The Art of the Motorcycle
Encyclopedia
The Art of the Motorcycle was an exhibition
that presented 114 motorcycles chosen for their historic importance or design excellence in a display designed by Frank Gehry
in the curved rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright
-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
in New York City, running for three months in late 1998. The exhibition attracted the largest crowds ever at that museum, and received mixed but positive reviews in the art world, with the exception of some art and social critics who rejected outright the existence of such a show at an institution like the Guggenheim, condemning it for excessive populism, and for being compromised by the financial influence of its sponsors.
The unusual move to place motorcycles in the Guggenheim came from director Thomas Krens
, himself a motorcycling enthusiast, supported by a novel corporate tie-in with BMW
. The motorcycles were chosen by experts including Krens, physicist and motorcycling historian Charles Falco, Guggenheim advisers Ultan Guilfoyle and Manon Slone, and others. The exhibition was described by historian Jeremy Packer as representing the end of a cycle of demonization and social rejection of motorcyclists, followed by acceptance and reintegration that had begun with the mythologized Hollister riot
of 1947 and ended with the high-end marketing of motorcycles and the newly-fashionable biker image of the 1980s and 1990s. Or at least the show served as "a long-overdue celebration of the sport, the machines and the pioneers they love."
The exhibition was the beginning of a new trend in profitable, blockbuster museum exhibits, foreshadowed by The Treasures of Tutankhamun tour of 1972-1979. Questions over the museum's relationship with corporate financial sponsors, both in this show and the tribute to the work of fashion designer Giorgio Armani
(on the heels of a $15 million pledge to the museum from Mr. Armani) that followed shortly after, contributed to soul searching and the drafting of new ethical guidelines by the Association of Art Museum Directors
.
s and tricycles, covering the earliest production motorcycles, Art Deco
machines of the 20s and 30s, iconic Harley-Davidson
s and Indians
, British roadsters, and on up to the striking race replica street bikes of the 80s and 90s, ending with the MV Agusta F4. The idea of the show was to use motorcycles as a way of surveying the 20th century, exploring such themes as mobility and freedom in a way that cars can no longer do because they are too commonplace and utilitarian, while motorcycles retain a unique romance.
The interior of the Guggenheim's spiral ramp was covered in reflective stainless steel, a design by Frank Gehry
, with a stylized pavement under the tires of the exhibits, and the bikes not leaned over on their kickstands, but rather standing up, as if in motion, held by thin wires and small clear plastic chocks under the wheels. Early examples from the 19th century, steam cycles and three wheelers mostly, were in a single room near the entrance. The first series produced motorcycle, and the first motorcycle included in the exhibition catalog proper, the 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller
stood outside the gallery. The exhibition also featured a film exhibit, "The Motorcycle on Screen," with Easy Rider
director Dennis Hopper
speaking, and clips from that film as well as the Buster Keaton
silent film Sherlock, Jr.
, Andy Warhol
's Bike Boy, and the TV show CHiPs
.
The year 1998 coincided with the 50th anniversary of Honda
motorcycles, the 75th of BMW motorcycles
and the 95th of Harley-Davidson
. Fifty-four collections loaned motorcycles, with the greatest number lent by the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, and the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife
.
BMW's interest in the world of fine art was not unprecedented, as that company had experimented with commissioning prominent artists to paint some of their race cars in the 1970s, leading to the collection, the BMW Art Car
s, becoming an ongoing project exhibited in the Louvre
, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
, and in 2009, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
and New York's Grand Central Terminal
.
The Chicago Field Museum exhibition presented 72 of the original collection's motorcycles, and added details such as coverage of the Motor Maids women's motorcycling club founded after WWII. That show also added a participatory group motorcycle ride open to 2,000 bikers at a cost of US$ 50.
made a splash at the beginning of his career as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
with a blockbuster exhibition "Harlem on My Mind," featuring the previously overlooked art of African Americans in Harlem, New York City and was buffeted by criticism from many quarters. Regardless of what final judgments were made on that show, the impact of the large-scale, media extravaganza art museum exhibition had been felt widely in the museum world. Hoving would go on to a successful career as director of the Met that would reach a high point with even larger The Treasures of Tutankhamun show, setting attendance records that are still unbroken. Hoving is credited with inventing modern museum populism in his King Tut show.
Other trends were at work as well, with a succession of public museum controversies over shocking art reaching back to the sixties, but coming to a head in the 1980s and 1990s with battles over art financed by the US National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA). The fights over financing of shows by Robert Mapplethorpe
and others drew bitter battle lines, with most artists, museum directors, gallery owners, and critics lining up to defend free expression and public financing of art with no restrictions on content. Opponents of this art were generally focused on cutting off funding for and evicting offensive art from public spaces, but there was also a positive side to their arguments, that the proper financing of art was in private sector and art which could successfully attract private financing was by definition deserving of being shown. Jacob Weisberg of Slate
saw the efforts of directors like Krens to drive overflowing museum attendance, at the cost of showing something other than, in Weistberg's view, real art, as a demonstration that they are not an elitist institution, a direct answer, and capitulation, to conservative attacks on museums and the NEA for shows like Mapplethorpe's.
It was in 1989 and 1990, one decade before The Art of the Motorcycle, that Mapplethorpe's The Perfect Moment exhibition was hounded from one venue to another by outraged conservatives. It was at this point also when performance artist Karen Finley
was denied NEA funding, and Andres Serrano
's Piss Christ
became another center of controversy. The 1990s saw one victory after another for the conservative movement in public art and museums. The economy was booming, and a kind of optimism was felt and expressed by such colorful figures as Malcolm Forbes
, whose "Capitalist Tools Motorcycle Club" toured exotic venues celebrating both wealth and a love of fine motorcycles.
In the summer of 1999, the Brooklyn Museum
did battle with then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
over the exhibition "Sensation," with charges of presenting sexually and religiously offensive art. In the face of all this, and the series of battles in the American culture war
, The Art of the Motorcycle stood as a counterpoint, and possibly the high water mark for the other kind of museum show: not offensive, not exclusive, but welcoming to the sensibilities of the general public. People who were baffled and irritated by modern and postmodern art could feel good about this show. The financing, while critics cried foul, was private. The show was by nature consented to directly by those who paid the bills, rather than passive taxpayers, and it was aimed at keeping the audience happy, rather than inciting rage with, say, US flags stuffed into toilets, as had been done in one famous museum exhibit decades earlier.
One decade after The Art of the Motorcycle opened, Thomas Krens has stepped aside from the top position at the Guggenheim. The New York Times Holland Cotter has declared the blockbuster exhibition dead, victim of a weak economy that cannot afford such expensive excess, though this was on a positive note, suggesting a new and exuberant role for independent artists and smaller venues.
In his book The Future of Freedom
, journalist and author Fareed Zakaria
argued that the Guggenheim's motorcycle exhibition, and other populist shows, were indicative of the downfall of American civilization in general, due to the undermining of traditional centers of authority and intellectual leadership. Zakaria writes that Thomas Krens' "gimmicks are flamboyant and often upstage the art itself," and that the point is not to get the public to look at the art anyway, but only to get them into the museum. While not rejecting that modern and commercial work should be included in modern art shows, Zakaria says, with The New Republic
's Jed Perl, that the show fails to "define a style or period" and instead merely parrots current taste, giving the public validation. Due to the overly dependent relationship with BMW, the show is driven by non-aesthetic criteria, and is too politically correct and uncontroversial. Zakaria goes on to point out that, indeed, the Guggenhiem gave up plans for a show "Picasso and the Age of Iron" because it was too old-fashioned to attract a sponsor, and that BMW turned down a request to sponsor a show "Masterworks from Munich" because Munich isn't sexy.
Zakaria equates sexiness and buzz with popularity, which drives profit, pointing to a connection between democratization and marketization. This means bad aesthetic choices will be made by the people, rather than having informed, aesthetically-sound leadership by aristocratic arbiters of taste whose wealth frees them from ulterior motives, enabling them to lead a reluctant public to perhaps challenging and unenjoyable art, that is nonetheless good for them.
These misgivings were cemented for many when the Guggenheim followed a few months later with an homage to fashion designer Giorgio Armani
in a show whose financing was even more suspect. Armani had pledged US$15 million to the Guggenheim Foundation and appeared to be rewarded in a quid pro quo manner with an uncritical and otherwise unjustified marketing coup at one of New York's most prestigious venues.
This type of criticism was described by Jeremy Packer as an ad hominem
attack on the stereotypical biker in service of a "rear-guard line of defense" of Western cultural and aesthetic values, perceived to be overrun by the "spiritually poor, oversexed, and insane." Such criticism was rebuked by Washington Post columnist Geneva Overholser as "dusty foolishness," a foot-dragging reaction to progress, in which some critics were hypocritically denouncing popular works in public while, in private, secretly enjoying the greater accessibility and relevance that was bringing in huge crowds, to the benefit of both museums and the public. Curator and Guggenheim director Thomas Krens
defended the premise of the show saying, "We can't focus on Monet and minimalism too much. We have to keep the intellectual vitality of the institution sharp, and I think the bikes do that. They vary the rhythm of the museum and pique your curiosity about what the next show might be. This show isn't meant to be a thumb of the nose at art."
Newsweek
critic Peter Plagens defended motorcycles as art by arguing that, "Just as aerodynamic airplanes are simple and streamlined, a motorcycle--which manages to balance an engine and a seat between two wheels--has a mechanical integrity, with intertwining pipes, chains and springs, that is fascinating to behold," comparing the aesthetic to the modernist, minimalist sculptures of Brancusi. Patrons need not feel guilty for enjoying themselves, because not all visits to a museum must be endured as grim ordeals of self-improvement.
[from BMW] would be available for such a show." A number of times the Guggenheim answered critics of BMW's involvement by ticking off the total number of Harley-Davidsons and Hondas, which were greater than BMWs included. But it was suggested that even at that, there were BMWs shown that were not significant enough to be present.
With regard to the content, the concept that the motorcycle could serve as a metaphor for the 20th century was received with interest, but some wondered whether the claim was fulfilled by the appearance of the motorcycles chosen and the way they were presented. The motorcycles shown did, at least, "illustrate technology and taste as they have evolved together in the 20th century, which is an issue basic to modern art." While there were many who lauded Frank Gehry's spare design, with only the reflective stainless steel and a terse string of words on the walls behind the bikes to evoke the decade they came from, others saw this as shallow or a failure to offer as much insight as the show could have.
Some of the text was criticized as flippant, and the connection between the social and historical context and the motorcycle designs produced from that was left unexplained. Packer contends this "buzzword approach to context forces the viewer to fill in the blanks, and it also reveals the extent to which the museum display is predicated upon the assertion of a naturalized link between essentialized culture and the artifacts that are said to emanate from it," so The Art of the Motorcycle was constructing the illusion that motorcyclists are a monolithic subculture rather than being different kinds of riders having "numerous relationships to motorcycling."
Packer also argues that "progressivist, developmentalist logic was underpinned by the chronological ordering" of the exhibits themselves, with the clean, productive member of the establishment image of motorcyclists found at the end of the progression.
The New York Times' Jim McCraw was satisfied that, "All the great bikes of the 20th century are represented," and the catalog is "impressive in its depth, breadth and purpose, worth several visits for avid motorcyclists." However, McCraw pointed out the following omissions: the Wankel-engined
Suzuki RE5
, the inline-6 Honda CBX1000 (instead the less popular but antecedent Benelli 750 Sei
was included), any of the Japanese turbocharged motorcycles of the 1980s-1990s, the world's fastest motorcycle in the quarter mile at the time, the Yamaha R1, the motorcycle with greatest top speed at the time, the Honda CBR1100XX
, and no police motorcycle
s at all. James Hyde of Art in America
pointed to the omission of the Moto Guzzi V8.
Slate
's Jacob Weisberg
found 114 motorcycles in the catalog to be too many, and too boring for the non-motorcycle aficionado. In contrast to critics like Zakaria, Perl, and Hilton Kramer
, who want museums to challenge and educate the public with difficult art like abstract expressionism
, which might require a little homework to learn to like, Weisberg complained that the information accompanying the motorcycle exhibits was too technical and bewildering to the non-gearhead, with talk of self-aligning bearings, compression ratios and near-hemispherical combustion chambers. That is, he wrote, "the approach is design-technical rather than design-aesthetic or design-cultural," and thus it failed to make the case that industrial design
is more than just the "stepchild of fine art" and that "the cross-fertilization of high and pop is an important part of the story of artistic modernism."
The selection of motorcycles was overwhelmingly Western, and mostly limited to motorcycles of the United States market, and mostly of the high end, leaving out utilitarian examples. One scooter is present, and one motorcycle truly for the masses, the Honda Super Cub. That motorcycles are the number one mode of transport in a great many countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and thus central to the lives of most of the world's population was completely ignored by The Art of the Motorcycle, and little mention was made of the design context of creating motorcycles for this market. Creative uses of motorcycles in the developing world, such as the tuk tuk and similar vehicles, was overlooked. Even the critical role that motorcycles played as utilitarian transport prior to the advent of the Ford Model T
was left largely out. Instead, motorcycling was seen through the lens of the late 20th century American: a form of recreation, and most of all, a form of self-expression. There were critics, such as The New York Times Michael Kimmelman
, who, somewhat playfully, shared this US-centric point of view, in that "motorcycles are frivolous to begin with: they're about irresponsibility, about not conforming, about getting away. Or at least they're about embracing the image of nonconformity."
, Condé Nast Publications
, and Estée Lauder Companies
, seen by The Guardian
's Michael Ellison as corporate-museum interdependency similar to the BMW and Armani shows at the Guggenheim. In addition to touring their Art Cars in various museums, BMW has continued to find new ways to be a major player in the arts, in accordance with their marketing goals, for example in the 2006 "BMW Performance Series" featuring jazz music and black filmmakers, all overtly targeted at black car buyers.
After the Las Vegas exhibit, derivative versions of The Art of the Motorcycle were presented at Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series and Orlando Museum of Art
. The Legend of the Motorcycle
concours
was in part inspired by the success of the Guggenheim's exhibit. A group of celebrity movie actors, friends of the "consummate showman" Thomas Krens named themselves the "Guggenheim Motorcycle Club" and rode motorcycles on various adventures in Spain and elsewhere. The Motorcycle Hall of Fame
museum's 2008 MotoStars event, designed to "go even further" than the Guggenheim shows, was anchored by celebrity appearances, and included Krens and co-curator Charles Falco. A forthcoming exhibition at the Bermuda National Gallery, inspired by The Art of the Motorcycle, will use the identical concept of the motorcycle as "possible metaphor for the 20th century." The Penrith Regional Gallery's curator was inspired in part by the Krens' success in New York City to create the 2009 Born To Be Wild: The Motorcycle In Australia, an examination of the motorcycle in contemporary art.
Art exhibition
Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...
that presented 114 motorcycles chosen for their historic importance or design excellence in a display designed by Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
in the curved rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in New York City, running for three months in late 1998. The exhibition attracted the largest crowds ever at that museum, and received mixed but positive reviews in the art world, with the exception of some art and social critics who rejected outright the existence of such a show at an institution like the Guggenheim, condemning it for excessive populism, and for being compromised by the financial influence of its sponsors.
The unusual move to place motorcycles in the Guggenheim came from director Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens is the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City, and currently the Guggenheim's Senior Advisor for International Affairs, overseeing the completion of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi...
, himself a motorcycling enthusiast, supported by a novel corporate tie-in with BMW
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...
. The motorcycles were chosen by experts including Krens, physicist and motorcycling historian Charles Falco, Guggenheim advisers Ultan Guilfoyle and Manon Slone, and others. The exhibition was described by historian Jeremy Packer as representing the end of a cycle of demonization and social rejection of motorcyclists, followed by acceptance and reintegration that had begun with the mythologized Hollister riot
Hollister riot
The Hollister riot occurred during the Gypsy Tour motorcycle rally in Hollister, California, from July 4 to July 6, 1947. The event was sensationalized by yellow news reports of bikers "taking over the town" and staged photos of public rowdiness....
of 1947 and ended with the high-end marketing of motorcycles and the newly-fashionable biker image of the 1980s and 1990s. Or at least the show served as "a long-overdue celebration of the sport, the machines and the pioneers they love."
The exhibition was the beginning of a new trend in profitable, blockbuster museum exhibits, foreshadowed by The Treasures of Tutankhamun tour of 1972-1979. Questions over the museum's relationship with corporate financial sponsors, both in this show and the tribute to the work of fashion designer Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted for his menswear. He is known today for his clean, tailored lines. He formed his company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful designer to come out of Italy, with an annual turnover of $1.6 billion and a...
(on the heels of a $15 million pledge to the museum from Mr. Armani) that followed shortly after, contributed to soul searching and the drafting of new ethical guidelines by the Association of Art Museum Directors
Association of Art Museum Directors
The Association of Art Museum Directors is an organisation of art museums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.Established in 1916 by the directors of twelve American museums, the Association formally incorporated in 1969. At that time the Association also hired an employee, and increased the...
.
Exhibition
The catalog of the exhibition covered a broad range of historic motorcycles starting from pre-20th century steam-powered velocipedeVelocipede
Velocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....
s and tricycles, covering the earliest production motorcycles, Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
machines of the 20s and 30s, iconic Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...
s and Indians
Indian (motorcycle)
Indian is an American brand of motorcycles. Indian motorcycles were manufactured from 1901 to 1953 by a company in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, initially known as the Hendee Manufacturing Company but which was renamed the Indian Manufacturing Company in 1928. The Indian factory team took the...
, British roadsters, and on up to the striking race replica street bikes of the 80s and 90s, ending with the MV Agusta F4. The idea of the show was to use motorcycles as a way of surveying the 20th century, exploring such themes as mobility and freedom in a way that cars can no longer do because they are too commonplace and utilitarian, while motorcycles retain a unique romance.
The interior of the Guggenheim's spiral ramp was covered in reflective stainless steel, a design by Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, with a stylized pavement under the tires of the exhibits, and the bikes not leaned over on their kickstands, but rather standing up, as if in motion, held by thin wires and small clear plastic chocks under the wheels. Early examples from the 19th century, steam cycles and three wheelers mostly, were in a single room near the entrance. The first series produced motorcycle, and the first motorcycle included in the exhibition catalog proper, the 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller
Hildebrand & Wolfmüller
The Hildebrand & Wolfmüller was the world's first production motorcycle. Heinrich and Wilhelm Hidebrand were steam-engine engineers before Alois Wolfmüller agreed to finance them to produce their internal combustion Motorrad in Munich in 1894....
stood outside the gallery. The exhibition also featured a film exhibit, "The Motorcycle on Screen," with Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
director Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
speaking, and clips from that film as well as the Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
silent film Sherlock, Jr.
Sherlock, Jr.
Sherlock, Jr. is an American silent comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton and written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's Bike Boy, and the TV show CHiPs
CHiPs
CHiPs is an American television drama series produced by MGM Studios that originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to July 17, 1983. CHiPs followed the lives of two motorcycle police officers of the California Highway Patrol...
.
The year 1998 coincided with the 50th anniversary of Honda
Honda
is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...
motorcycles, the 75th of BMW motorcycles
BMW Motorrad
BMW Motorrad is the motorcycle brand of the German company BMW, part of its Corporate and Brand Development division. The current General Director of the unit is Hendrik von Kuenheim....
and the 95th of Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...
. Fifty-four collections loaned motorcycles, with the greatest number lent by the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, and the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife
Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife
The Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, more commonly referred to as The Vintage Museum or The Chandler Museum was the primary showcase for the collections of Otis Chandler since its foundation in 1987...
.
BMW's interest in the world of fine art was not unprecedented, as that company had experimented with commissioning prominent artists to paint some of their race cars in the 1970s, leading to the collection, the BMW Art Car
BMW Art Car
The BMW Art Car Project was introduced by the French racecar driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain, who wanted to invite an artist to create a canvas on an automobile. It was in 1975, when Poulain commissioned American artist and friend Alexander Calder to paint the first BMW Art Car...
s, becoming an ongoing project exhibited in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...
, and in 2009, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
and New York's Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
.
The Chicago Field Museum exhibition presented 72 of the original collection's motorcycles, and added details such as coverage of the Motor Maids women's motorcycling club founded after WWII. That show also added a participatory group motorcycle ride open to 2,000 bikers at a cost of US$ 50.
Popularity
Average attendance was at 45 percent higher than normal, with over 4,000 visitors daily, and more than 5,000 people a day visiting on the weekends. Total attendance at the New York museum was 301,037, the largest in the history of the Guggenheim, prompting the ad-hoc show at the Chicago Field Museum, where advance tickets were sold for the first time. That show was followed by runs at Guggenheim Bilbao and Guggenheim Las Vegas. The name The Art of the Motorcycle and some associated media content was subsequently licensed for shows at Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series and the Orlando Museum of Art. Many of the same bikes appeared at these venues. Attendance at the Chicago exhibition was 320,000, the highest since The Treasures of Tutankhamun two decades before. Attendance at the next venue, Bilbao, was over 3/4 million, and at Las Vegas, over 250,000, making the tour's total attendance among the top 5 exhibitions ever in a museum. Many attendees attracted to these shows had never been to any museum before. Copies of the exhibition's lavish, large-format 427-page color catalog outsold any museum catalog yet, with over 250,000 copies in print as of 2005.Historical context
In 1969 Thomas HovingThomas Hoving
Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving was an American museum executive and consultant and the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.-Biography:...
made a splash at the beginning of his career as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
with a blockbuster exhibition "Harlem on My Mind," featuring the previously overlooked art of African Americans in Harlem, New York City and was buffeted by criticism from many quarters. Regardless of what final judgments were made on that show, the impact of the large-scale, media extravaganza art museum exhibition had been felt widely in the museum world. Hoving would go on to a successful career as director of the Met that would reach a high point with even larger The Treasures of Tutankhamun show, setting attendance records that are still unbroken. Hoving is credited with inventing modern museum populism in his King Tut show.
Other trends were at work as well, with a succession of public museum controversies over shocking art reaching back to the sixties, but coming to a head in the 1980s and 1990s with battles over art financed by the US National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
(NEA). The fights over financing of shows by Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
and others drew bitter battle lines, with most artists, museum directors, gallery owners, and critics lining up to defend free expression and public financing of art with no restrictions on content. Opponents of this art were generally focused on cutting off funding for and evicting offensive art from public spaces, but there was also a positive side to their arguments, that the proper financing of art was in private sector and art which could successfully attract private financing was by definition deserving of being shown. Jacob Weisberg of Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
saw the efforts of directors like Krens to drive overflowing museum attendance, at the cost of showing something other than, in Weistberg's view, real art, as a demonstration that they are not an elitist institution, a direct answer, and capitulation, to conservative attacks on museums and the NEA for shows like Mapplethorpe's.
It was in 1989 and 1990, one decade before The Art of the Motorcycle, that Mapplethorpe's The Perfect Moment exhibition was hounded from one venue to another by outraged conservatives. It was at this point also when performance artist Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
was denied NEA funding, and Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
's Piss Christ
Piss Christ
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...
became another center of controversy. The 1990s saw one victory after another for the conservative movement in public art and museums. The economy was booming, and a kind of optimism was felt and expressed by such colorful figures as Malcolm Forbes
Malcolm Forbes
Malcolm Stevenson Forbes was publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B. C. Forbes and today run by his son Steve Forbes.-Life and career:...
, whose "Capitalist Tools Motorcycle Club" toured exotic venues celebrating both wealth and a love of fine motorcycles.
In the summer of 1999, the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
did battle with then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
over the exhibition "Sensation," with charges of presenting sexually and religiously offensive art. In the face of all this, and the series of battles in the American culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
, The Art of the Motorcycle stood as a counterpoint, and possibly the high water mark for the other kind of museum show: not offensive, not exclusive, but welcoming to the sensibilities of the general public. People who were baffled and irritated by modern and postmodern art could feel good about this show. The financing, while critics cried foul, was private. The show was by nature consented to directly by those who paid the bills, rather than passive taxpayers, and it was aimed at keeping the audience happy, rather than inciting rage with, say, US flags stuffed into toilets, as had been done in one famous museum exhibit decades earlier.
One decade after The Art of the Motorcycle opened, Thomas Krens has stepped aside from the top position at the Guggenheim. The New York Times Holland Cotter has declared the blockbuster exhibition dead, victim of a weak economy that cannot afford such expensive excess, though this was on a positive note, suggesting a new and exuberant role for independent artists and smaller venues.
Critical reception
Reaction to the exhibition came from two distinct camps of critics, with few having views from both. One camp rejected the very idea of The Art of the Motorcycle, having nothing to do with the machines on display in the Guggenhiem or Thomas Krens' way of displaying them, nor his way of financing such a show. The other camp accepted in principle that such a show was acceptable, as art, or at least as subject for a museum like the Guggenheim, and from that basis formed a range of opinions about the quality of the show itself.Outright condemnation
The exhibition was condemned outright by some art critics and social commenters who rejected the very existence of an exhibition of motorcycles at the Guggenheim. They saw it as a failure of the museum to carry out its social role as a leader and educator of the public's understanding of art. Rather than guide the masses toward works they might not have considered or been aware of, The Art of the Motorcycle showed them things they already were familiar with, and already liked; in other words, pandering to the lowest common denominator by giving people more of what they wanted and none of what they needed. To the extent that the exhibition responded to desires other than what made the public feel good, the Guggenheim was catering to the marketing needs of the shows sponsors, in particular BMW. They saw a great cultural institution renting itself out as an exhibition hall for a mere trade show.In his book The Future of Freedom
The Future of Freedom
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad is a book by Fareed Zakaria analyzing the variables that allow a liberal democracy to flourish and the pros and cons of the global focus on democracy as the building block of a more stable society rather than liberty. It was a...
, journalist and author Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine...
argued that the Guggenheim's motorcycle exhibition, and other populist shows, were indicative of the downfall of American civilization in general, due to the undermining of traditional centers of authority and intellectual leadership. Zakaria writes that Thomas Krens' "gimmicks are flamboyant and often upstage the art itself," and that the point is not to get the public to look at the art anyway, but only to get them into the museum. While not rejecting that modern and commercial work should be included in modern art shows, Zakaria says, with The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
's Jed Perl, that the show fails to "define a style or period" and instead merely parrots current taste, giving the public validation. Due to the overly dependent relationship with BMW, the show is driven by non-aesthetic criteria, and is too politically correct and uncontroversial. Zakaria goes on to point out that, indeed, the Guggenhiem gave up plans for a show "Picasso and the Age of Iron" because it was too old-fashioned to attract a sponsor, and that BMW turned down a request to sponsor a show "Masterworks from Munich" because Munich isn't sexy.
Zakaria equates sexiness and buzz with popularity, which drives profit, pointing to a connection between democratization and marketization. This means bad aesthetic choices will be made by the people, rather than having informed, aesthetically-sound leadership by aristocratic arbiters of taste whose wealth frees them from ulterior motives, enabling them to lead a reluctant public to perhaps challenging and unenjoyable art, that is nonetheless good for them.
These misgivings were cemented for many when the Guggenheim followed a few months later with an homage to fashion designer Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted for his menswear. He is known today for his clean, tailored lines. He formed his company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful designer to come out of Italy, with an annual turnover of $1.6 billion and a...
in a show whose financing was even more suspect. Armani had pledged US$15 million to the Guggenheim Foundation and appeared to be rewarded in a quid pro quo manner with an uncritical and otherwise unjustified marketing coup at one of New York's most prestigious venues.
This type of criticism was described by Jeremy Packer as an ad hominem
Ad hominem
An ad hominem , short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it...
attack on the stereotypical biker in service of a "rear-guard line of defense" of Western cultural and aesthetic values, perceived to be overrun by the "spiritually poor, oversexed, and insane." Such criticism was rebuked by Washington Post columnist Geneva Overholser as "dusty foolishness," a foot-dragging reaction to progress, in which some critics were hypocritically denouncing popular works in public while, in private, secretly enjoying the greater accessibility and relevance that was bringing in huge crowds, to the benefit of both museums and the public. Curator and Guggenheim director Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens
Thomas Krens is the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City, and currently the Guggenheim's Senior Advisor for International Affairs, overseeing the completion of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi...
defended the premise of the show saying, "We can't focus on Monet and minimalism too much. We have to keep the intellectual vitality of the institution sharp, and I think the bikes do that. They vary the rhythm of the museum and pique your curiosity about what the next show might be. This show isn't meant to be a thumb of the nose at art."
Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
critic Peter Plagens defended motorcycles as art by arguing that, "Just as aerodynamic airplanes are simple and streamlined, a motorcycle--which manages to balance an engine and a seat between two wheels--has a mechanical integrity, with intertwining pipes, chains and springs, that is fascinating to behold," comparing the aesthetic to the modernist, minimalist sculptures of Brancusi. Patrons need not feel guilty for enjoying themselves, because not all visits to a museum must be endured as grim ordeals of self-improvement.
Criticism of content
Among critics who accepted the premise of the show and the legitimacy of motorcycles under the Guggenheim's roof, since museums have included design exhibitions before, and shown, for example, utilitarian bowls or ancient chariots as art, many still had misgivings about the way in which it was financed. While appreciative of Thomas Krens' innovative museum direction, The New York Times mused that, "one can't help wondering which came first, the idea for the exhibition or the realization that moneyWith regard to the content, the concept that the motorcycle could serve as a metaphor for the 20th century was received with interest, but some wondered whether the claim was fulfilled by the appearance of the motorcycles chosen and the way they were presented. The motorcycles shown did, at least, "illustrate technology and taste as they have evolved together in the 20th century, which is an issue basic to modern art." While there were many who lauded Frank Gehry's spare design, with only the reflective stainless steel and a terse string of words on the walls behind the bikes to evoke the decade they came from, others saw this as shallow or a failure to offer as much insight as the show could have.
Some of the text was criticized as flippant, and the connection between the social and historical context and the motorcycle designs produced from that was left unexplained. Packer contends this "buzzword approach to context forces the viewer to fill in the blanks, and it also reveals the extent to which the museum display is predicated upon the assertion of a naturalized link between essentialized culture and the artifacts that are said to emanate from it," so The Art of the Motorcycle was constructing the illusion that motorcyclists are a monolithic subculture rather than being different kinds of riders having "numerous relationships to motorcycling."
Packer also argues that "progressivist, developmentalist logic was underpinned by the chronological ordering" of the exhibits themselves, with the clean, productive member of the establishment image of motorcyclists found at the end of the progression.
Wankel engine
The Wankel engine is a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into a rotating motion instead of using reciprocating pistons. Its four-stroke cycle takes place in a space between the inside of an oval-like epitrochoid-shaped housing and a rotor that...
Suzuki RE5
Suzuki RE5
The Suzuki RE5 is a motorcycle with a Wankel rotary engine that was manufactured by Suzuki from 1974 to 1976.-Notes:Suzuki's RE5 was one example of the very few Wankel engine motorcycles that were produced. Some of the others were by DKW and Norton Motorcycle Company, e.g. the Norton Interpol 2,...
, the inline-6 Honda CBX1000 (instead the less popular but antecedent Benelli 750 Sei
Benelli 750 Sei
The Benelli 750 Sei is a motorcycle that was produced by Italian manufacturer Benelli from 1972 to 1978. It was the first production motorcycle with a 6-cylinder engine. The engine was based on the four-cylinder Honda CB500, but with two extra cylinders...
was included), any of the Japanese turbocharged motorcycles of the 1980s-1990s, the world's fastest motorcycle in the quarter mile at the time, the Yamaha R1, the motorcycle with greatest top speed at the time, the Honda CBR1100XX
Honda CBR1100XX
The CBR1100XX Super Blackbird is a Honda motorcycle made from 1996 to 2007. The bike was developed to challenge the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-11 as the world's fastest production motorcycle, and Honda succeeded with a top speed of . Two years later the title passed to the Suzuki Hayabusa, which reached...
, and no police motorcycle
Police motorcycle
A police motorcycle is a motorcycle used by various police forces and departments. They may be custom designed to meet the requirements unique of a particular use. A police motorcycle is often called a "motor" by police officers in the United States...
s at all. James Hyde of Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
pointed to the omission of the Moto Guzzi V8.
Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
's Jacob Weisberg
Jacob Weisberg
Jacob Weisberg is an American political journalist, serving as editor-in-chief of Slate Group, a division of The Washington Post Company. Weisberg is also a Newsweek columnist. He served as the editor of Slate magazine for six years, until stepping down in June 2008...
found 114 motorcycles in the catalog to be too many, and too boring for the non-motorcycle aficionado. In contrast to critics like Zakaria, Perl, and Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer
Hilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
, who want museums to challenge and educate the public with difficult art like abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
, which might require a little homework to learn to like, Weisberg complained that the information accompanying the motorcycle exhibits was too technical and bewildering to the non-gearhead, with talk of self-aligning bearings, compression ratios and near-hemispherical combustion chambers. That is, he wrote, "the approach is design-technical rather than design-aesthetic or design-cultural," and thus it failed to make the case that industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
is more than just the "stepchild of fine art" and that "the cross-fertilization of high and pop is an important part of the story of artistic modernism."
The selection of motorcycles was overwhelmingly Western, and mostly limited to motorcycles of the United States market, and mostly of the high end, leaving out utilitarian examples. One scooter is present, and one motorcycle truly for the masses, the Honda Super Cub. That motorcycles are the number one mode of transport in a great many countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and thus central to the lives of most of the world's population was completely ignored by The Art of the Motorcycle, and little mention was made of the design context of creating motorcycles for this market. Creative uses of motorcycles in the developing world, such as the tuk tuk and similar vehicles, was overlooked. Even the critical role that motorcycles played as utilitarian transport prior to the advent of the Ford Model T
Ford Model T
The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from September 1908 to May 1927...
was left largely out. Instead, motorcycling was seen through the lens of the late 20th century American: a form of recreation, and most of all, a form of self-expression. There were critics, such as The New York Times Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman is an author, critic, columnist and pianist. He is the chief architecture critic for The New York Times and written on issues of public housing, community development and social responsibility. He was the paper's longtime chief art critic and, in 2007, created the Abroad column,...
, who, somewhat playfully, shared this US-centric point of view, in that "motorcycles are frivolous to begin with: they're about irresponsibility, about not conforming, about getting away. Or at least they're about embracing the image of nonconformity."
Legacy
In the year following the opening of the Guggenheim motorcycle exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented Rock Style, featuring music performance costumes, sponsored by Tommy HilfigerTommy Hilfiger
Thomas Jacob "Tommy" Hilfiger is an American fashion designer and founder of the premium lifestyle brand Tommy Hilfiger.-Early life:...
, Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
, and Estée Lauder Companies
Estée Lauder Companies
Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. is a manufacturer and marketer of prestige skincare, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. The company has its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.-History:...
, seen by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
's Michael Ellison as corporate-museum interdependency similar to the BMW and Armani shows at the Guggenheim. In addition to touring their Art Cars in various museums, BMW has continued to find new ways to be a major player in the arts, in accordance with their marketing goals, for example in the 2006 "BMW Performance Series" featuring jazz music and black filmmakers, all overtly targeted at black car buyers.
After the Las Vegas exhibit, derivative versions of The Art of the Motorcycle were presented at Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series and Orlando Museum of Art
Orlando Museum of Art
The Orlando Museum of Art is located at 2416 North Mills Avenue, Orlando, Florida. It houses local, regional, national and international works of art. The museum collections include a diverse range of pieces that cover a broad spectrum of subjects using a variety of artistic mediums.-Websites:* *....
. The Legend of the Motorcycle
Legend Of The Motorcycle
The annual Legend of the Motorcycle International Concours d’Elegance is a competitive event held on a 44-mile scenic loop that begins at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Half Moon Bay, California and follows the coast down, along, and back up the mountain ridge-top that overlooks the Pacific Ocean...
concours
Concours d'Elegance
A Concours d'Elegance dates back to 17th Century French aristocracy, who paraded horse-drawn carriages in the parks of Paris during Summer weekends and holidays...
was in part inspired by the success of the Guggenheim's exhibit. A group of celebrity movie actors, friends of the "consummate showman" Thomas Krens named themselves the "Guggenheim Motorcycle Club" and rode motorcycles on various adventures in Spain and elsewhere. The Motorcycle Hall of Fame
Motorcycle Hall of Fame
The Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum is an offshoot of the American Motorcyclist Association that recognizes individuals who have contributed to motorcycle sport, motorcycle construction and motorcycling in general. It displays motorcycles and riding gear and memoribilia. The museum is located in...
museum's 2008 MotoStars event, designed to "go even further" than the Guggenheim shows, was anchored by celebrity appearances, and included Krens and co-curator Charles Falco. A forthcoming exhibition at the Bermuda National Gallery, inspired by The Art of the Motorcycle, will use the identical concept of the motorcycle as "possible metaphor for the 20th century." The Penrith Regional Gallery's curator was inspired in part by the Krens' success in New York City to create the 2009 Born To Be Wild: The Motorcycle In Australia, an examination of the motorcycle in contemporary art.
See also
- List of motorcycles in The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition
- Outline of motorcycles and motorcyclingOutline of motorcycles and motorcyclingThe following outline is provided as an overview of motorcycles and motorcycling:Motorcycle – single-track, engine-powered, two-wheeled motor vehicle...