up with the following post that I hope does the subject justice and which first appeared on their respective blogs, which if you don’t know them are excellent places for all things cultural and goings on in and around Leeds.
When I watch the pro bike racing on TV one of the things that has always struck me is the sheer visual nature of the spectacle and in particular the peloton sweeping down a mountain pass writhing their way through a series of S-bends. The fluidity of movement encapsulated in these moments has always reminded me of brushstrokes swept across a canvas with the sponsored team jerseys providing a vivid blur of primary colour often offset against stunning visual scenery. It’s no surprise to me that artists have looked to capture this colour and motion in many guises, for example David Gerstein :
or a particular current favourite of mine in the recently commissioned Euskaltel by Chris Billington depicting the orange kit of the Euskaltel Euskadi team snaking their way up into their Basque Pyrenean homeland.
Other artists such as Alexander Calder (6 day bike race – 1924) or Leroy Neiman (Indoor Cycling – 1979) have sought to capture action similar to that we will see on the velodrome at the forthcoming Olympics when for a brief moment the population at large will become aware of the sport and Laura Trott will become a household name. In contrast to these paintings that seek to exploit the fluidity of movement inherent in cycling I particular like Edward Hopper’s 1937 painting French Six Day Bicycle Rider (below) which shows the rider (in my view anticipating the motion to come through the stillness) before he competes. 6 day racing was very popular at the time (hence the similarity with Calder’s title) and Hopper regularly went to watch the racing at Madison Square Gardens and although Hopper did not say who the rider was in picture the likelihood is that it was Alfred Letourner a regular winner at the Gardens in the period and nicknamed ‘Le Diable Rouge’
The feeling of flow is something of a holy grail among those of us who ride, that moment when all your feelings, emotions and senses coalesce with your physical movements and you slip into a bubble where there are no thoughts just oneness of movement. I don’t find it that often but when I ride the Yorkshire Dales single track treading in Turner’s footsteps I sometimes stumble across it and I wonder whether this heightening of the senses, being totally aware of your surroundings and colours is what artists feel when they find their muse? As a cyclist you will invariably find yourself riding past the same landmarks time after time and in doing so you will notice the subtle changes of immediate surrounds as you pass through the seasons in a way that has been perfectly encapsulated by Hockney in his most recent exhibition with paintings of the same lane or same tree over a period of time. I could immediately identify with this and now keep seeing “Hockney’s” whenever I ride. I guess however that this feeling can be better summed up by someone who can actually write so here’s Hemmingway:
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle
I sometimes wonder how bikes have affected art in ways that we cannot measure, how did some of the landscape artists of the early 20th century get to their destination? In my mind they cycled there and this ability of the bike to take us further afield must have had an effect on the art being produced at the time? In a way this process is still happening today as land artist Richard Long is known to cycle down to his favourite muddy bank before collecting mud to put in his saddlebag before riding back to the studio to get to work and Grayson Perry has been a keen mountain biker for a long time and I wonder how that may have influenced his work.
Art and bikes move much further though than simply the depiction of racing or bikes in the physical form to which most people imagine when they think of a bike. Take the fantastically titled 1920 painting by Max Ernst below – The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses !
I think that this picture was one of the first pieces of bike art that began to disassemble the bike and was the forerunner, alongside Marcel Duchamp‘s Bicycle Wheel (1913), to those who realised that the bike’s genius simplicity and component parts make the perfect materials to produce some of the most eye catching and memorable work of the 20th Century, most notably with the Head of a Bull (1942) by Pablo Picasso at the top of the piece that uses the saddle and handlebars and is probably instantly recognisable for many people. This tradition of using the bike itself as the art rather than depicted bikes in art has continued through to the modern day with Ai Weiwei Forever Bicycles – 1200 bikes formed together into this remarkable structure:
I love the way that all of the artists who work in this way from Duchamp through to Weiwei are taking a brilliantly designed but essentially humble everyday item and seeking to expand our horizons to what is possible and surely all those who saddle up seek to explore expanded horizons?
The bikes of Duchamp, Picasso and Weiwei could not of course be ridden but many many cyclists enjoy the concept of creating or modifying their own bike and applying colour schemes, designs, details and frame decals and the controversial Lance Armstrong got in on the idea when he rode a series of customised art bikes in the Tour de France that were then auctioned off for his Livestrong charity. The artists KAWS, Kenny Scharf, Shepard Fairey, Marc Newson, Yoshitomo Nara and Damien Hirst produced a serious of one offs with my fav being that by Yoshitomo Nara:
Once you start customising bikes people can tend to get very obsessive, a trait I suspect that might exist in the art world, that can be perhaps best illustrated by the people who actually tattoo the brand logo of bike part manufacturer Campagnolo onto themselves, which might be the perfect manifestation of bike art?
The most recent trend in using bikes as art would, I suspect, never be considered art by those who do it and that’s the Ghost Bike movement whereby bikes are sprayed white and tied up at the site where a cyclist has been killed. I’m not sure where I stand on Ghost Bikes but they remind me very much of the Situationist Art movement where all art was done for a political reason and when you first come across a Ghost Bike it very much makes you think about your own mortality, what happened at that site and why? what changes need to happen to prevent further Ghost Bikes appearing? If Guernica can bring to our attention what is happening in the world around us and can challenge us with profound questions then I think Ghost Bikes do the same thing and are very much in the best tradition of art with a purpose.
Bike art has continued to develop as different mediums for expression have developed and photography and film have perhaps proved the perfect medium. Graham Watson has been photographing cycling for 30 years producing any number of breathtaking images and new kid on the block Jered Gruber I particularly like for his ability to really capture the soul and culture of cycling and bike racing. Film makers in this area are mushrooming and there are now film festivals dedicated to all things bike. Channel 4 got in on the act last year through their Concrete Circus series of films and the 2 bike films in particular reminded me of the grace, control, balance and rhythm that any dancer would be proud of, especially when you watch Flatland BMX specialist Keelan Phillips get to work. If you have not seen Danny or Keelan ride before the prepare to be amazed.
Danny Macaskill
Keelan Phillips
For many of us however the bike does not need to be depicted as art, the bike itself is art and none more so than currently being demonstrated by the growing artisan bespoke movement in this country producing some of the most beautiful creations imaginable that achieve the difficult marriage of form and function to perfection. There are none better than Yorkshire’s own Ricky Feather (who I’m hoping will be building my next bike in the future and if it’s as good as the one below I’ll be smiling) and we should celebrate these craftspeople and their skill and creativity.
So since the first bike pedal was turned bikes have influenced countless artists and continued to do so through developing mediums. A question often asked is what is art ? and for me the answer is freedom, whether that be creative freedom or freedom of expression. Art is what people do and have always done there is a primal urge within all of us to create (admittedly well hidden in some of us) and that is it’s essential link to bikes as if you ask people what riding gives them from the very youngest upwards the word freedom will consistently appear, perfectly summed up in 1896 by Susan Brownwell Anthony:
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.
For me though perhaps the piece of cycling art that means most to me is the one that I cycle past regularly a few minutes from my house. A wall at the back of a row of shops that has been painted to commemorate Beryl Burton, Britain’s greatest ever cyclist (and in my view greatest sportsperson). Fine though it is I feel it is time for a new piece of bike art and that is a sculpture of Beryl for the centre of Leeds.
Overworlds & Underworlds
This weekend Leeds became a multimedia, multi-arts moving canvas and various parts of the city became part of the Overworlds & Underworlds “project”. I use the word project as I’m not sure how else to describe it. For those who don’t know the city, the river Aire runs through it but at one point part of it flows underneath the railway station through a serious of tunnels which are known as the dark arches. They have always had a slightly otherworldy feel to them as the noise of the rushing water is amplified and there is unsurprisingly a dank and dampness to the place. This weekend the whole dark arches area formed the Underworlds element of the project dreamt up from the warped imagination of the Quay Brothers.
In each of the arches something different was taking place, there was the journey of the River Stykes through the cycle of imagined, observed and remembered memories; Phoenix Dance and the Northern Ballet performing; a floating Queen/ Ghost like character on a sunken ship; film loops; chalk drawings; a wailing/laughing ensemble (Phoenix Dance) with a lot of chairs and a dead horse; a miniature port hole / coffin depicted a shattered/ flooded world. All to the accompaniment of bells and water. Water was clearly a key theme to what was going on although quite what was going on is open to interpretation.
As we were wandering a gap opened and 3 dark angels appeared and handed one of my kids an umbrella full of holes and instructed her to follow them and shelter them as they weaved through the crowd past the band of lost souls. These dark angels then turned into a fire breathing / eating act, again with the bell toiling for the dead caused by the flood ? Out in the courtyard a gaggle of steampunks carried water jugs and emptied them in a solemn ritual into the canal, each one again to the ringing of the bell while next to them a pylon had found it’s watery grave.
The Band of Lost Souls
A Dark Angel (photo credit – Carl Milner)
Photo Credit – Carl Milner
A watery grave
Dark Angels playing with fire !
The strange and macabre world of the flooded underworld was of course only half the story, what of those who had survived the flood? celebration was required. The main shopping street in Leeds found itself with a shipwreck, brass bands in “band off”, celestial dancers floating through the shoppers, shop windows converted to themes of the sea. All of this of course taking place while much of Leeds does what Leeds does on a weekend and worships to the god of consumerism. What on earth did they think to these strange goings on around them and I even missed the singing children in one of the arcades.
Members of the Paper Birds Theatre Group and other theatre performers, who we had earlier seen in the ‘water into the canal ceremony’ then mingled in with the bands and dancers and the bells rang out again as they led the way pied piper like back down to the dark arches where without doubt the best thing of the whole “project” was. Almost hidden right at the end of the dark arches you could see a tightly packed huddle of people all staring at something but it was unclear what. I wedged my way in to the very densely packed throng but could see nothing but pitch black with the rushing sound of water, then magically the most incredible projection appeared that wrapped round the arches and illuminated the space underneath. It was like a flooded cathedral or a ballroom of a titanic like ship and totally took the breath away. I could have stayed there gawping at it for a long time but the throng of people wanting to look meant that I needed to make some room. The projections were created by Mic Pool, I have no idea how he has done them but they were the highlight of this amazing day.
Photo credit – Carl Milner
Photo credit – Carl Milner
I have no idea what any of this was really about, it was beautiful, beguiling and macabre in equal measure. I’m not sure if it was environmental or political all I do know is that huge credit must go to all who collaborated on it and Leeds needs more things like this.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
This month’s book club book was remarkable in lots of ways:
Drawings
This book was packed full of drawings. It’s not the first book we’ve read with pictorial excitement but we haven’t read many that use illustrations to tell the story along with the prose (apart from Maus that is). This book tells the story of an obsessive 12 year old boy who has to physically draw and map everything that happens to him in his life – from the accidental shooting of his brother in a barn to waste paper on a Chicago street. Everything is drawn and recorded in exquisite detail and these illustrations were the constant companion to the text throughout the book.
Size
It was an odd, large, square-ish format, this book. Larger than A5 and smaller than A4. It would flop open and fall awkwardly when trying to read it in bed. On the plus side, it would fall open flat without having to break the spine. The large format allowed the illustrations to really breathe and the typographic layout was pleasingly open and engaging. But most of all it was just odd.
Old book or New Book?
This book was an old book set in the modern era. It was a timeless tale set amidst the high plains initially with cowboys and ranches and then hobos on railroad cars and then Smithsonian derring do. The author played around with the idea of time I think to the point where it wasn’t important which for me is interesting as I’m always trying to pinpoint time because it helps me to process the information.
Obsession
The author was relentless in his articulation of the obsession of the main character TS Spivet to the point it almost detracts from the narrative. I found it was only when I relaxed and enjoyed the illustrative diversions that they no longer distracted but delivered additional texture and depth. As a bit of an obsessive myself, this book spoke to me on many levels and Spivet shares many traits with myself not just as a 12 year old but now.
Six out of Ten
That’s what I scored this book, which I upped at the end of the night because I felt I’d underscored it somewhat. There was a mixed bag of scores and even one of the guys hadn’t read it – which is unusual in itself and often tells us more than the review would from that member. I enjoyed the book, it was light and fresh after last month’s intensely brutal South American dictator novel and I’m thinking back on it fondly.
On to next Month.
Howies T Shirt of the Week
There’s a few folk who write for and read this blog that really do need to have this shirt.
Available now on Howies.
Urban Etiquette
I read an interesting piece recently by Desmond Morris who described eloquently how we’re still evolving as humans and one of our most significant achievements is our ability to live in huge numbers, in such close proximity to each other. He reminded us that this wouldn’t have been possible a thousand years ago, as we simply wouldn’t be able to do it without killing each other in great numbers.
I was interested then to see this Urban Etiquette Project where a range of well-designed vouchers were created to reward fellow citizens for good behaviour and reprimand for bad. Of course etiquette varies the world over and what is acceptable in London is completely out of order in Japan but I did think it was interesting that the rules of living together could be articulated this way.
I love the slightly sanctimonious tone of voice on these vouchers and it’s no surprise they’ve come out of California. Why not print some and dish them out on your local bus service and see what kind of response you get?
Breakfast #7
Been a bit of a heavy weekend what with BoysBookClub Friday, Wembley yesterday and the climax to the Fantasy Football League today, which was of course far more important that what was going on in the real football world. Rustled up this little beauty to pick me up and get me going for the day, poached egg (cooked in the old cling film method with thyme, dried chilli, salt and pepper), beans and mushrooms served on a toasted foccacia. Lovely start.
Wembley Dreams
6,403 – what a weird number. We all have to remember all sorts of numbers in our lives, passwords, log ins, overdraft limits, telephone numbers but if there is one number that I will always remember it’s 6,403 the attendance figure of the first football match I went to – Newport County v Huddersfield Town (3-2 to the Port). 5 games (for me) later it was 18,000 as the mighty Port played in the Quarter Final of the European Cup Winners Cup against the East German cup holders Carl Zeiss Zena (see my programme below). The Port had drawn 2-2 over in East Germany but despite dominating the most one sided game in history we got hit on the break and lost the home leg 1-0 and to be honest that’s as good as it got. 30 odd years later I’m reminded of Jasper Carrotts’s famous quip about watching Birimingham City – “you lose some you draw some”. In fact I don’t remember us drawing many apart from a couple of seasons later when we stormed to the top of the old division 3 table (now division 1) beating those that can’t be named from down the road 1-0 in front of 16,500 with Tommy Tynan and John Aldridge leading the line on Easter Monday. The future was bright the future was amber but history then cast it’s dark cloud as the only time we had previously been promoted from the 3rd division was in 1939 and WW2 broke out, so fearing a repeat we did the best thing for the country and capitulated, culminating with a last day defeat away at Huddersfield Town which sent them up and us heading toward the vortex of doom.
As all our players were sold and we began our descent into oblivion we managed to pass on a bit of that bad luck onto our departing players. Aldridge had a great career via Oxford and then onto Liverpool but managed to miss the penalty in the 1988 cup final against Wimbledon. While travelling home and away all over the UK watching the Port I also clocked up over 20 years of Wales home games missing I think 4 with a few European trips thrown in for good measure. In 1993/4 Wales played Romania at Cardiff Arms Park with the winner off to America for the World Cup Finals. At 1-1 a penalty was awarded to Wales and the Romanians were crumbling. Paul Bodin hit the best penalty I’ve ever seen apart from the fact that he hit it so well and so hard it hit the perfect apex of post and crossbar – we lost the game 2-1. Bodin was an ex Newport player – you get the drift. The game of course was put into the shade by the tragedy of a fan killed by a flare fired into the crowd 2 blocks from where I was.
By this point Newport had been relegated out of Division 3 and Division 4 (100 games attended across both seasons not many draws) into the Conference where we went bankrupt, auctioned off everything and started again a long way from the football league. At the same time the Football Association of Wales in their infinite wisdom banned us from playing in Wales as they wanted us to join their new fangled Welsh League and our ground was sold for housing. When you can’t sink any lower however and your back is against the wall it’s best to come out fighting so we get up and running again sharing a ground firstly with Moreton in the Marsh and then Gloucester City, we sue the Welsh FA for restraint of trade at the High Court and win and finally end up back playing games in Newport. Slowly but surely we inch our way back through the divisions and now find ourselves 1 promotion away from regaining our place in the Football League.
Of course running parallel to all this was me growing up, forging relationships, marriage and all that goes with that, moving away from the Port and after various cities now finding myself living and settled up in Yorkshire which makes getting to games much harder now, but I feel I’ve paid my dues over the years so I go as and when I can. When I first started watching we had a small back garden with a hedge at the back and one of the those washing lines that you could fold up and down that span round which acted as my perfect defender. I would spend hours in the back garden jinking past the washing line onto my right foot before firing a “goal” into the hedge. A goal only counted if it went into one of the corners that were a perfect football sized hole in each corner of the hedge made from my constant shooting. As I dribbled past the washing line I had only dreams of being one player – Kevin Moore an elusive, erratic, ebullient and effervescent winger for the Port, a player that still remains my favourite ever player. Kevin launched us onto one of our best runs winning a penalty against Orient that put us into the third round of the FA Cup and up against the great Everton side of the mid 80′s who we took to a replay. Of course at that stage I thought the only way was up for us and imagined (like every young fan everywhere in the country) that one day I’d see my team run out at Wembley. It would surely only be a matter of time ?
Kevin on the charge and in our fantastically classic 80′s addidas number.
Of course that time never came but watching so much defeat helps to harden you to the knocks that come through life and over the years, contrary to those contorted in apoplectic rage, I watch games in a sense of zen calmness and magnanimity (although I still get worked up in my own way!). Most of my mates were not interested and my family certainly wasn’t so I developed a certain stoicism, watching most of the games in my own solitary world. In fact I often feel that my own existence and that of the Port is wrapped up in some weird mirror image that closely resembles Kipling’s If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
However on Saturday all those dreams I had as a young lad will return as Newport County play York City at Wembley in the FA Trophy. To many perhaps a meaningless bauble but in the 100th season since the club’s establishment our first visit. I’m really glad that we are playing York as I live up here now and they are also a team that has fallen on hard times but is on the rise again and will return the following week with a chance to make it back into the Football League and I for one wish them well for that game. On Saturday though no matter what I will certainly be treating triumph and disaster the same but may well shed a tear as the teams run out and one of my lifelong dreams is fulfilled.
Hepworth Gallery
Today saw a trip out to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield which in the year it has been open has really established itself as a jewel in the art scene in Yorkshire and no doubt beyond. Having it pretty much on my doorstep has provided a fantastic opportunity to see some really interesting and thought provoking art which changes on a regular basis. I’ve loved the design of the gallery from the first time I saw it floating as it appears to be on the canal.
What I most enjoyed about the new exhibitions today was the installation “Anna” by Heather & Ivan Morison which contained a serious of objects that reflected the life and love affair between “The Warden” and “Anna” and their “The Child” The Warden and Anna were two large pictures and their Child was what looked effectively like an enormous lightshade. Numerous objects scattered the room – pots, flowers, bones that gave a slightly unnerving air to the room that was enhanced through snippets of conversation being played (effectively the paintings talking to each other?). I appreciate that this sounds crackers but hey it worked for me:
The Warden
Anna:
Their Child
I had plenty of time in this room as my kids had got involved in an art project where they were sketching some of the objects in the room that they then transferred onto card and carved out their own etchings. There were several really interesting art activities that children could get involved in that were all linked to the exhibits in the museum. They were well run and allowed the kids to take their time and look at some of the objects in a way that they would never have done if we’d just been walking around. Many other galleries could take a lesson from the approach that the Hepworth take here. The afternoon had them produced their own collographic prints inspired by David Thorpe’s work.
As well as the visiting displays there is also of course the permanent Hepworth sculptures:
So all in all I’ve got high praise for what they are doing at the Hepworth, it’s a high class gallery contained within a beautiful building. The displays are excellent and if you have children there are activities that are well thought through and linked to the art, together with an outdoor play area when you need a bit of a run around. An excellent cafe with locally sourced products and a really good gallery shop and to top it off it’s free. So if you’ve not been get yourself down there and if you enjoy your sculptures and are from outside the area then the Hepworth combined with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park just down the road would make a perfect weekend break.
Tequila
I have to admit that after the fantastic Tequila tasting evening at Pinche Pinche in Leeds, I’ve got a little bit obsessed about Tequila.
We learnt all about how 100% agave is the only way to go from Leeds legend Skippy (he of Mojo fame) and how the different types of Tequila reflect how they are produced and every nuance is present in the drink itself. The tequilas we drank were very similar to fine malts or cognac – not the rank stuff you get as shots in bars. Anyway it was a school night and I was up early the following day with a surprisingly light head.
Then seeing this week a wonderful selection of bottle designs on The Dieline website…well I just had to share it. I love how it goes from minimalist, modernist chic through to home grown authentic in the blink of an eye. I think it reflects how Tequila is all things to all men and apparently the fastest growing drinks ‘category’ in the world right now.
What’s your favourite?
Forms @ National Media Museum, Bradford
Paid one of my occasional visits to the Media Museum in Bradford recently and I must admit I’ve always had mixed feelings about it having never really been sure that the museum as a whole works. At the moment they have an exhibition called “In The Blink of An Eye” which is a cultural tie in with the Olympics and features a fantastic collection of sporting images, some good features on different photographic techniques and two commissioned works one of which “Forms” I found mesmerising.
In some respects the idea is simple, film a variety of sports in action and “digify” the movement contained within that sport. However the execution is far more subtle and striking than that premise. The animated graphic effectively seeks to capture then energy within each particular sport displayed on a massive screen. In watching the repeating displays tumble across the screen (I think that there are 10 sports represented) you can step back and see the sport displayed on a smaller screen like the gymnast (above on the bottom right), or as I preferred ignore the screen and just watch the tumbling, exploding pixels of energy. I could have stood there for hours. The pictures above do not in any way do it justice, I’m not sure how long the exhibition is on for but if you are around then check it out (the exhibition also includes a great photo of Edward and Mrs Simpson levitating !). Must admit though that I found it a bit odd that an exhibition celebrating the capture of moments using photography banned the taking of pictures.
Of course could not go to Bradford without checking out the new puddle:
I must admit that although one puddle does not a regenerated city make, it made me smile and everyone else who was there which has got to be a good sign.
