.

This was a style Dine would eventually reject, although his painterly training would impact his later work. Over his career, Dine has both questioned the status of the artwork and continued a tradition of making work full of symbolism and allegory.

Accomplishments

• Dine is inspired by the power of simple images to be both familiar and symbolic.

  Artists working in the Neo-Pop movement, such as Jeff Koons, borrowed Dine's tropes of elevating commonplace objects to the status of fine art; Koons' New Hoover Convertibles (1980) are an example of this.

  Influences and Connections

  Influences on Artist

  Influenced by Artist

  Open Influences

  Close Influences

  Useful Resources on Jim Dine

  Books

  websites

  articles

  video clips

  Books

  The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page.

  Jim Dine

  A History of Gardening, an exhibition exploring botanical prints and drawings by Jim Dine (b. I was a liar, little boys are liars."
  
  Dine started off by seeing Pinocchio as his alter ego, as the wooden puppet becoming a real human being; however, towards the end of his career he started to associate himself more closely with Geppetto, Pinocchio's maker.

  His parents were second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe and practicing Jews, an identity which influenced his artistic career. For a new edition, Rachel Cohen’s Flags Version IV, 2022, which will be unveiled for the first time, six joined sheets depict rows of bursting violets, made using drypoint, electric tools, and hand painting in oil and charcoal.

  Dine has gardened his entire life; his current home in Paris includes a small plot where he grows roses and potatoes.

  Through his close focus on the simple form of the heart, and his repeated and prolonged attention to this iconic shape, Dine transforms a trite, almost meaningless subject into something that demands our attention and our consideration. The performance was designed to be a cathartic process, a way of working through the trauma of the original events by acting it out with his fellow performers and through the interaction with his audience.

  Dine recalls that they were introduced by a friend who had an art space in the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village: "Claes and I got together, drank a lot of beer, and talked and talked and talked. His interest in their suggestive and symbolic qualities was reignited by a provocative dream while traveling abroad in the 1990s.

  Dine himself had painted his face silver, wore silver clothing, and repeatedly drew anthropomorphic automobiles with chalk on a blackboard, as if trying to communicate with the audience through the images and nonverbal grunts and cries. Being dyslexic, he found reading difficult, but found poetry easier than novels. He said, "All the time I was identifying with the boy, but now, you know it is a great story because it's a metaphor for art, this old man brings the puppet to consciousness through his craft, and in the end I am Geppetto, I am no longer Pinocchio."
  
  For Dine, the Pinocchio story acts as a metaphor for the creation of art, with the lump of wood coming to life through the artistic process as the figures take shape.

  The couple lives in Walla Walla, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Washington, where Dine maintains several studios.