Daytona Speedway 1969 emerging from the heat haze a brightly coloured motorcycle comes into view.
A blur of lime green and white a psychedelic paint scheme at high speed its riders chin on its petrol tank so tight that no light dared escape.
Artistically this bike the Kawasaki A7R and its unique painted livery would change the face of motorcycle racing and would lead to a revolution where the hands of the engineer would be joined to the hands of artistic expression.
Kawasaki A7R 1969 Author : TOKUMEIGAKARINOAOSHIMA
But just a few years earlier it was a completely different story. With the ubiquitous black racing leather suit on the shoulders of the riders and simple paint scheme on the motorbikes.
Motorcycle racing was a blank canvas waiting for some artist to colour it in.
That artist was the American Rollin Molly Sanders a design consultant for Kawasaki who managed to convince its executives to repaint their racing machines from their usual standard colour which was red to that of an eye jolting lime green colour.
It was a remarkable achievement from a psychological point of view convincing the Japanese Company to give up their Crimson Red a colour reminiscent of the red armour of elite Akai Ono Samurai of Japan.
It was also a stroke of genius in his ability to convince its riders to not only race a bike in the colour green, but also to get them to wear one piece leather suits in the colours of green and white.
Racers are a superstitious lot and green is always considered an unlucky colour in racing. The addition of a white psychedelic design to that of the lime green may have been a compromise to these superstitions. Kawasaki adopted and refined the colour and patented the name Kawasaki Racing Green for all its bikes.
This colour scheme not only shocked the public it shocked rivals Yamaha who quickly sought out Sanders to begin fingerpainting on their behalf and soon Yamaha would have its own nature inspired war paint of its own.
Sanders adopted a nature inspired war paint that of lemon yellows and tomato reds for Yamaha and with the addition of a black and white track stripe a sort of abstract chequered flag the aesthetics of Yamaha's race machines took on a more aggressive meaning.
Yamaha OW35K Author : Tony Hisgett
Sanders had done something remarkably avant garde with Kawasaki in 1969. He created an experimental genre taking a racing motorbike and elevating it to a higher level to that of a piece of abstract art.
Creating a new aesthetic he went even further than the machines themselves by creating brightly coloured leather suits and customised helmets for Kawasaki and later Yamaha riders.
In so doing he created a blueprint for a new visual language for motorbike racing that would bleed colours into the decade that followed the 1970s.
It could be said that Sanders was an artist that had the unique ability to tell the story of Kawasaki and Yamaha. Taking what really was a play on their broken narratives he completely reinvented a new aesthetic for these motorcycle companies.
This new visual literacy was taken on a new journey and proved inspirational for another motorbike manufacturer who wanted to completely change its image that manufacturer was BMW.
By the end of the 1960s the BMW motorcycle division was in severe decline. Sticking to the old formulas and believing that the excellence of its engineering was enough to sell their motorcycles.
They did not entertain the notion that aesthetically their bikes were looking quite antiquated.
It fanned the flames that threatened to consume the division. BMW were metaphorically speaking burnt out. Whilst psychologically speaking management seemed apathetic almost burnt out its motorbike engines certainly were not.
In 1969 BMW produced the R75/5 its sportiest bike yet. While aesthetically it was found wanting what purred within its heart was a great engine. This engine would allow BMW to mount a challenge to its all conquering Japanese rivals.
In a negatively charged environment there's always the inevitable positively charged response.
Behind the doors of BMW test department such positivity was buzzing as hands were put to work on designing a racing boxer for the newly introduced Formula 750cc engines.
What emerged from behind the doors of the workshop was what BMW had been waiting for a purpose built racing machine.
Lessons had been learned by giving the new race bike bike a beautiful makeover. The bodywork was painted in the colours of gold and its frame was painted a beautiful metallic green.
What the test dept had done with the F750 race bike was to show how exciting the BMW brand could be and what could be done with the new R75/5 engine.
The choice of colours the gold and the green created a new visual literacy that of a 1920s Art Deco style. It showed that BMW could find a way out of its own self imposed exile in the wilderness of antiquity.
BMW F 750 Author: Bert Verhoeff
But it would not be enough for BMW to start finger painting, it needed a new force of energy.
The energy would come from the USA in the form of Bob Lutz VP of Sales for BMW.
Lutz convinced the upper echelons of BMW to lose their fears. That it should allow the artistic talent and the engineering talent a free hand. Metamorphically speaking the paintbox should remain open and that all the blueprints should be actively studied.
The arrival of Hans Muth and his eventual appointment as head of design at BMW positively charged the atmosphere of creative freedom.
As the summer heat faded Autumn and its eventual successor Winter began to take hold of BMW's ancestral home Bavaria painting the entire countryside with a touch of silver.
Artists have always found inspiration from such effects yet often struggle to replicate it.
In his quest to create a paint scheme for the new BMW R90s Hans Muth began to experiment with paint to replicate the cold atmosphere of nature the atmosphere of mists and fogs.
Taking his spray gun he creates a two paint colour scheme of silver and black for the R90S a stroke of creative genius it would mean that each R90s would be unique.
This unique nature was due to the elusive nature of his smoke painting technique because each overspray would be different on each bike. The technique was then shown to the painters in BMW's Berlin factory.
What he had done was remarkably creative a form of individualism in a mass produced format and a new visual language for BMW.
The clever integration of black with the silver spoke to BMW's past but the use of the silver showed its transition to the future.
This visual language was taken one step further when the traditional BMW black was replaced by the colour orange.
The R90s was a good looking machine but the new combination of silver with orange smoke effect was spectacular.
BMW had the world's first superbike championship in its sights so the new colours was christened Daytona Orange.
1976 was to be BMW's Annus Mirablis equipping both its American and European squads with the R90s.
This beautiful machine went on to win the Daytona 200 and claim an overall victory in the world superbike championship the actual bike can be seen in the image below.
BMW R90S Racer Author: PSParrot
Whilst the 1970s were more consumer driven than the more innocent 1960s there was still a little bit of innocence left over. The colours of nature still held sway and there was still a wide open space for creative freedom.
1970s motorcycle racing provided fantastic source material for graphic design as the bikes had a simple flow to them with an almost feminine softness with curvaceous cowlings and soft jelly mould petrol tanks.
The colours a feast of colours from nature's finest table from which graphic designers had only to reach out and touch enabling them to tell a brand's story.
Nature provided all the colours the lime green of Kawasaki the lemon yellow and tomato reds of Yamaha and who can forget Suzuki's ubiquitous RG500 in the hands of Barry Sheene.
Barry Sheene Suzuki RG500 Author: Rikita
The RG500 curvaceous bodywork offered up a canvas a surface that transformed the art of the graphic designer into that of an artisan baker or the art of the confectioner.
However its rival Yamaha was just as pretty in its design and colour scheme's.
Taking inspiration that could be found in the windows of a cakeshop or a sweetshop the Yamaha TZ 750 of French rider Michel Rougerie was a stunning machine dressed in its candy striped patterns of warm candy apple red and black the bike looked delicious.
The bike looked so sweet that it would be good enough to eat metaphorically speaking.
The bikes colours could be likened to that of the foil wrapped around your favourite chocolate swiss roll as can be seen in the image below.
Michel Rougerie Yamaha TZ750 Author: Thesupermat
The GP grids of the 70s seen with the mind's eye could be seen as baked masterpieces the bikes baked to show off their delicious array of colours and graphic designs.
Designs baked by the long hot summers that seemed to pervade the 1970's which were then devoured by the eyes of hungry spectators.
A culinary feast of motorcycling all heated by the blue smoky atmosphere created by the race bikes two stroke engines themselves.
The look of motorcycling and its racing grids began to change in the 1980s especially from 1984 onwards.
In contrast to the 1970s artistically the bikes endured a cosmetic makeover which gravitated away from Minimalism and towards a Maximalism aesthetic of excess.
All the elements that made the GP bikes of the 1970s so attractive were slowly taken away the bikes bodywork became more masculine more angular.
Whereas previously the bikes design had a more eye pleasing feminine quality imbued with more softness and curvaceousness.
The bikes began to lose their stylish magnesium alloy wheels which gave the bikes an almost jewel like quality their golden hues a perfect complement to the bikes colours and graphic schemes.
The bikes had completely lost their unique delicacy and their quite elegance with an overuse of colour that paid no heed to nature complementary palette.
Only one ingredient remained and that was the individualism and the uniqueness of the riders themselves.
Whilst before the broken narratives of bike manufacturers allowed graphic design the freedom to colour in the storybooks of marques like Kawasaki and Yamaha this freedom was taken away.
Sponsors wanted stickers everywhere and the result was not great to look at.
It is at this point of the story that we see the entrance onto the stage of the artisan Aldo Drudi.
Drudi became motorcycle racing's premier storyteller and its colourist as he began to reshape the visual landscape of motorcycling racing grids.
He began adding colour to the black and white storyboards of each individual rider and began to address the excessive use of colour which had saturated the aesthetic of the bikes and their riders,
By reducing the colours in his paintbox he began to employ the use of primary colours and the simpler graphics of the 1970s in his works.
By reducing the colours he paradoxically brought out the colourful character of the riders that he worked with.
For the motorcycle racer Graziano Rossi father of Valentino Rossi he created a design for a racing suit that resembled a red striped t-shirt like that of a gondolier and a set of jeans just taken out of a wardrobe.
For Kevin Schwantz he created an abstract take on the Texan flag complete with a bright yellow starburst that later would provide the template for all the helmet design's he would create for Valentino Rossi.
Drudi could tell the story of Valentino Rossi's personality and riding style by drawing inspiration from his energy as a rider and his personal story and then paint it in with the nature inspired forgotten colours of the 1970s.
Kevin Schwantz Author: Rikita
Whilst the Art Cars of BMW became a part of the modern art scene its motorcycles were largely ignored by the art world.
Only one noted group of artists based in Italy were interested in using the machine as its subject matter the Futurists of the 1920s and 1930s who captured its energy on canvas.
However whilst the motorbike may have been ignored by the art critic and the art galleries in the public gallery of the 1970's it thrived the public gallery of the race track.
The race tracks gave great freedom for artistic expression from the pens of graphic designers and artisans who blended art storytelling and fantasy into realised design's.
It could be said that they were neo-futurists who continued to be inspired by the energy of the bikes and its riders.
The artistic GP bikes of the 70s may have faded into the mists of time but in my mind I cannot help but see a sculptural feminine flow in the styling of the modern GP bikes especially from 2010 onwards to this day.
Art is still relevant in racing today noting the race bikes of the Pramac Racing team which had the paint brushes and colours of Spanish artist Miquel Caravaca applied to them.
Nostalgia for the past is everywhere exemplified by the new wave custom scene.
The R Nine introduced by BMW in 2014 has a 1970s race bike style to it offering the customiser and the rider the ultimate canvas for their fantasies to become reality.
This all reaffirms the notion that the race bikes of the 1970s were aesthetically superior to that what replaced them in the 1980s.
BMW R nine T Author: Matti Blume
Their designs were very attractive because they were balanced compositions that spoke to the person's eyes and to a person's imagination drawing a person in like a piece of great art.
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