Artwork details

Artist

Title

Tool Drypoint: Bottle opener

Description

Drypoint print on white Crisbrook Waterleaf paper. Signed by the artist, numbered 7/10, and dated 1972 lower center in pencil. Edition 10: this impression 7/10.

Drawn by the artist and printed at the same time as Jim Dine's “Thirty Bones of My Body” portfolio. Here, a bottle opener points upward, silhouetted by a single black line. Seeming to press against the expanse of light grey forming the background, the bottle opener’s mouth emanates long, wispy strands of hair. At the opener’s base, a few stray strands thread through a hole.

The hand tool is undoubtedly Jim Dine’s most iconic motif. Meticulously catalogued in rows like scientific specimens or sketched individually, hammers, awls, brushes, saws and screwdrivers assume a visceral symbolism. Curvilinear handles evoke the contours of limbs or bones, and even metal points and blades seem organic under Dine’s thoughtful hand. In this series of dry point prints, each tool is positioned vertically. Standing in for the artist’s body, the phallic shapes are gently shaded, appearing pressed into the soft grey background. Wisps of hair creep up and around each tool, as if the instruments themselves were sprouting from the body. Dine’s deft draftsmanship tempers the grotesque possibilities of this inanimate hirsutism, while the delicate, soft quality of dry point lines enhances the intimate nature of these portraits.

Date

1972

Medium

Drypoint

Edition

Signature

Signed

Image

9 x 6 inches

Sheet

30 x 22 inches

Price

$2,500.00

Jim Dine: Printmaker, Painter and Poet of the Everyday Object

Jim Dine (born 1935, Cincinnati, Ohio) is one of the most prolific and technically adventurous printmakers of the past sixty years. He first emerged in New York’s late-1950s art scene alongside the Happenings and Pop art movements, but he has always resisted the Pop label. His work is intensely personal, autobiographical and hand-made. Jim Dine prints put that sensibility on paper: expressive, gestural and rooted in the physical act of drawing and cutting.