{"id":8261,"date":"2020-11-13T17:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artinterview.com\/interviews\/jim-dine\/"},"modified":"2022-10-16T17:22:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T15:22:30","slug":"jim-dine","status":"publish","type":"interview","link":"https:\/\/artinterview.com\/en\/interviews\/jim-dine\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Dine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n
\n

By Fanny Revault<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Jim Dine is a major artist on the American art scene. He continues to fascinate at the age of 85, while never ceasing to pursue his pictorial questions. As a pioneer of Happenings and abstract expressionism, Jim Dine transcends twentieth century art and positions himself as a decidedly contemporary artist, whose work is prolific and disturbing in equal measure, while escaping all classification. In his latest show A Day Longer<\/em>, heldat the Templon gallery, he displays vibrant energy in color and material. In the exhibition, which was partly produced during lockdown, the artist\u2018s work is powerfully intimate and full of contrasts. It is violent yet tender, structured yet chaotic, prophetic yet introspective, poetic yet pictorial. In this interview, the indefatigable American artist talks of his creation which is born from the subconscious and his intuition, as well as his desire to touch the human soul.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n

\n

How did your passion for art come about?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I was born with it, I knew from the age of 5 that I wanted to be an artist. For as long as I can remember, that’s all I ever wanted to do. It’s my life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

\n

Improvisation is at the heart of your artistic process. Your last exhibition appears to have a slightly freer and daring touch. What prompted you to revisit your work?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There’s two sculptures included and they\u2019re a new departure for me about how to work. I built the sculptures on the floor, face down. Then, piece by piece, we took them apart, took them to the foundry and cast each piece. Then, at the foundry, I redid the sculptures. I invented them by holding them there and then we’d weld a piece. It was a collage method for me, it was a big discovery, another very lively way to work and I will do more of that.<\/p>\n

I trust my instincts, I go on my nerve, I try things before I necessarily have worked them out conceptually. I let my hand do the thinking much of the time and that’s intuition. I create everyday, it is a gift.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

\n

Can you explain further your perception of the importance of the creation process in an artwork, your various techniques, between materials as different as bronze, coal, pigments, sand and that in one single painting for example?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I use acrylic and a mixture of acrylic with sand and let it dry very hard, then I build up the impasto with a compound I make with cellulose and polyvinyl so it makes an instant impasto, and it also is a very tough glue, and it’s a very hard surface that I can then distress and correct and erase with grinding tools, electric grinding tools.<\/p>\n

I have a \u2014 I keep in the studio a vocabulary of materials. The material is very important to me. [That] it speak to me. Materials for me are like my tools. They\u2019re the tools that I express myself with. I trust my unconscious and I go where my hand leads me. I follow my hand. I\u2019m 87 years old and it’s done \u2014 my left hand has done very well for me through these years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

\n

In your paintings, prophetic characters (such as the “Prophet in the Storm” or “Twisted Lyre”) interact with poetry and humor (“Red Laughing”, “The Tongue”). What do you wish to express with this binary drive, this oscillation between, worry and happiness, violence and tenderness?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I don’t think I have a violent relationship to the material. I think that my life as a workman \/ artist informs how I build a painting and that means: tear it off, put it back another way, tear it off again, move it to the side. I don’t consider that violent, I consider it efficacious and I do what’s necessary to make a painting work.<\/p>\n

And titles have always served as objects for me, an opportunity to add another dimension to the work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\"\"
Jim DINE – Prophet in the Storm & Red Laughing – Vue de l’exposition – A Day Longer – Credit : Nicolas Brasseur – \u00a9 Courtesy Templon, Paris \u2013 Brussels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
\n

Does Me<\/em>, the series of self-portraits pursue an intense study on yourself, existence and time?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I have been drawing and painting myself for decades, it has always been a study of me and my unconscious.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n