Jim Dine, Eight Pieces from the “Robe” Series
Jim Dine had a great love for hs everyday objects, the things in which he lived and worked. Throughout his career Jim Dine incorporated common objects into his work that were meaningful in his own life–such as tools, bathrobes, and hearts. Through repetition over time, these objects take on meaning for the viewer as well as the artist. By creating a work that is based on his own favorite bathrobe, he is creating a very intimate self portrait of himself. In essence, who he is as a person and as an artist.
On guggenheim.org, Dine’s work is interpreted thusly, “Dine also began to address his identity and physicality through images of thickly painted palettes (or actual palettes affixed to canvases) and oversize color charts, which suggest the basic artifacts of his profession and the presence of the artist. Such references to the self became more direct in 1964 in a series of assemblages featuring images of men’s suits and in another series based on an illustration of a bathrobe that Dine saw in a newspaper advertisement.”