Seen & Remarked: Bike Art in the Times

As you surely know, I am ever on the lookout for great bike art, and the proliferation of cycling race posters and handbills has been gratifying. I've been disappointed with the dreadful cylocross race fliers I've seen this year; the alleycat kids make us "serious cyclists" look like fingerpainting idiot savants at best. So here's an emergency call to all 'cross racers with an iota of artistic talent: Please spend less time shaving your legs, and more time with your color separations. Take a tip from Hollywood.

Anyway, this weekend I noted a piece of bike art on the cover of New York Times Sunday Book Review, by Jeffrey Fisher. The piece is mildly interesting, though it's clear that Fisher is probably not a cyclist. To put on the cap of the bike-art critic for a moment -- the one with the upturned bill that says "I'm a snob about bikes AND art!" -- I would say his cover says more about the sad state of newspaper "primitive" illustration than the happy state of bike art, but whatevs. (Ink wash on an actual road map? How, like, 1998... And the way this dude's tubing comes together, looks like a GT from about the same era.)

What's nifty though is that this piece accompanies a review of "The Discovery of France " by Graham Robb. Robb put 14,000 miles on his bike to write a cultural and geographical history of France, and we're eager to read it. (Jeff Fisher, take note: Intrusive mapmakers in the 18th century were sometimes hacked to death by French villagers.)