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Front Room: Jim Dine
June 11 - October 5, 2008
The series of contemporary
art exhibitions in The Baltimore Museum of Art's experimental project space
continues with Front Room: Jim Dine. On view 
June
11 through October 5, 2008, the exhibition features approximately 20 works
on paper from the BMA's holdings along with loans from private collections.
(right: Jim Dine. The Five Hammer Études. 2007. The Baltimore
Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist. BMA 2008.5. ©Jim Dine)
Front Room: Jim Dine includes works that draw upon everyday images, as well as Dine's own personal experiences. Highlights of the exhibition are the first prints the artist made, five lithographs revealing his anguish following a fatal car accident called Car Crash (1963); two remarkable etchings, Five Paintbrushes and Braid (both 1973), which explore the sensuality of human hair; and the book The Temple of Flora (1984), which weds botany and poetry. Recent additions to the collection featured in the exhibition include A Side View in Florida (1986), an enlarged hand-colored image of a skull from Gray's Anatomy, and Raven on Lebanese Border (2000), a masterful combination of both etching and woodcut techniques. The Five Hammer Études (2007) was given by the artist on the occasion of this exhibition.
Since his first exhibition in 1958, American artist Jim Dine (b. 1935) has been a forceful presence on the American art scene. Known for creating familiar motifs that are both easily recognizable and mysterious, Dine's art explores Jungian questions of humankind's place in the world through a marriage of raw emotion and Pop aesthetics. Although closely linked with Pop art, what sets him apart from his peers is his depiction of intensely personal images such as shoes, neckties, and tools; the latter which he came to appreciate while working in his grandfather's hardware store as a teenager. The physical evidence of Dine's hand -- including accidents and corrections -- is as important as the subjects pictured in the works of art themselves and is proof of the artist's existence in the world.
The exhibition is curated by Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs Ann Shafer
(above: Jim Dine. The Temple of Flora. published 1984. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Jean and Sidney Silber, Lutherville, Maryland. BMA 1998.102.1. ©Jim Dine)
(above: Jim Dine. Flo?Master Hearts. 1969. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection. BMA 1970.21.5. ©Jim Dine)
Selected wall text from the exhibition
Front Room: Jim Dine
For nearly fifty years, the American artist Jim Dine (born 1935) has created paintings, sculptures, and drawings, but it is his prints that provide the most intriguing window onto his art. Dine relishes the many possibilities offered by printmaking, a process he refers to as "magical." He reuses and reinvents images, devises new techniques,and collaborates with master printers who challenge and inspire him.
A self-described romantic expressionist, Dine uses compelling imagery such as tools and hearts as a fundamental means of communicating. He embraces his subject matter as a framework to explore his accumulated memories. His prints reveal the history of their creation through an evocative build-up of marks. Dremels, grinders, and chainsaws are among the tools that Dine uses to make changes to his printing plates, which emerge from the process grubby, scratched, and abraded.
He can be obsessively precise, but also allows elements of chance to enter his work.
The Baltimore Museum of Art has a long history of collecting Dine's work both through purchases and gifts, beginning with the purchase of The Crash #1-5 in 1963, and continuing with the artist's gift of The Five Hammer Études in 2008. The collection includes one drawing and one sculpture, as well as two bound volumes and 23 prints. In addition to objects from the Museum's collection, this exhibition includes several loans from private collections.
(above: Jim Dine. A Side View in Florida. 1986. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Women's Committee Fund for Contemporary Prints and Photographs. BMA 2007.223. ©Jim Dine)
Selected related events
Editor's note: Readers may also
find of interest:
and from other websites:
Jim
Dine in conversation with Judith Brodie, curator of modern prints and
drawings, 46 minutes, March 16, 2004, National Gallery of Art's Elson Lecture
Series
Jim
Dine converses with Ruth Fine, curator of special projects in modern art,
National Gallery of Art, 65 minutes, September 29, 1991, National Gallery
of Art's Conversations with Artists series
Inside
New York's Art World: Jim Dine from Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Video Archive. Interview by Barbaralee Diamonstein [28:15]
CharlieRose
- August 27, 2007. First, a discussion with Anthony Lewis of "The
New York Times", Joe Conason, editor of "The New York Observer",
John Fund of "The Wall Street Journal" and James Stewart, author
of "Blood Sport, The President and his Adversaries", about Stewart's
book, which discusses the Whitewater scandals. Then, artist Jim Dine and
his wife, filmmaker Nancy Dine, discuss their collaborative effort, "Jim
Dine: A Self-portrait on the Walls", which is about Jim's exhibition
of wall drawings in a German museum. [57:00]
TFAO also suggests these DVD or VHS videos:
Jim Dine is a 28 minute 1970
video directed by Michael Blackwood that provides a concentrated look at
one of America's early Pop artists. The film was made during Dine's four-year
residency in London. The artist talks about his connections to literature
and about his frequent collaboration with poets; he also discusses his
own poetry, some of which he reads for the camera. The parks and streets
of London are the setting for Dine's frank comments about his voluntary
exile in that city. On one walk, Dine encounters Gilbert and George as
they endlessly repeat "Underneath the Arches" in bronze make-up,
their earliest performance piece.
TFAO does not maintain a lending library of videos or sell videos. Click here for information on how to borrow or purchase copies of VHS videos and DVDs listed in TFAO's Videos -DVD/VHS, an authoritative guide to videos in VHS and DVD format.
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editor's notes rev 8/11/11
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