Walking Memory, 1959 -1969 r mm 1 Jim Dine: Walking Memory, 1959-1969 Germano Celant and Clare Bell 248 pages i$6 reproductions Jim Dine (b. 1935) is one of Americas best-known image-makers. This book, published to accompany the first major exhibition of Dines work from the 1960s, reproduces a broad selection of his early mixed-media works, paintings, and sculptures. Many of the works featured in this volume contain elements of the now-familiar themes of Dines career: tools, robes, hearts, palettes, and domestic interiors. Bringing together fascinating performance photographs with vivid full-color reproductions, the book is the first to explore the complex relationship between Dines mixed-media works and his environments and theater pieces. With essays by Germano Celant, Clare Bell, and Julia Blaut; an interview with the artist, combined with a selection of his poetry and statements; and superb colorplates of the works themselves, Dine: Jim Walking Memory. i959 - I9 69 is an important addition to scholarship on the 1960s, perhaps the most significant period in American art. Also included are a detailed chronology and select bibliography. Design by Massimo Vignelli M H uW« IB mm I ' Mi § unn ^B ffi8U ;> Ha SSI $* B BO IH rnffia Hi Ml ' '^'J'.v rlQRfl ' m $ : : I H I I ^H . PI is Hi! ^V 186 B I :V-->U trfHUtf •HH3 1 mJI T r '.'•: fcA SV -*.. — uS» ' •*•** fc> ^> -,f-« 5f^-T^^- 1 6^ ^-r^v; •"*« *r*?^ Walking Memory ioSO -1969 UGGENHEIM MUSEUM Jim Dine: Walking Memory, 1959-1969 Organized by Germano Celant and Clare Bell Support provided by The Florence Gould Foundation Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum February 12—May 16, 1999 Cincinnati Art Museum October 22, 1999—January 9, 2000 © 1999 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. All rights reserved. All works byJim Dine ©1999Jim Dine. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Guggenheim Museum Publications ioyi Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10128 Hardcover edition distributed by Harry N. Abrams 100 Fifth Avenue Neiv York, New York 10011 Design: Massimo Vignelli Design Assistant: Letizia Ciancio Editor: Stephen Robert Frankel Production: Esther Yun ISBN 0-8109-6918-1 ISBN 0-89207-215-6 Printed in Italy Red Robe with Hatchet (Self-Portrait). 1964 (fig. 128) frontispieces: 1. Dine wearing the costume from bis The Smiling Workman and standing in The House, an environment included in the exhibition Ray-Gun. held at the J/idson Gallery. New York. January 4- March 2;. i960. Photo by Robert R. McElroy 2. Detail oj Walking Dream with a Four-Foot Clamp. 196s (fig. 142) j. Nancy and I at Ithaca (Straw Heart). 1966-69/ 1998 (fig. tu) Lenders to the exhibition Robert E. Abrams Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo The Art Institute of Chicago Nancy and Dolph Berman, Cincinnati Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. Douglas S. Cramer Dallas Museum of Art Frits de Knegt Denver Art Museum Nancy Dine Ronny Genco, Milan Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Goergen Ralph and Helyn Goldenberg Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago/New York Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University Art Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Jorge and Marion Helft, Buenos Aires Jon and Joanne Hendricks Maria and Conrad Janis, Beverly Hills Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University Barbara and Richard S. Lane Sydney and Frances Lewis Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark The Menil Collection, Houston The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Morton G. Neumann Family Collection Reinhard Onnasch, Berlin Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach Patsy Orlofsky PaceWildenstein The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton Stanley Posthorn Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham Saint Louis Art Museum Mr. and Mrs. Abraham I. Sherr Sonnabend Collection Marcia and Irving Stenn, Chicago A. Alfred Taubman Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond Estate of Frederick R. Weisman Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven Five lenders who wish to remain anonymous Preface Jim Dine: Walking Memory, xg$p rp6p continues the Thomas Kretu institution's commitment to in -depth analysis oi the crucial early oeuvre of artists. Dine joins fellow American artists Robert Rauschenberg and Helen Irankt ntlukr, whose early I met Jim Dine for the first time in 19^4, at his studio in Putney, Vermont. Only three years earlier, he had moved to endeavors have been the subject of recent exhibitions at tin the foothills of the Green Mountains straight from four years Guggenheim. It would be impossible to have realized this of an expatriate's life in Europe. He was already a master ot project without the support, guidance, and t lose- involvemeni of the artist himself. Although I know he would rather have paintings, drawings, and prints. I had long been an admirer of Dines accomplishments in the 1960s and was eager to see been working in his studio, he made sure that he was firsthand the new directions his work had taken. His self- available whenever his memories, resources, and candor imposed years away from the tenter of the American scene proved indispensable to a better understanding of his work. had considerably changed the dynamic of his work and It has been personally ami professionally gratifying to have continued a dialogue with Dine. I lis insight and enthusiasm process. I found new motifs to contend with, and his paint and lines were much looser In feel. His abstract field about art is evident throughout these pages and in the paintings with various objects attached had given way to a exhibition itself. are more traditional style of portraiture and still life. It was The curators of the exhibition Germano Celant, Senior obvious to all concerned that Dine had undergone a radical Curator of Contemporary Art, and Clare Bell, Associate- rethinking of his aesthetic goals. Curator for Prints and Drawings. Each has brought an enormous amount of skill and insight to the project. Both In the summer of [976, I had the privilege to sit down and talk to Dine about the course his art had taken during the contributed essays to this catalogue and moderated the decade following the explosion of Pop art. Our conversation discussion with Dine about his work that forms the basis of formed the foundation for an exhibition and catalogue of this publication. They each have been assisted by numerous Dines printwork from 1970 to 1977 at the Williams College staff members as well as those outside the institution whose expertise and archives have been invaluable. I would also like Museum of Art, which I organized. Dine approached our talk with the same kind of straightforward acumen that he to thank the Cincinnati Art Museum, our partner venue in this brought to his art. It was an earnest and educational endeavor, especially Barbara K. Gibbs, Director, and discussion about his ideas, his work, and his life history. Dine John Wilson, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, along with had begun to attack the figure with a vengeance, using an Jean E. Feinberg, former Curator of Contemporary Art, for approach shaped by memory and the notion of the mirror their considerable support. Another note of thanks is due to image. The caustic quality of his previous subjects had been PaceWildenstein Gallery, most especially to Arnold replaced by classical distortions of form and modeling. The Glimcher, President, and Susan Dunne, Director, w host- graphic, facile quality that had sustained his earlier works efforts at locating works and providing critic. il information had been replaced by a richer palette that shifted emphasis about them have been essential to the show. away from the mark on the canvas or page to the subject The Florence Gould foundation provided much-needed support, for which I am extremely grateful. To the lenders itself. I began the interview by asking why Dine had taken up figuration with such tenacity after his celebrated who have agreed to part with their works temporarily in performances and mixed-media works of the 1960s. He told order to realize this momentous and rare exhibition, the its curators, and our audience owe an me that he had never left it. Guggenheim, The decade from 1959 to 1969, which Dine spent living and enormous debt of thanks. To all those individuals who, each working among New York's coterie of avant-garde artists has in their own way, have helped guide the project to fruition, 1 often been treated as an anomaly with respect to his later wish to express my deepest appreciation. work. He was one of the first to introduce raw emotional content into performance art and was one of its most controversial champions. Yet, he only created five performance pieces. Dines earliest paintings were equally celebrated. The store-bought items he attached to his paint- filled canvases were brimming with an exhilaration of the new, only to be replaced in the next decade with classical figuration evoking the past. I remember Dine telling me that during this ten-year period he had felt an enormous amount of anxiety over achieving fame as an artist so rapidly and at such a young age. The fact that his early work was turned into a Pop art spectacle was even more discomfiting to him. Dine shifted the tenor of his work at the end of 1969 in order to save the artist in himself. While Dines motifs remain some of the most cherished images in American art, his desire to be a painter has always superseded any aspirations he might have had for celebrity.