Title: Bike Art: Bicycles In Art Around The World
Author: Kiriakos Iosifidis (Editor)
Publisher: Publikat
Year: 2011
Pages: 256
Order: Stylefile Mail Order
What it is: A collection of art works inspired by the bicycle.
Strengths: Beautifully produced, wonderfully diverse.
Weaknesses: Could have done with a wee bit more text about the individual contributors. Also: no photography.
Bike Art is one of those books that falls somewhere between pro-bike propaganda and bicycle pornography. With contributions from more that 250 contemporary artists the book showcases the way a host of different people, drawn from around the world, view the bicycle today. The mix is eclectic, ranging from street graffiti artists though to international design studios, with time and space for tattoo artists, cartoonists, performance artists, sculptors, illustrators and painters.
It would be relatively easy for me to waffle on for a couple of thousand words about some of the individual contributors, telling you what's so good about them. Some people have made whole careers out of waffling on about art, it ain't all that hard to do once you master a few tricks of the trade. But Bike Art is one of those books which should be allowed speak for itself.
What follows then is a selection of some of the contributions to the book, along with a few page layout shots to give you a clue as to what the book itself looks like. To save having to blather on about any of the contributors for this peek inside Bike Art's covers I've included links to the artists' websites, where I could find them.
The selection here is pretty much personal, the sort of stuff that fires my fuse, but with so many contributors - this selection covers just twenty-four of the contributors, not even one in ten - it's a safe bet that there's something in Bike Art to satisfy most tastes. Unless you're into crayon-based cycling art, which is totally ignored. I guess Podium Café have cornered the market in that.
| URBAN ART | |
 Mart (c) |
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| PAINTINGS | |
 Alison Gayne (c) |
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 Page layout example: pages 50-51 |
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 James Straffon (c) |
 Jeff Parr (c) |
 Steve Dennis (c) |
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 Page layout example: pages 84-85 |
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 Page layout example: pages 86-87 |
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| ILLUSTRATIONS - DRAWINGS | |
 Andy Singer (c) |
 Blanca Gomez (c) |
 Chris Piascik (c) |
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 Mads Berg (c) |
 Riccardo Guasco (c) |
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| TATTOOS | |
 ABT Tattoo (c) |
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| SCULPTURES | |
 David Gerstein (c) |
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 David Kinzett (c) |
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 Page layout example: pages 200-201 |
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 Page layout example: pages 202-203 |
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| TYPES | |
 Page layout example: pages 214-215 |
|
 Fretsche (c) |
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 Page layout example: pages 238-239 |
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| EXTRA | |
 Bicycle ballet (photograph by Ray Gibson) (c) |
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For more details on the artists included, check out the Publikat site.