Jim Dine flowers and plants

Jim Dine, renowned for his wit and creativity as a Pop and Happenings artist, has a restless, searching intellect that leads him to challenge himself constantly. In the 1970s he began to focus on flowers and plants, sometimes from his own garden. Always a superb draftsman, Dine revealed a hitherto untapped precision and depth of expression in his botanical drawings and paintings, which are collected here for the first time. Many of these works have never before been published; the impetus for them came from this projected book. In this extraordinary and intense series, he extends traditional botanical illustration and flower painting to encompass a new subjectivity, deriving from artistic and personal sources. Familiar garden and house plants yield unsuspected qualities in Dine's work. Gardeners as well as art lovers will find his wide knowledge of plants and flowers delightful and rewarding. Unusual techniques underlie the uniqueness of much of Dine's botanical work. On several ceramic jars created to his specifications, Dine has drawn towering foxgloves or a clump of crocuses or a strong old trunk with a tangled network of branches - giving these plants an unexpected context that provokes new thinking. His eagerness to get down his ideas leads Dine to press any blank surface into use: two handsome wooden panels, purchased to become doors, now provide the backgrounds for an imposing thicket of weeds and a glorious bunch of gladiolas. The author, Marco Livingstone, who has written widely on Pop and other aspects of contemporary art, makes skillful use of interviews with the artist, whose comments on specific works provide direct insights into his working methods and intentions. With great sensitivity, Livingstone scrutinizes each work, noting the effect of Dine's virtuosity - a stroke of color here, a patch of scuffed paper, painstaking detail on the surface of a cactus - or Dine's patient studying and restudying of calla lilies or hyacinths or his bold rendering of crabapples. The remarkable power and beauty of Jim Dine's plant and flower works - 93 reproduced in full color - make this elegant book an exhilarating and memorable experience.