Combine: Art and Life

Robert Rauschenberg displays the beauty of the bicycle. This can be seen in his poster for his 1992 exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. (Bicycle, 1992). This is a typical montage image: note the bicycle, the woman, an industrial spool of some sort, columns, Miller High Life, a sign for a breakfast special, and a chicken. This is all displayed in various shades of orange, with a blue woman, silver background, and white bike in the forground (love that bike so much). The bike is a classic: reminiscent of what Big Frank used to ride as a kid. Perhaps the woman will ride it; she may even have on biking tights, but her shoes will have to be changed. Robert Rauschenberg famously said, "For me, there's no difference between art and life." His art concentrated on this real world that surrounds us in all its seemingly empty and kitschy facades. He called them combines for they combined art and life.

This fascination with the bicycle appears again with a neon construction in the Daimler City complex near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin (Riding Bikes, 1998). Two glowing bicyles with their doubles in the reflecting pools below. It strikes Big Frank as a very hopeful image. In some ways like the energized glowing future of this pair emerging from their dimmer fading past. But, Rauschenberg would never have agreed with Big Frank's idea of this combine; for him it was what it was. He said: "People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity."

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A Cycling Villanelle

(For Cd)
. . . Big Frank Dickinson

Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.
Away and back our revolving track;
Constantly circling the center our mode.

Coasting in tight, with such a light load
Overtaking each other with ease.
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.

No matter the route, no matter the road,
You after me after me after you.
Constantly circling the center our mode.

At the summit joined, breathless we glowed.

A moment, then over, and downbound the slope.
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.

Spokes meet at the hub or the wheel becomes bowed:
The chord of a circle needs two lines that hold.
Constantly circling the center our mode.

A new kind of spin has now taken hold;
Reeling. Has the circle widened or closed?
Spoke after spoke on the cycles we flowed.
Constantly circling the center our mode.