Dear Mr. Tom Dalton, rider: You and Brian sounds like every painter that I have ever been with going
to a major painting show at a museum. They are not historians, but analyzing an object with their own legitimate and interesting perspective. In this case, Brian is deconstructing the bike just how i would want my builder to approach the consideration of my frame, and how
i would expect a rider with some knowledge to look at the Laser.
Neither you and Brian are not looking at this from a curators perspective. The curatorial staff (specifically for the MOMA collection
which would be obvious if you knew the collection) are not looking at how a design works for it's particular function, but rather how it fits the design legacy for the particular time, how it influences future design approaches, and how it integrates and reinforces their presumptions and hypothesis of their current collection (of course, politics) and writings. It is the tradition that every department in a museum reflects the particular curator's approach to collecting and historical scholarship, and the museum's reputation rests on this. Remember, the museum relies on visual display which leaves less credence
to function, and most 'cutting edge' design requires years of refinement. If function was a primary requirement, which bicycle would fulfill it- would it be by wind tunnel tests, winner of the tour de X, a
Paris brevet, or what sold the most?
The more I hear about the Cinelli Laser (and see it), the more it seems to fit with the current design collection in MOMA for using technology ahead of it's time (albeit needing refinement), for the aerodynamic approach, internally routing all the cables, composite non metal component construction, wheels (as you mentioned), oval tubing- many years before these things became off the shelf products.
It would be most interesting for a design museum to take the approach of
searching out the best functional products for any time period, I remember the London design museum having their show of the evolution of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. It would be a nightmare to curate and require
experts of every discipline to participate (and willing to be thrown to the wolves), and a real topic of controversy on a list like this....
> While I agree that the Cinelli Laser was both exotic and impractical,
> I think you may have missed Brian's point. His point was that the
> execution of some of the features was poor, and that these
> shortcomings cannot be justified by the supposed cutting-edge nature
> of the bike.
-- gabriel l romeu in a foggy chesterfiel nj usa, an hour south of the MOMA collection with
lottsa bikes that fit fine in a rider's collection ± http://studiofurniture.com Ø http://journalphoto.org ±