book reviews

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get the bike ready for a great new year

the bike as art

i'm sure this will probably offend one or two folks, but i'm working on the premise that 'art is in the eye of the beholder' so what pleases me may not please you (or the person sitting next to you). i don't find the current stream of mountain bikes particularly pleasing to the eye - well possibly in an industrial sort of way, much in the same way that some cnc machining looks, well, chunky. but you just know that had it been designed by someone with an artistic eye, those corners would be more flowing and round, rather than the rather cut and dried chunky fashion as described by a computer.

in this way, a bicycle presented by pinarello or colnago seems to have been designed with due consideration for the methods of construction, the materials inherent in that construction and at least one and a half eyes on the purpose of that cycle.

cast your mind back a few issues to the colnago 'commuter bike' displayed on these very pages. flat bars, red and black carbon - some way away from the 'sit up and beg' two wheelers our grandparents used to pedal, though they themselves had a style all of their own.

contrast this with some of the 'vehicles' i have just perused in the current issues of two mountain bike magazines (dirt and singletrack) many of which bear more than a passing resemblance to a farm gate with a wheel at each end. granted many of the so called downhill and freeride bikes are a triumph of function over form - basically lumps of aluminium to which it is possible to bolt the latest in suspension technology.

but then, much like tv soaps or articles in the newspaper, i can cheerfully ignore most of this because i have no need or desire to ride any of these machines. (bizarrely, i find them quite fascinating from a technical point of view, but that starts to separate them from the concept of a bike - confused? yes me too).

however, an american artist has put much of what i - and evidently others too - feel about bicycles into mixed media, pencil, paints, paper and whatever. taliah lempert first grazed my horizon a few years ago when i was busying myself typing 'colnago' into google and following up the results (it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it) and came across her website www.bicyclepaintings.com where, for a mere smattering of dollars, i bought a double set of postcards depicting a selection of miss lempert's paintings of bikes - which, of course, included a colnago.

as you can hopefully see from the brief selection of paintings shown in this episode of the post, they are wonderful, displaying all of the form and feeling that these bikes have evoked throughout their history. coppi, bartali, anquetil - colnago, bianchi, pinarello: pure style.

now i have no idea whether taliah lempert has the same attitude towards modern chunky downhill mountain bikes as i, or whether the lack of their depiction in the works i have seen (check out her website) is simply because few folks in the new york area own such machines (can't imagine why you'd need one in central park anyway), but most of the works feature older style road bikes, those lovely ones with the brake cables looping out the levers along with a smattering of schwinn cruisers and other oddities (mostly steel, lugged frames now that i think about it - and even though i ride a carbon fibre dreambike, there's something about steel and lugs...). taliah has painted many of her own collection of bikes and also appears to be no slouch when it comes to pedalling them quickly. the girl loves bikes as much, if not more, than we do.

these paintings are almost the missing link. most of us love our bikes (though maybe not all of us nip out of an evening just to look at them sitting on the workstand in the bikeshed), but this artist really understands bikes, but not as objects of technology and the paintings allow me (us?) to appreciate the art of the frame builder/designer from a different perspective.

it's possible still to buy the postcard collection from bicyclepaintings.com, along with a colouring book (sorely tempted), paintings printed on t-shirts and prints of the paintings themselves. you can commission a painting of your own bike, but since miss lempert only paints from life (she needs the bike in front of her, in the studio), sending the beloved velocipede all the way to a new york studio may be more than finance and time off the bike would allow. at the very least, visit the site, and if you don't agree with me, let me know.

if you don't agree with me about current downhill mountainbike styling, well - i don't really care i'm afraid. i'm off to find a pencil and paper, and i'll be in the bike shed if anyone needs me.

all images on this page are copyright taliah lempert and appear here by kind permission of the artist

festive spirit part ii

photo of the aftermath of atrocious weather for the mince pie ride. l to r: james and apprentice, one-handed jeremy, yours truly, graham, and the ds wearing tour de france headgear. embarrassing, isn't it? for those not there, you missed out on some excellent espresso, fabulous mince pies, preceded by near gale force winds and driving rain. character building.

the now traditional new year's day bike ride will be on, well, new year's day. if you're over here and fancy joining me/us e-mail for details.

next...

graeme fife's book 'tour de france, the history, the legend, the riders', updated from its 1999 edition to accommodate the subsequent american invasion. it's published by mainstream in edinburgh.

and 'viva la vuelta - the story of spain's great bike race' by lucy fallon and adrian bell. published by mousehold press. ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

this website is named after graeme obree's championship winning 'old faithful' built using bits from a defunct washing machine

as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

this column appears, as regular as clockwork on this website every two weeks. (ok so i lied) sometimes there are bits added in between times, but it all adds to the excitement.

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