Modern Art & Design presents Jim Dine
Jim Dine, "Four Robes Existing in this Vale of Tears"
Bukowskis presents the work "Four Robes Existing in this Vale of Tears" by Jim Dine at the upcoming auction Modern Art & Design – the leading auction for modern art and design in the Nordics.
The polyptych "Four Robes Existing in this Vale of Tears" deals with one of Jim Dine's most iconic motifs—the bathrobe. Bathrobes have been a central theme throughout his artistic career and recur in many of his diverse techniques. Dine began painting bathrobes as early as the 1960s. Despite claiming that he has never personally worn a bathrobe, they quickly took on the form of self-portraits. In an interview in ARTnews, September 1977, Dine described his relationship with the magical bathrobe: “The robes have become much more mysterious than they used to be, and that’s because I understand them more. Obviously, there’s some hidden significance there. But what’s funny is that I don’t own a bathrobe. I don’t wear one. I don’t walk around in one. I never see bathrobes around me, nor do I see people wearing them. I don’t have a bathrobe to paint from. What I use is what I’ve used from the very beginning - a newspaper ad which I clipped out of The New York Times back in 1963. The ad shows a robe with the man airbrushed out of it. Well, it somehow looked like me, and I thought I’d make that a symbol for me. Actually, it all began when I wanted to paint a self-portrait . . . and just couldn’t. It’s important for me to say this, because what I really wanted to do was sit in front of a mirror and paint a portrait of myself. But at the time, I was in analysis and the pressures I felt prevented me from going through with it.”
David Shapiro writes about the current work: "In 1976, Dine painted one of his most compelling 'serial' images, Four Robes Existing in this Vale of Tears (plate 162). For those who have compared the robes of this period to Rothko, one might say that Dine accepts this as a compliment, but his art does not depend any longer on the luminous predecessor, Here, Dine has created a completely mature version of figuration without the figure. The green robe, the red, the lavender, and the orange stand in quiet dignity to amaze us. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Dine in his title uses the almost passive "existing," but not so much to emphasize passivity as to give us a sense of ontological calm. Indeed, these robes are presentations of four color symphonies in a Whistlerian mood of fog and interior atmospherics. They are persistent in the way a Morandi seems to be patient with his domestic constructions. Dine has recently created a robe with a green balcony out of Manet, but usually the robes are not so spatially fixed. They are figures of isolation without the neurosis that Antonioni loved in his color symphonies with the isolated heroine, say, in his film "The Red Desert." But there is no embarrassment at the theme of loneliness, just as once Dine was unembarrassed with the heroics of happiness and pleinairism. The robes have all the abstract cruciformality that Joseph Masheck has analyzed as a fundamental compositional device in much geometric painting. In Cardinal of the same year, an even more painterly version is made in a red as worldly and lavish as any prelate in Raphael”.
Jim Dine has been represented by Pace Gallery New York since 1976, and it was there that he first exhibited a series of large paintings with bathrobe motifs. The polyptych "Four Robes Existing in this Vale of Tears" was created in 1976, an important period for the artist. In 1978, he had a retrospective solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. More exhibitions followed, and to date, he has exhibited over 300 times at institutions and galleries around the world.
The work will be sold at Modern Art & Design
Estimate: 1 500 000 – 2 000 000 SEK
Viewing: May 14–19, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Open May 14 12 PM–6 PM, weekdays 11 AM–6 PM, weekends 11 AM–4 PM
Live auction: May 20–21, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm
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