Since the 1960s, artist Jim Dine has transformed the images of
familiar, everyday objects into powerful evocations of a range of
emotions, including loss, longing, joy and wonder. His
fascination with such commonplace things as bathrobes, hand tools
and hearts has found ready expression in the medium of
printmaking, to which he has been devoted since the beginning of
his career.
Now a new exhibition is allowing museumgoers in the New York
region to survey the large and extraordinary body of prints that
Dine has created since 1985, when he turned 50. In these
monumental works, the artist presents his favorite motifs with a
fresh intensity, often instilling them with a lively sense of
spiritual searching or historical weight. New motifs are also
displayed in the exhibition, including owls and the puppet
Pinocchio.
Forty-six of these large-scale, complex works, with their
virtuosic drawing, richly layered surfaces and enigmatic moods,
will be on view July 16-September 11 at the Frances Lehman Loeb
Art Center at Vassar College, in the exhibition "Jim Dine Prints:
1985-2002."
The exhibition, which will be seen in the New York area only at
Vassar, has been organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
in collaboration with Pace Prints and Jim Dine and it is
accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné of Dine
prints from 1985 to 2000.
"Printmaker has always allowed Dine to work through his ideas in
a more private way than with paintings and sculpture," notes
Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus curator of prints and
drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. "The prints in
this exhibition show how, as he approached 50, he turned to
spiritual themes, which became intensified with his investigation
of Jungian psychoanalysis. In their monumentality and painterly
effects, these prints clearly stand apart from Dine's earlier
work. Together, they offer a true survey of his personal
interests and issues of the past 20 years."
Drawn from several private collections (including the artist's
own), the exhibition presents works made in a range of print
media; etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and a combination of
techniques. Dine created the 1995 "Very Picante," for example, by
using a jigsaw to cut shapes from a large sheet of cardboard,
then reassembling the pieces on the press and printing them. The
resulting, boldly colored work is an image of a man's bathrobe,
which at almost six feet tall serves as an enigmatic yet imposing
stand-in for the human figure.
Only for its showing at Vassar, "Jim Dine Prints: 1985-2002" will
be accompanied by a selection of Dine works from the permanent
collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. These earlier
works on paper will help to introduce Dine's motifs to
museumgoers who are not yet familiar with his art, while allowing
others to appreciate the richness of his evolution over the
years.
All of the works in the exhibition were made through close
collaboration with professional prints shops, including Pace
Editions' Spring Street Workshop in New York, Atelier Crommelynck
in Paris, Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in
Tampa and the Werkstatt fur Handgedruckte Original-Graphik in
Vienna.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is located at the entrance to
the Vassar College campus.
For information, 845-437-5632 or www.fllac.Vassar.edu.
