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Curious, isn’t it? Applying an essentially post-modernist approach (Wordle.net) to one of the fundamental texts of 19th century French modernism (albeit in translation) reveals the basic themes of the essay but completely loses the vision, vigour and force of the original. Figures…!
Read the original Baudelaire essay here.
Other things I’ve Wordled can be found here and here.
r:B
Near the beginning of December I made an early entry to the Yehuda Moon headbadge contest, restricting myself to the Van Sweringen category since I normally ride a similar machine.
Looking at the other entries for the Van Sweringen, there seems to be an assumption of traditionalism or Olde Worlde-ness in both the imagery and choice of typeface. To me, this completely misses the point of the upright, three-speed bicycle as a twentieth-century urban phenomenon, not to mention a modernist icon.
When the early roadsters were being produced there was a certain degree of marketability in the notion of heritage, of something stable and familiar in a period of increasingly rapid modernisation.
I attempted to reflect the modern Dutch heritage of the city bicycle by drawing inspiration from the neoplasticist/De Stijl movement, in particular the limited primary palette so indicative of Mondrian or Rietveld.
I went for a slightly later style of typeface, the early De Stijl efforts being a tad too square and blocky for decorative purposes.
I made a few prelimary sketches as vector drawings – looking primarily at the arrangement of colours but with the main idea relatively concrete. It struck me immediately that an exaggerated elongated ‘S’ presented a strong visual analogy for the road. I toyed with the idea of using the lowercase ‘v’ as a headlight beam…but decided this would introduce too much of a narrative/figurative element into what was, after all, a logo.
I then worked it up in a CAD package before rendering it for the final image. In hindsight, I should probably have taken more time and curved the “badge ” to fit the headtube…
Anyway, you can pop over and vote for me – Flaneur Brian – should you feel charitable.
r:B
For some reason I continue to be surprised when correspondents call me Brian. I’ll be frank, that’s not my real name…and, no, neither is Frank!
I enjoy writing under a nom-de-clavier as it provides a limited degree of privacy and a greater degree of intellectual escapism. I can experiment, discuss and develop new themes and ideas without caring one jot about professional credibility. I can even call myself Brian. And yes, I was kidding about the credibility…
Careful readers may have noticed that I prefer to write about bicycles and bicyclism rather than “cycling” – a term too often appropriated by the sport cycling industry to the detriment, I believe, of ordinary riders of bicycles. Let’s be clear, I regard humbly riding a bicycle to work on a daily basis as far more heroic than repeatedly circumcycling a velodrome in pursuit of glory or gold and a damned sight more socially and economically valuable too!
I may not always succeed but I try to treat the bicycle as a metaphor or analogue for something. Ocassionally I’ll just write a meditation on tinkering with an old bicycle – a literary brico-cyc-lage – often with obsessive attention to unimportant detail. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I get it into my head to dig up random trivia. And quotes! I love finding references which express an attuitude towards the bicycle or bicyclism.
But I digress. The name – Flaneur Brian – is perhaps best considered a polyseme; a vaguely Joycean homonymic homage to Flann O’Brien, author of The Third Policeman, as well as being an amalgam of the Flâneur and the bemused victim of happenstance (epitomised by Brian, in Monty Python’s Life of) to compose a character that represents, to me at least, an archetypal urban bicyclist in the transportation paragone of the twenty-first century.
Have I lost you yet?
Call me eccentric…but you can call me Brian.
R:B
“The bicycle is nothing but a desecration of nature.
“What artist dare depict three or four hideous contrivances of steel and india rubber on a beautiful pastoral landscape? None I trow. The artistic portion of humanity would cry out as with one voice for the instant annihilation of a being who dare shatter its most cherished conceptions of ideality by such a wanton act of vandalism. Yet the pedestrian who is afflicted with a mind that soars above mere materialism is compelled in silent anguish to behold the fair face of Nature defaced by this anti-artistic contrivance. If the mania for cycling continues to develop at the rate is has done during the last five years it requires no great prophetic ability to prognosticate the complete submergence of the pedestrian altogether…
“I sincerely hope that pedestrians will assert themselves ere they are completely overriden by the most diabolical of all modern inventions, the bicycle.”
– from a letter to the Glasgow Herald, Saturday, June 10, 1899
In light of my brief exchange with Fixup on the subject of bars bereft of brakes, I felt I really had to share this snap of a generally unspectacular bicycle I spotted in Amsterdam. There are likely thousands like it but there was something about the empty square bars that, for me, just epitomised the idea of the bicycle as a modernist icon.
R:B
Witnessed between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum…m’Lud!
R:B
Yesterday: I pedalled out to the local car boot sale and picked up some damned ugly but almost unused Ever Ready bicycle lights (£1) and some books; Kafka, Gide and a copy of the Zeus reference tables among them.
Today: Saw me start back at work after almost six months of sick leave. Yes, I was that ill. To be honest, I’m only working 50% of my previous hours and primarily from home, but at least I’m back. I’ve no idea how the department managed without me… :c)
This evening: Browsing for something completely unrelated to bicycles, I stumbled across an article in the Canadian Art journal that piqued my interest. Apparently there is a “trend alignment” of artists treating the bicycle as a “post-futurist” subject. I won’t pretend to know what a “trend alignment” might be but Marcel Duchamp, as one might reliably expect, was trotted out as the Proteus of bicycle-based art…twice. Just go and read those introductory paragraphs…
I can’t fault this juxtaposition of Futurism and Dada, it’s in all the text books. The reference to the Futurists is really just a throwaway comment in an otherwise interesting article but I would have hoped for a bit more. This is Canadian Art, after all! What the writer neglects to consider is that Duchamp’s work of the period had, at the very least, a tentative toe in Futurism and, furthermore, that the Futurists were not solely obsessed with the automobile, the aeroplane, nationalism and war. I hate to generalise but they were Italian and, as such, were fairly keen on the bicycle, itself perhaps more of a modernist icon than the motor car…
Consider the palpable, puerile self-doubt with which Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto bemoans a pair of outraged cyclists who force his motor car into a ditch, “wobbling like two equally convincing but nevertheless contradictory arguments.” Consider also the bicycle-centric Futurist works (Opera Futurista) on the Turin Critical Mass (Massa Critica Torino) site, many of which are entirely contemporary with Duchamp. There has also been some interesting work on the influence of Futurism on sports design.
I’m no real fan of the Futurists (or sport, really) but I have a grudging admiration for some of Boccioni’s paintings, their fluidity and urgency, their “dynamic sensation“.
Boccioni - Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913)
Don’t get me wrong, I love Duchamp…but, personally, I’d like to think he simply built himself a jig to true a buckled front wheel…
R:B
I’ve probably been giving too much thought to the notion of frame art but I believe that, if a bicycle is to be personalised through blood and toil, it should also bear the more exoteric marks of its keeper.
I honestly don’t see the point of restoring the Superbe’s original colour – a dark green with gold and red lining. Perhaps if it had been in better initial condition… Nah…I’m leaning strongly towards a plain white frame, perhaps with black head tube and forks, perhaps not.
What I certainly do want is witty and idiosyncratic frame art. Such as this image – strategically situated on the seat tube (where you might expect to find the tubing manufacturers badge), staring upward in mute disbelief:
I’ve started experimenting with Transcryl by Lefranc & Bourgeois. This is a milky white acrylic transfer medium that is painted over a printed image and allowed to dry until completely clear. The paper substrate is then soaked and peeled away, leaving the image on the flexible acrylic. One then uses more of the medium to adhere the image to the target object. It can then be lacquered or varnished. If you have passable French, voici une description photographique merveilleuse…
To be honest, the default Transcryl medium is a bit thick and gloopy and benefits from being very slightly diluted. I have a suspicion the same process might also work with a standard PVA “school glue”.
R:B
