Local Artists Commemorate Jim Dine

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Jimmy Baker, Gold Teeth (2010). Three color silkscreen (mockup), 14x17in. Photo Courtesy of the artist.

In recognition of his impact on the art world, the Cincinnati Art Museum is honoring Jim Dine with the inaugural Cincinnati Art Award during a gala hosted by the museum on April 17^th.
Born in Cincinnati, Jim Dine is a Pop Artist recognized internationally for his Happenings. According to the Hollis Taggart Gallery site, Jim Dine was noted for 1960s "performances such as Smiling Workman, The Vaudeville Show, and Car Crash [which] drew on personal events, found materials, and a sense of collaboration shared by others, such as Alan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg. It is the found materials and objects of everyday life, like hearts and robes that continued in his painting and sculpture."
Along with the Cincinnati Art Award, Cincinnati Art Museum Director Aaron Betsky has invited 8 local artists to contribute to a portfolio of prints commemorating Jim Dine. The contributing artists are Jimmy Baker, Kim Flora, Mark Fox, Stewart Goldman, Anthony Luensman, Tim McMichael, Casey Millard, and Joseph Winterhalter. Inspired by Dine's work, each of these artists created a single, 14x17 multicolor print for the portfolio. From artists like Casey Millard, who combined Dine's recognizable icons with her own sharks to much more abstract references to the artist, the portfolio presents a range of approaches to Jim Dine's work

Working in a number of different media, Jimmy Baker's oeuvre presents the ambiguous using recognizable contemporary iconography, forcing the viewer to re-look at ourselves and our society. His compilation of technological gadgets in Ghost (2007), for example, calls us to explore an almost apocalyptic future tangled in wired chaos. With a closeted love of the Gothic, Baker found himself easily drawn to Dine's skull imagery. Specifically, a work in the MoMA collection was a starting point for Baker's print. Baker's is a dark skull reclining in a rather nondescript dark gray space. Within this gray on gray image the skull sports a set of shiny gold teeth. As a commemoration to Jim Dine, Pop Art, and Cincinnati, the gold teeth read as a gold grill. A popular reference could be to Cincinnati Bengal Chad "Ocho Cinco" Johnson. Like Ghost, Baker's print for the Jim Dine portfolio seems to be a commentary on our current popular culture.

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Anthony Luensman, mockup for print CARCRASHCHOKER (2010). Photo Courtesy of the artist.

Anthony Luensman employs so many different everyday objects in his sculptures and installations that it is easy to understand why this local artist was invited to contribute to the Jim Dine Portfolio. Unlike Baker's adoption of a Dine icon, Luensman's work moves away from Dine's well-known imagery. While working on this project, Luensman came across a study for Dine's Happening, The Car Crash. In his approach, Luensman writes, "I like to look at things out of the corner of my eye so to speak and just pick up on a basic color scheme, paper quality (that yellow/brownish, butcher-wrap look) and the small image of a first aid/ambulance cross." Combining the concept of a car crash with haloes, Luensman has made a resultant image that resembles a halo or choker of red crosses over a smoky crash site. In his print, Luensman replaces Dine's repeating heart icon with a red cross. The title, CARCRASHCHOKER, references not only Dine's specific Happening, but the actual typewritten form of the title (Luensman used an actual typewriter) points to the 1960s, when Dine was performing the Happenings.
Inviting Kim Flora to contribute to the Jim Dine Portfolio is a most wonderful surprise, as she is an abstract artist. Flora's print is consistent with the approach to her recent paintings, which are currently hanging in the PAC Gallery. As an abstract artist, Flora's focus is on the gestured and expressive process of painting. Before now, printmaking was rather foreign to her. This project has allowed her the opportunity to explore the medium, specifically color lithography, for the first time. Though printmaking is characteristically flat, Flora maintained her commitment to retain her painterly style as she worked in what was for her a more mechanical process. To do this, she found inspiration not in Dine's imagery, but in his Neo-Expressionist style visible in his painting The Sound of Your Cold Voice (1991). The organic lines and textured layering of colors in this later Dine work present the perfect inspiration for Flora's print.
Clay Street Press Mark Patsfall is printing the Jim Dine Portfolio. The Cincinnati Art Museum will exhibit the entire portfolio of 8 prints in time for the April 17^th Dine Gala.