Combines

The use of materials that had a history or meaning and use, all their own. Sometimes paint is used to connect the materials or attach objects to the painting, hanging them, or assemblages or construction with the materials. These works combine the elements of both painting and sculpture, but are neither. Rauschenberg called them "Combines", Calder's mobiles and Duchamp's ready mads were the first step in this terrain / concept of art.

Very often these are autobiographical. Sometimes, art is not created as a enduring masterpiece for an elite, but to further a perpetual process of discovery in which everyone can participate. It is breaking down all barriers between art and life.

Rauschenberg wrote "Painting relates to both, art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in the gap between the two." Art, said John cage, a composer, should be an affirmation of life, not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living.