Picasso Bike

This sculpture was welded up from old bicycles and figures cut from sheet metal with the oxy acetylene torch. It was fun, you could ride it like a bike and the head-piece would rotate in front of you. No wheels though, it didn’t go anywhere.

The rotating head-piece had figures from Picasso’s paintings welded on rods protruding from the central axis. There were figures from his paintings Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Three Dancers. It had a Picassoid bulls head on top too (just out of shot). The remaining metal sheet from where the figures were cut was also welded on nearer the centre giving an interesting dimensional impression.

The whole Bull’s-Head v bike-seat-and-handle-bars thing was fun to play with. Turning Picasso’s appropriation back on itself, back into what they started as but still in the service of Mr Picasso.

It was fun being part of a Picasso painting as you sat there making the Dancers and Demoiselles spin. There was an element of danger to it too, if you fell into the spinning head-piece those women would take your nose off in a flash.

It’s hard to lug these things around, I moved house and left it behind in the front yard of a place in Balmain, Sydney years ago.