Details — Click to read
Poster produced on the occasion of Jim Dine’s 1973 exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld, Zurich. The artist’s 1973 etching Braid (second state) is reproduced on off-white, fine, laid paper, cut narrowly to enhance the proportions of the long braid.
Jim Dine’s careful depiction of everyday objects imbues them with life: tools, hearts, robes, and hearts serve as frameworks for formal experimentation and as vessels for meaning. Nowhere is the artist’s love of drawing more evident than his etchings: Dine takes visible pleasure in the capacity to produce ultra-fine line work and inky depths. Hair is a recurrent motif in his work, sketched sprouting from tools, swirling in suggestive triangles or phallic bunches, growing wayward to obscure the face, and disembodied, as in Braid. Dine’s enjoyment seems to be twofold: immersing viewers in the pleasure and beauty of his line work, and then disrupting their perception of hair as an alluring symbol of health. See, he seems to say – it’s alive, growing where it shouldn’t be. Here, the shiny, healthy braid transforms to an abject talisman.
This rare poster comes from our Petersburg Press archives where it has been stored since its publication.
