Bicycling, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1889

Curator: So here we have "Bicycling, from the Pretty Athletes series" created around 1889 by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. It's a coloured pencil print. What do you make of it? Editor: Well, my first thought is "vaudeville." The pose, the costume—there's something very performative about it. I see both control and spectacle at play. It also feels a bit satirical. Curator: It’s intriguing, isn’t it? Kimball & Co. was primarily a tobacco company; these cards were included in cigarette packs. A tiny thrill, easily consumable. Do you see the connections between labor, representation and consumption? Editor: Absolutely! The high-wheel bicycle itself, the craftsmanship to produce such a spectacle of a machine—is being literally undermined here, in the drawing itself! We have a blurring of labor lines in a late industrial society struggling to codify roles. Curator: There’s an interesting tension between this ideal of athleticism and a burgeoning female eroticism. Think about what’s *not* shown—veiled in color and obscured with the scale of that wheel—hinted at for consumption! Editor: And that costuming! That's hardly functional attire for bicycling! What statement about female ability, labor, and access can be found here? Where does capability end and parody begin? Curator: The piece reflects anxieties around industrial shifts and changing gender roles, right? Bicycles were allowing women unprecedented mobility, freedom. It suggests a playful defiance, yet, crucially, it’s still marketed through consumerism. It is designed to move product. Editor: Yes, mobility packaged and sold back—as a set of limitations, with gender literally trapped within the turning wheels. I wonder, too, about the artists involved in making the actual prints? Anonymous, likely working in rather regimented production lines. Curator: I never considered the conditions surrounding that "invisible" labor force who made such work possible. These are questions that prompt me to want to see and appreciate all of it on a deeper, systemic scale. Editor: It does highlight how commercial art, often dismissed as merely functional or disposable, can be such a layered reflection of the culture that produces it, and what *creates* that culture. Curator: Indeed. Every pencil stroke whispers stories about gender, power, and commerce, even on a seemingly simple promotional card. It makes me want to pick it up and examine it even more carefully, now!