A CONVERSATION IN MONTROUGE: PART I: TECHNIQUES & MATERIALS
Photography by Matt Dine
French writer Brigitte Adés recently interviewed Jim Dine. The result is a deep and informative discussion, providing a comprehensive understanding of Jim’s work. The interview offers a profound exploration of Jim’s creative process, inspirations, and reflections on his remarkable career.
This is the first of a three part interview between Brigitte Adés and Jim Dine.
Photography: Matt Dine
PART I: TECHNIQUES & MATERIALS
By Brigitte Adés, March 2024
BA: Mr. Dine, in your exhibition in Venice entitled “Dog on the Forge,” your canvases are different and very remarkable, your paint is thicker and more densely applied, and it seems you even added pieces of material into it. Is this a new approach? Can you describe the process?
JD: I sometimes feel more like a blacksmith than a painter, hence the title of the show. As for the thickness of the paint, I now use a mixture of acrylic and sand with which I make the impasto to which I include cellulose and polyvinyl which is a very powerful glue. I let it dry until it becomes very hard, then it gives a very hard surface which I can then patina, correct and even erase with grinders.
BA: And what about the insertions of cloth or even small floor pieces? How do you decide to add them?
JD: It all pertains to my lived experience transformed, transmuted and inserted into my work. I am a great believer of what the surrealists called the “Objet trouvé” a found object you stumble upon that inspires you. It is a great metaphor about life itself
In my studio, I have a vocabulary of materials at my disposal. The material is very important to me. I let it speak to me. I consider this added material such as pieces of carpet or floor I have lived on as a personal mosaic. It feels like it corresponds to my own life, layers after layers of lived experiences and impressions. Materials, for me, are like tools. They're the tools with which I can express myself.
BA: Speaking about tools, new features also appear for the first time, spirals of copper are sticking out and cascading from your canvasses. What was the impetus behind this radical choice?
JD: Copper tubes have always exerted a fascination on me, ever since I was a child as my grand father had a hardware store and I liked watching handymen manipulating and soldering them. I recently found a way to twist and bend them myself. I feel they add a new plane to my work. I think it energizes the surface more and brings movement, like a dance, which is taking place. It is also like a line of paint; it relates to my hand in three dimension. The whole point is to have found this simple material that can really mirror my hand and use it like drawing on top of the staticness of paint. It’s like a tridimensional calligraphy.
BA: You have also inserted real tools on some of your canvases?
JD: Again I hope to transform the picture plane adding these objects which I found or bought. For me they become like a mark with my brush.
In the case of the tools, I inserted them because I greatly respect men working with their hands and using tools. These have a past and a history; they are the result of hundreds of years of thinking of optimizing how they could be used. I mean it is not a question of good design. The tools I am interested in like a hammer comes from work, not from Charlotte Perriand or from Le Corbusier. It comes from a carpenter. It has a history. We have a collective unconscious—so does the hammer. A history of work. By this I mean it comes to you now in 2024, with thousands of years of somebody trying to make it work, it comes from that and you can’t throw that away. It is something to be celebrated and kept.
BA: Does this explain why you have created very large bronze sculptures such as the “Bolt Cutter,” in order to erect a useful tool into a work of art?
JD: Exactly. All of these come from my own vocabulary about tools; at two years old I was already playing in the garden with a hammer—my father took a film. But more importantly, I wanted to give people something to think about their meaning for humanity, in order to force people to reflect on these aspects of their life and what we owe to these tools and to workers who know how to use them. They are charged with a memory; I deeply respect this. They are not to be discarded or disrespected. Quite the contrary in fact.
BA: You have included many such sculptures in your Venice show, huge in size, bigger in fact than what you have done in the past. Does this monumentality correspond to a personal evolution?
JD: To be frank, increasing the size of my sculptures is something that I have always wanted todo but I hadn’t found the right foundry for it. For some forty years I used a foundry near my country home in Walla Walla, Washington (USA) and they didn’t have the equipment for these grand works. I am now sculpting at the Kunstgiesserei St.Gallen. They have allocated a studio just for me where I can create freely and supervise the work of my big sculptures in the making. There, I am the only old fashion artist who doesn’t use a computer to aid in my design. I think they secretly like this and respect this way of working.
BA: In Venice your show has many more sculptures than paintings. Is that a shift of interest? What made you change your usual balance?
JD: This is a solo exhibition in a 17th century palazzo and we have chosen with the curator, to respect the space and use the alcoves to install the paintings and adapted their size. There will also be a big painting standing on its own. We do not want to touch the walls. There are more spaces including the garden well adapted for the sculptures. Nonetheless it is also true that I am particularly interested by sculptures lately and I would like to make more of them. I have a whole program in my mind for the next few years.
