Jim Dine The Alchemy of Images

by Livingstone, Marco

• ISBN13: 9781885254795
• ISBN10: 1885254792
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press

Summary

In fewer than four decades, Jim Dine has produced more than 3,500 works in an astonishing range of media -- above all in painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, but with occasional excursions into performance, stage design, book design, poetry, and even music -- using a variety of approaches and imagery. Illustrated with over three hundred exceptional examples, this is the most comprehensive survey of this important artist's oeuvre. From Dine's early Happenings in the late 1950s to his most recent paintings, Marco Livingstone has documented and analyzed the evolution of both work and artist by exploring and discussing several themes in great detail. The discussion of these themes, ordered chronologically, presents a tightly woven account of the artist's development: his reaction to abstract expressionism and action painting of the late 1950s and early 1960s; the central role of objects used both as constituent elements of assemblages and sculptures and as a fund of images; the various art-making techniques and "hands-on" quality of his art; his profound vocabulary of images as well as his signature motifs; and his return to direct observation and life drawing, supplementing representations of the human body in the form of fragments, clothing, and tools. Integrated into Livingstone's text are short essays by Dine himself, giving insight into his personal history and his relation to visual material.

Author Biography

Marco Livingstone, who lives in London, has been an art writer and curator for over twenty years. He is known for his work on postwar painting, and has both curated exhibitions and written books on Jim Dine, David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, Tom Wesselmann, and pop art. Among his other works are contributions to numerous catalogs and books, including those on Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Roy Lichtenstein, and Antoni Ta;pies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	6	(3)
The '50s	9	(3)
A Man Alone	12	(17)
Heat	29	(3)
A Strange Voyage in Art	32	(39)
Summer, 1971	71	(3)
Action	74	(25)
Family History	99	(3)
Agents of Transformation	102	(47)
Me and Aldo	149	(3)
Hands On	152	(27)
Three Songs	179	(5)
Obsessive Images	184	(47)
Heavy Looking	231	(3)
Go-Betweens	234	(59)
Ape & Cat	293	(3)
Romance and Expression	296	(43)
Artist's Biography	339	(1)
Selected Bibliography	340	(4)
Commissions	344	(1)
Index of Names and Themes	345	(5)
Index of Works	349