Modern Art of Jim Dine Goes Beyond Hearts and Bathrobes – 3

This is part 3 of the biography of modern artist Jim Dine, continuation of part 2.

Motifs in the Art of Jim Dine

Jim Dine has been depicting everyday household objects and his personal possessions as far ranging as hearts, hammers & other hardware tools, painting tools such brushes, palettes and canvases, bathrobes (self-portraits), as well as shoes, neckties and other articles of clothing to braids (portraits of his wife). He even depicted a bathroom sink.

It’s a little hard to pin him down as additional new motifs keep appearing. And there is no predictability re. his usage for earlier motifs either: just when you think he has moved beyond hearts, a new heart emerges.

For Dine, all these objects offered a vocabulary of feelings. The repeated use of these images in his artwork became signatory for Jim Dine’s oeuvre.

While Jim Dine is possibly best known for his heart art, actually, his bathrobe motif has been most enduring. He created his first bathrobe work in 1964, after being triggered by an newspaper advertisement of a man in a dressing gown. The bathrobe has been the subject of more than 70 printed works. Dine incorporated hammers, brushes and clamps in his paintings, based on memories of his childhood when his father and grandfather had a hardware store.

It seems that the metaphors come into his life, grab his attention, become part of his life, and become motifs in his work. In 2006, Jim Dine illustrated Carlo Collodi’s book Pinocchio published by Steidl. In 2007 The original 39 hand-colored lithographs used to illustrate the book were exhibited at his long representing gallery, PaceWildenstein, “Jim Dine: Pinocchio” and acquired byThe New York Public Library for its permanent collection. In 2008, just last year, he made a poster for his show at the Lincoln Art Center, featuring Pinocchio. Even though the book illustration project was finished, Pinocchio was to stay as a motif in Jim Dine’s artwork. Beyond the initial drawings and prints, he has since made sculptures and digital photography on canvas featuring Pinocchio. Jim Dine read the Pinocchio story as a young boy, and it made a strong impression on him, the artist once said in an interview. Hence the exploration of the theme.

Tomorrow, we’ll publish the conclusion of this four part article on artist Jim Dine.