Jim Dine
American
(Cincinnati, Ohio, 1935 - )
Any discussion of Jim Dine invariably involves a recitation of his colossal artistic resume, which after four decades of national and international recognition is still as vital as ever. (1) He’s a self-styled artist whose work aims to challenge boundaries, and while his work ranges from painting to poetry, it is always involved, inventive, and influential.
Jim Dine was born on June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His relationship with art began almost immediately when he started studying art, more or less formally, at a young age. (2) Dine first enrolled in a summer art class at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1946 when he was only eleven years old. He continued to study painting and drawing throughout his adolescence, admitting that “[he] painted a lot in school because it was [his] ticket to freedom from the other subjects… (3)” Although Dine participated in adult night classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati between 1951 and 1953, it was not until 1954 that Dine officially and formally studied art again. (4) At that time, he attended the University of Cincinnati, the Boston Museum School, and finally Ohio University, Athens. There, Dine received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 as well as completed his postgraduate studies in drawing the following year.
By the end of the 1950s, Dine found himself an ambitious artist. He married Nancy Minto in 1957, and together, they moved to New York City in 1958. (5) That same year, Dine began associating with a talented group of emerging artists, and he, along with Allan Kaprow, Lucas Samaras, George Segal and Claes Oldenburg, soon began to pioneer the performance and popular art movements.
Dine first received recognition in 1959. At that time, he was an early participant in performance art, or Happenings. A Smiling Workman (6), his telling debut performance, represented a kind of “painter’s theatre (7)” for him, and moreover asserted his passion for artistic expression – even artistic experimentation – with various media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. That said, throughout the course of his career, Dine’s works are often inclusive, accumulative compositions, combining found objects, collages, and mixed materials.
By the early and mid 1960s, Dine’s reputation was closely associated with the avant-garde art movement, Pop Art. His earliest works portrayed a range of everyday objects, and these images proved to be both critically and commercially successful. Dine received five solo exhibitions in New York (at the Reuben, Martha Jackson, and Sidney Janis galleries) and participated in numerous group shows in his early career. (8) His canvases featuring tools and machines as well as hearts and robes implied his involvement with Pop Art, but arguably, his style is more suggestive more than his subjects.
In 1967, Dine left New York with his family, which included three sons by then, and moved to London. Living abroad, Dine sought to move afield from his uneasy affiliation with Pop Art (9), and in doing so, he strengthened his own artistic direction. Undoubtedly, Dine’s works began to reach beyond popular interests as he strived to portray personal realities.
Dine returned to America in 1971. His acclaim within the art world was impressive, if not overwhelming for the artist, therefore, he and his family settled outside of New York City. For the next fifteen years, Dine lived and worked from his home in Vermont. In 1980, he was admitted as a member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York, and in 1985, Dine reestablished his home New York, where he lives and works today. Over the years, Dine exhibited his works in both solo and group exhibitions in America and abroad without pause. (10) In fact, since Dine’s first solo exhibition in 1960, his art has been featured in over two hundred solo exhibitions.
Although his production has been both prolific and varied over the years, Dine retains his commitment to his visual language, and his art, while associated with contemporary and conventional art trends, reflects a style that is essentially his own. Dine’s compositions are intensely suggestive in his use of line and color. His art considers more closely, and with greater focus, not only what he depicted, but also how he depicted it. (11) For Dine, the object is redefined as a metaphor, and these changes are reflected in his artist’s statement of 1970: “I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings”. (12) As a result, Dine’s compositions are expressive in nature, reflecting his personal realities.
Dine's work with printmaking began in 1960 as a parallel project to his other artworks. He continued his printmaking practice over the following decades, and he has since produced numerous print series. Dine never worked exclusively as a printmaker, but his print production was concentrated between 1970 and 1973 when he worked intensively with printmaking and its techniques while in Europe. He excelled as a printmaker, and he produced his works with master printmakers like Chris Prater, Aldo Crommelynck, and Paul Cornwall-Jones. (13) Importantly, Cornwall-Jones later established Petersburg Press where Dine printed some of his major series, including Picture of Dorian Grey (1968), Thirty Bones of My Body (1972), and Five Paintbrushes (1973).
Today, Dine’s work can be seen in numerous public collections worldwide including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone-machi, Japan; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
Footnotes:
(1) Many books, articles, and catalogs have been published on Jim Dine’s work. The information in this essay was compiled from the following sources: Information on file, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama; Krens, Thomas. Jim Dine Prints: 1970-1977. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977; Dine, Jim, Ruth E. Fine, and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993; Gordon, John. Jim Dine. New York: Praeger, 1970, and
Dine, Jim and Julia Blaut and Clare Bell. Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
(2) According to Dine, he “simply couldn’t stop painting” as a child. Fine, Ruth, “Inventing History: Jim Dine’s Glyptothek Drawings,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek, ed. Jim Dine and Stephen Fleischman (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 13.
(3) Fine, Ruth, “Inventing History: Jim Dine’s Glyptothek Drawings,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek, ed. Jim Dine and Stephen Fleischman (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 21.
(4) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(5) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(6) In A Smiling Woman, Dine appeared as a painter in a painter’s studio. He then began to work at an easel with a blank canvas, writing “I love what I am doing, HELP!” across a canvas before suddenly covering himself in paint. Dine, Jim and Julia Blaut and Clare Bell. Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
(7) Blaut, Julie. “A Painter’s Theatre,” in Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003, 32.
(8) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(9) In fact, Dine said, by his own admission, "I'm not a Pop artist.”
(10) Several significant exhibitions include: “Jim Dine,” a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1970); “Jim Dine Prints 1970-1977” organized by Williams College Museum of Art in Massachuesetts (1976-1977); and “Jim Dine: Five Themes,” a survey by Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center (1984).
(11) Fleischman, Stephen. “The Object Takes Human Form,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 14.
(12) Castleman, Riva. “Jim Dine’s Prints,” in Jim Dine Prints: 1970-1977 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977), 37.
(13) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
Researched by: Emily Harwood, October 2009
Image credit: Martin C. Barry, Jim Dine is seen here speaking with two patrons at the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Westmount, on the evening of a vernissage, 2009, (c) Martin C. Barry
American
(Cincinnati, Ohio, 1935 - )
Any discussion of Jim Dine invariably involves a recitation of his colossal artistic resume, which after four decades of national and international recognition is still as vital as ever. (1) He’s a self-styled artist whose work aims to challenge boundaries, and while his work ranges from painting to poetry, it is always involved, inventive, and influential.
Jim Dine was born on June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His relationship with art began almost immediately when he started studying art, more or less formally, at a young age. (2) Dine first enrolled in a summer art class at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1946 when he was only eleven years old. He continued to study painting and drawing throughout his adolescence, admitting that “[he] painted a lot in school because it was [his] ticket to freedom from the other subjects… (3)” Although Dine participated in adult night classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati between 1951 and 1953, it was not until 1954 that Dine officially and formally studied art again. (4) At that time, he attended the University of Cincinnati, the Boston Museum School, and finally Ohio University, Athens. There, Dine received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 as well as completed his postgraduate studies in drawing the following year.
By the end of the 1950s, Dine found himself an ambitious artist. He married Nancy Minto in 1957, and together, they moved to New York City in 1958. (5) That same year, Dine began associating with a talented group of emerging artists, and he, along with Allan Kaprow, Lucas Samaras, George Segal and Claes Oldenburg, soon began to pioneer the performance and popular art movements.
Dine first received recognition in 1959. At that time, he was an early participant in performance art, or Happenings. A Smiling Workman (6), his telling debut performance, represented a kind of “painter’s theatre (7)” for him, and moreover asserted his passion for artistic expression – even artistic experimentation – with various media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. That said, throughout the course of his career, Dine’s works are often inclusive, accumulative compositions, combining found objects, collages, and mixed materials.
By the early and mid 1960s, Dine’s reputation was closely associated with the avant-garde art movement, Pop Art. His earliest works portrayed a range of everyday objects, and these images proved to be both critically and commercially successful. Dine received five solo exhibitions in New York (at the Reuben, Martha Jackson, and Sidney Janis galleries) and participated in numerous group shows in his early career. (8) His canvases featuring tools and machines as well as hearts and robes implied his involvement with Pop Art, but arguably, his style is more suggestive more than his subjects.
In 1967, Dine left New York with his family, which included three sons by then, and moved to London. Living abroad, Dine sought to move afield from his uneasy affiliation with Pop Art (9), and in doing so, he strengthened his own artistic direction. Undoubtedly, Dine’s works began to reach beyond popular interests as he strived to portray personal realities.
Dine returned to America in 1971. His acclaim within the art world was impressive, if not overwhelming for the artist, therefore, he and his family settled outside of New York City. For the next fifteen years, Dine lived and worked from his home in Vermont. In 1980, he was admitted as a member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York, and in 1985, Dine reestablished his home New York, where he lives and works today. Over the years, Dine exhibited his works in both solo and group exhibitions in America and abroad without pause. (10) In fact, since Dine’s first solo exhibition in 1960, his art has been featured in over two hundred solo exhibitions.
Although his production has been both prolific and varied over the years, Dine retains his commitment to his visual language, and his art, while associated with contemporary and conventional art trends, reflects a style that is essentially his own. Dine’s compositions are intensely suggestive in his use of line and color. His art considers more closely, and with greater focus, not only what he depicted, but also how he depicted it. (11) For Dine, the object is redefined as a metaphor, and these changes are reflected in his artist’s statement of 1970: “I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings”. (12) As a result, Dine’s compositions are expressive in nature, reflecting his personal realities.
Dine's work with printmaking began in 1960 as a parallel project to his other artworks. He continued his printmaking practice over the following decades, and he has since produced numerous print series. Dine never worked exclusively as a printmaker, but his print production was concentrated between 1970 and 1973 when he worked intensively with printmaking and its techniques while in Europe. He excelled as a printmaker, and he produced his works with master printmakers like Chris Prater, Aldo Crommelynck, and Paul Cornwall-Jones. (13) Importantly, Cornwall-Jones later established Petersburg Press where Dine printed some of his major series, including Picture of Dorian Grey (1968), Thirty Bones of My Body (1972), and Five Paintbrushes (1973).
Today, Dine’s work can be seen in numerous public collections worldwide including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone-machi, Japan; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
Footnotes:
(1) Many books, articles, and catalogs have been published on Jim Dine’s work. The information in this essay was compiled from the following sources: Information on file, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama; Krens, Thomas. Jim Dine Prints: 1970-1977. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977; Dine, Jim, Ruth E. Fine, and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993; Gordon, John. Jim Dine. New York: Praeger, 1970, and
Dine, Jim and Julia Blaut and Clare Bell. Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
(2) According to Dine, he “simply couldn’t stop painting” as a child. Fine, Ruth, “Inventing History: Jim Dine’s Glyptothek Drawings,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek, ed. Jim Dine and Stephen Fleischman (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 13.
(3) Fine, Ruth, “Inventing History: Jim Dine’s Glyptothek Drawings,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek, ed. Jim Dine and Stephen Fleischman (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 21.
(4) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(5) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(6) In A Smiling Woman, Dine appeared as a painter in a painter’s studio. He then began to work at an easel with a blank canvas, writing “I love what I am doing, HELP!” across a canvas before suddenly covering himself in paint. Dine, Jim and Julia Blaut and Clare Bell. Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
(7) Blaut, Julie. “A Painter’s Theatre,” in Walking Memory 1959-1969. Edited by Germano Celant. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2003, 32.
(8) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
(9) In fact, Dine said, by his own admission, "I'm not a Pop artist.”
(10) Several significant exhibitions include: “Jim Dine,” a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1970); “Jim Dine Prints 1970-1977” organized by Williams College Museum of Art in Massachuesetts (1976-1977); and “Jim Dine: Five Themes,” a survey by Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center (1984).
(11) Fleischman, Stephen. “The Object Takes Human Form,” in Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 14.
(12) Castleman, Riva. “Jim Dine’s Prints,” in Jim Dine Prints: 1970-1977 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977), 37.
(13) Dine, Jim and Ruth Fine and Stephen Fleischman, Drawing from the Glyptothek (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 120.
Researched by: Emily Harwood, October 2009
Image credit: Martin C. Barry, Jim Dine is seen here speaking with two patrons at the Galerie de Bellefeuille in Westmount, on the evening of a vernissage, 2009, (c) Martin C. Barry
Artist Objects
