Hamers rijwielen c. 1912

Curator: Here we have “Hamers Rijwielen,” a poster created around 1912 by Johann Georg van Caspel. The work is a mixed-media print, rendered in a distinctive Art Nouveau style. Editor: It has such a feeling of leisurely modernity to it! The figures on bicycles, framed by what looks like a breezy landscape. Are those windmills I see in the distance? There is also this flatness of color. This work feels designed to sell freedom and ease, above all. Curator: Absolutely. Consider the bicycle itself. By this period, cycling symbolized emancipation, especially for women. Notice their dress—it conveys activity and forward movement. There's a psychological shift visible, too, a break from older forms of social constraint. The bicycle here suggests a release of repressed societal conventions. Editor: Indeed, this poster makes me consider the material culture of leisure at the time. These bicycles were being mass-produced, but they still had a symbolic weight. Each detail, from the clothes people wore while cycling, to the posters themselves, implies a growing middle class with both purchasing power and leisure time. The layers of consumer culture, starting here, begin to seem complex indeed! Curator: Observe too how the linear procession of figures reinforces the notion of forward progress. It’s not just physical mobility, but social mobility implied as well. We have here a visual embodiment of optimism, a collective movement towards an imagined better future, driven by technological innovation. Editor: It is easy to think of “progress” being inevitably positive. But I think about how advertising plays on desires and anxieties—does it offer solutions, or simply more desires? Regardless, the medium is definitely the message in "Hamers Rijwielen". It's interesting to see the dawn of these manipulative marketing practices as technological progress moved so many objects into mass consumption. Curator: An astute observation. The interplay between the ideal and the reality… I leave with renewed thought about our continuous negotiation between technology's promises and its impacts. Editor: I agree. Considering the poster through the lens of labor and consumption makes it clear that these marketing materials are never neutral objects, always implicated in broader power dynamics.