Jim Dine III – hearts

This is the third and last of three consecutive posts on pop artist Jim Dine - for biographical notes on Dine see Part I.

“I always need to find some theme, some tangible subject matter besides the paint itself. Otherwise I would have been an abstract artist. I need that hook… something to hang my landscape on” Jim Dine in Jim Dine: Five Themes, 1984

Alan Cristea Gallery, London (2010): Such is Jim Dine’s importance that his work has been celebrated in solo exhibitions from the Guggenheim to the Getty in his native America and in museums in major cities across the length and breadth of Europe over the past 55 years. As he nears his 75th birthday, the demand for his work from institutions and collectors grows ever greater and he still exerts enormous influence over contemporary art practice both here in the UK and abroad.

The “Heart”, one of his most enduring vehicles for his explorations of line and colour and one of his most expressive motifs, will be the common denominator in some 40 recent works, made in his studios in New York and Gottingen, Germany, and on a recent journey to India, which we will exhibit in both of our Cork Street galleries in April and May.

Dine is the Renaissance man of contemporary art – originally performance artist, now at once poet, writer, photographer, sculptor, painter and printmaker.

 1982 Rancho Woodcut Heart

 1983 Black Heart 

lithograph

 1986 Hand Painting on the Mandala

 1993 Heart for Film Forum (woodcut)

 2007 Dear Senior Boy

 2008 Merry Snow

 2010 Black Friar's Blues

 2010 Blue Birds

 2010 Boo-Boo Blues

 2010 Manhatten at Home

 The Month of June no. 1

 The Month of June no.2

 The Month of June no. 3

 The Month of June no. 4

 The Month of June no. 6

 The Month of June no. 9

 The Month of June no. 10

Jim Dine II - robes

This is the second of three consecutive posts on pop artist Jim Dine - for biographical notes on Dine see Part I.

Over his career Jim Dine has produced many series of works focused on certain subject matter, tools, bathrobes and hearts amongst them. Dine began painting bathrobes in 1964; though some were titled or subtitled Self-Portrait. The bathrobe became a motif in his repertoire which he has returned to on many occasions, in prints as well as paintings. Though he claimed never to wear a bathrobe, nonetheless it is an article of collective faith that these are all, in a way, self-portraits.

Pictorially, Dine finds the motif convenient because, absent a human within protruding head and limbs, it neatly fits the rectangular limits of the supports he uses, be they paper, stretched canvas, or wood panel. Relatively flat as well, the bathrobe is an armature for the entire unfolding spectacle of his painterly and graphic invention, a design with which he has become increasingly familiar and adept, incrementally shedding its descriptive function until it stands alone as the thing itself, indivisible.

 1975 Black and White Bathrobe 

lithograph

 1983 Cooper Street Robe 

woodcut

 1984 The Robe Following Her

 1986 Atheism 

lithograph

 1988 Olympic Robe

 1992 Bill Clinton Robe

 1993 Yellow Robe 

watercolours, woodcut

 1995 Very Picante

 1996 Grey Sitting with Me

 2005 Black Ink Robe 

lithograph

 2006 Black Storm of Charcoal

 2007 July on the Palouse 

woodcut

 2007 Sonny Terry

 2008 A Sea of Blood

 2009 Green Rain

 Coloured Dots 

lithograph

Jim Dine - pop artist

Jim Dine is a graphic artist, painter and sculptor associated with pop art. In the first of three posts on his work I am taking a general overview of his output. The next two feature 'dressing gowns' (robes) and 'hearts' respectively.

Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935. He studied at the University of Cincinnati, the Boston Museum School, and in 1957 received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio University. After graduation, he moved to New York City and became involved with a circle of artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein, all of whose work moved away from abstract expressionism toward pop art.

Like other pop artists, Dine incorporated images of everyday objects in his art, but he diverged from the coldness and impersonal nature of pop art by making works that fused personal passions and everyday experiences. His repeated use of familiar and personally significant objects, such as a robe, hands, tools, and hearts, are signature icons in his art. In his early work, Dine created mostly assemblages in which he attached actual objects to his painted canvases, as in Shoes Walking on My Brain (1960). From 1959 to 1960, Dine also was a pioneer of happenings, works of art that took the form of theatrical events or demonstrations.

In 1967 Dine and his family moved to London, England, where he devoted his energies to printmaking and drawing. When he returned to the United States in 1971, he concentrated on figure drawing. Dine is considered among the most accomplished draftsmen of his generation, and is known for his series of self-portraits and portraits of his wife, Nancy. Dine's attention turned to sculptural work in the early 1980s when he created sculptures based on the ancient sculpture Venus de Milo. His recent art uses imagery borrowed from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and African objects.

 1960 Car Crash #4

 1960 Crash

 1962 Scissors

 1962 Toothbrush and Tumbler

 1966 Toolbox

 1966 Toolbox (2)

 1968 Hose Lamp from 

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

lithograph

 1973 Nutcracker

 1973 Untitled 

graphite

 1976 Paris Smiles in the Darkness

 1976 The Skier

 1978 Strelitzia

 1980 Tree (The Kimono)

 

 1984 Red Grease 

charcoal, pastel, oil-stick

 1993 Woman on Fire in Vienna 

etching

 1994 For Athena

 1999 Bird of Paradise

 2004 Big Winter Breathing 

lithograph

 2005 Amayllis IV

 2007 Blue Taco