KENTUCKY ROBE
Jim Dine, (b.1935, American)
This luminous bathrobe suggests the aura of a human presence, yet there’s no one there. Transformed from an everyday article of clothing into a metaphor for the self, this quintessential Dine image radiates with a warm familiarity forged through years of experimentation and reinvention. By addressing the same themes over and over again using different media and techniques, Dine saturates his subjects with personal identity and makes them his own. Borrowing the robe image from a newspaper advertisement, Dine began using it as a template for a recurring self-portrait in 1964. When he returned to the robe motif over a decade later, the image evolved from its early sharply delineated form to assume the more sublime atmospheric qualities exhibited here.
This piece is part of our private collection and is located in the Wendell Cherry/C. Edward Glasscock Conference Room.
