Jim Dine b. 1935
American painter, born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dine studied at the Boston Museum School and Ohio University. Began painting in 1950s and first exhibited in New York in 1960. Involved with Environments and Happenings for many years. He made four of these between the years 1959 and 1960- Smiling Workman, Jim Dine’s Vaudeville, Car Crash and Shining Bed. Close in spirit to Claes Oldenburg, the two worked jointly on their happenings for a period. Some critics consider Dine to be a Pop artist.... read more
American painter, born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dine studied at the Boston Museum School and Ohio University. Began painting in 1950s and first exhibited in New York in 1960. Involved with Environments and Happenings for many years. He made four of these between the years 1959 and 1960- Smiling Workman, Jim Dine’s Vaudeville, Car Crash and Shining Bed. Close in spirit to Claes Oldenburg, the two worked jointly on their happenings for a period. Some critics consider Dine to be a Pop artist.
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were very influential on Dine’s work, as was Marcel Duchamp. Dine continually tested the boundaries of works of art often using real objects in his paintings (such as bathrobes, ties, hair and household appliances. Most of his creations make their initial impact as visual puns or parodies, with all kinds of juxtapositions and combinations of elements and images. In the 1960s Dine enclosed objects within glass boxes, cast life-size feet, boots and hands and made plywood hearts and executed collages.
Dine’s first set of prints were completed in 1960 and consist of five black lithographs which are essentially expressionist images. Dine has been enormously prolific in print production and uses or combines – intaglio, lithography, woodcut and screenprint. He works with an array of unconventional hand and machine tools on his print surfaces and occasionally on the paper itself. Dine frequently returns to his plates and essentially recycles them. By making alterations and erasures Dine allows the evidence of correction and revision to enrich his prints with what he describes as their “History”.
“A facet of Dine’s character which comes out in the graphic work is that he is an instinctive collaborator: a man of outgoing and communicative nature who is re-galvanised by the idea of working with someone else. This happened with the joint assemblages which he made some years ago with Eduardo Paolozzi and with the book of photographs and etchings which he made with Lee Friedlander.” (From Jim Dine: Complete graphics catalogue, Galerie Mikro, Berlin, 1970).
read less
