Biker Art Work
Biker Art Work
David Mann was the Norman Rockwell of the Biker world.
httpv://youtu.be/gCk-i9l9PI8
David Mann through his artwork, has captured the fun, fascination, trials, and romance of living the biker lifestyle…..without a camera.. David Mann completed his circle of life on September 11th, 2004 at age 64, however his legend lives on forever.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
David “Dave” Mann (September 10, 1940 – September 11, 2004)was a California graphic artist whose paintings celebrated biker culture, and choppers. Called “the biker world’s artist-in-residence,” his images are ubiquitous in biker clubhouses and garages, on motorcycle gas tanks, tattoos, and on t-shirts and other memorabilia associated with biker culture.Choppers have been built based on the bikes first imagined in a David Mann painting.
In the words of an anthropologist studying biker culture in New Zealand, “Mann’s paintings set ‘outlaw’ Harley chopper motorcycles against surreal backgrounds, and distorted skylines, colourful images that celebrated the chopper motorcycle and the freedom of the open road […] Many of his images captured the ‘Easyrider’ ethos – speed, the open road, long flowing hair – freedom.” Most of his works were for the motorcycle industry, especially for motorcycle magazines.
One of the messages contained in Mann’s overall body of work is an unresolved tension between, on one side, the biker artist’s (painter, chopper builder, performance artist) craving for attention and recognition for biker art and the biker lifestyle in the mainstream world of middle-classstraights and squares; and, on the other side, a rejection of that very same world based on the biker preference for biker values over mainstream values, and the need to show the squares and their opinions have no power over the biker. The biker/artist is aloof, yet bristles when ignored or disparaged and seeks ways of getting the right kind of attention.
A further contrast is apparent in the repeated theme of the honor and nobility of the biker, depicting bikers as modern knights or similar mythic heroes, and the appearance of members of Mann’s El Forastero Motorcycle Club in many of his paintings, a club whose members have been found guilty for the crimes motorcycle theft and for “transporting and distributing methamphetamine” after it was discovered the club members pooled money to buy narcotics at their organized events.
Was there ever a better chopper artist?
Mr. Mann was the BEST biker artist EVER!
I still have a number of David’s great posters up in my garage. . . He was the best.
I have not gone to a major motorcycle/car show in many years. But, when I did, I recall seeing lots of Mann’s posters always being sold. This guy really captured the outlaw/chopper essence in his works.
This guy was the Picasso of outlaw motorcycle art.