Jim Dine

Jim DINE (born 1935) is an American painter who works both in Pop Art and construction, with collages, readymades and happenings, to stress the tangible in art. In 1959-60, with Oldenburg, he made a Car Crash, and in 1959, he exhibited a Green Suit, and pieces of clothing as found objects or “found objects composed“, such as hammers and lips, and clamps with a girl’s legs. Sometimes he is deliberately sensational, as in his Canticles to the Penis, which in London suffered the ridiculous indignity of being closed by the police as indecent. It was an aspect of 20th-century rebellion against prudery, which is not exemplified by the universal fashion for pudenda in the painting of nudes, male and female. Words and numerals in capitalized slogans such as “Die“, “Kill“, are challenges to the inherent self-satisfaction of materialism and sexuality, as a reflection of US life and society. Real social comment is rare or a strong reaction to racial violence. There are works in Amsterdam, Buffalo, Baltimore, London (Tate), Los Angeles, New York (Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney) Ontario and San Francisco (Ref. Dictionary of Arts & Artists by P. & L. Murray)).

Posters by Jim Dine