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Five Paintbrushes (fourth state) is a perfect exemplar of this methodology: not only does it depict a group of ordinary paintbrushes, but the image is one that has been reworked from the initial plate several times. The impression belonging to Reynolda House is the fourth state, meaning Dine produced an edition of prints and then reworked the plate three times before issuing the fourth set. The first state, etched on the copperplate, showed five brushes evenly spaced across the picture plane. In the second state, one was deleted and six were added, interspersed among the original brushes, making a total of ten. For the third and fourth states, Dine cut the plate at top and bottom, creating a tighter image, making the background darker, and adding lines to the bristles. Two more states followed; each time the artist made the image crisper and denser.
Systematically arranged and evenly spaced, the ten paintbrushes are lovingly rendered. This is an artist’s homage to a basic tool. Each one, whether shown in profile or head-on, is given its own separate identity––a metaphor for Dine’s search for his place in the art world, as he commented in a 1995 interview: “From the beginning, those tools, or those objects, that bathrobe, were metaphors for me and my condition, whatever my condition was at that time. Or my history. It was me painting out my history. So that, with this highly sophisticated man, boy, me, who had looked at a lot of art, there was this other side, this primitive side, this outsider, this guy who, very much, had I gone to jail then, would have painted, and I would then probably been called an outsider artist.” [1]
Unlike some of the flat and intentionally slick silkscreens of the Pop Art movement, Dine appreciates and capitalizes on the expressive potential of etching, an approach that recalls Rembrandt, who also reworked his plates. Reading from left to right, the bristles become softer, more open, and more like human hair. The same year he developed Five Paintbrushes (fourth state), 1973, he explained his passion: “There is in etching—work on copper—the most exciting work you can do. I really think so. I think lithography the most boring, although I’ve gotten results that are quite pretty. But it’s like drawing, and then you reproduce the drawing. … With intaglio or drypoint, you are drawing with metal or with acid, and it’s something very much like an extension of my hand rather than me reproducing my fingerprints.” [2]
Notes:
[1] Dine to author December 2, 1995, in Marco Livingstone, Jim Dine: The Alchemy of Images (New York: Monacelli Press, 1998): 20.
[2] Dine quoted in Ellen G. D’Oench, “Jim Dine: Portrait of a Printmaker,” Jim Dine Prints: 1977–1985( New York, Harper & Row, 1986), 3.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
Published ReferencesFaber, David L., Daniel M. Mendelowitz, and Duane A. Wakeham. A Guide to Drawing. 7th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.
Faber, David L. and Daniel M. Mendelowitz. A Guide to Drawing. 8th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 182, 183
DepartmentAmerican Art
Five Paintbrushes (fourth state)
Artist
Jim Dine
(born 1935)
Date1973
Mediumetching with drypoint, mezzotint, aquatint on copperplate de Luxe paper
DimensionsFrame: 31 3/4 x 37 7/8 in. (80.6 x 96.2 cm)
Image: 14 1/2 x 27 3/8 in. (36.8 x 69.5 cm)
Paper: 29 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. (74.9 x 90.2 cm)
SignedJim Dine 1973
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© 2021 Jim Dine / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1983.2.23
DescriptionKnown for his passion for tools, Jim Dine is also highly regarded as a consummate and prolific printmaker, versatile in intaglio, lithography, and, on occasion, silkscreen and, more recently, woodcut. Like many of his contemporaries who reintroduced concrete imagery after the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, Dine usually selects pedestrian and familiar objects which he addresses in series.Five Paintbrushes (fourth state) is a perfect exemplar of this methodology: not only does it depict a group of ordinary paintbrushes, but the image is one that has been reworked from the initial plate several times. The impression belonging to Reynolda House is the fourth state, meaning Dine produced an edition of prints and then reworked the plate three times before issuing the fourth set. The first state, etched on the copperplate, showed five brushes evenly spaced across the picture plane. In the second state, one was deleted and six were added, interspersed among the original brushes, making a total of ten. For the third and fourth states, Dine cut the plate at top and bottom, creating a tighter image, making the background darker, and adding lines to the bristles. Two more states followed; each time the artist made the image crisper and denser.
Systematically arranged and evenly spaced, the ten paintbrushes are lovingly rendered. This is an artist’s homage to a basic tool. Each one, whether shown in profile or head-on, is given its own separate identity––a metaphor for Dine’s search for his place in the art world, as he commented in a 1995 interview: “From the beginning, those tools, or those objects, that bathrobe, were metaphors for me and my condition, whatever my condition was at that time. Or my history. It was me painting out my history. So that, with this highly sophisticated man, boy, me, who had looked at a lot of art, there was this other side, this primitive side, this outsider, this guy who, very much, had I gone to jail then, would have painted, and I would then probably been called an outsider artist.” [1]
Unlike some of the flat and intentionally slick silkscreens of the Pop Art movement, Dine appreciates and capitalizes on the expressive potential of etching, an approach that recalls Rembrandt, who also reworked his plates. Reading from left to right, the bristles become softer, more open, and more like human hair. The same year he developed Five Paintbrushes (fourth state), 1973, he explained his passion: “There is in etching—work on copper—the most exciting work you can do. I really think so. I think lithography the most boring, although I’ve gotten results that are quite pretty. But it’s like drawing, and then you reproduce the drawing. … With intaglio or drypoint, you are drawing with metal or with acid, and it’s something very much like an extension of my hand rather than me reproducing my fingerprints.” [2]
Notes:
[1] Dine to author December 2, 1995, in Marco Livingstone, Jim Dine: The Alchemy of Images (New York: Monacelli Press, 1998): 20.
[2] Dine quoted in Ellen G. D’Oench, “Jim Dine: Portrait of a Printmaker,” Jim Dine Prints: 1977–1985( New York, Harper & Row, 1986), 3.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]
From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)
Published ReferencesFaber, David L., Daniel M. Mendelowitz, and Duane A. Wakeham. A Guide to Drawing. 7th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.
Faber, David L. and Daniel M. Mendelowitz. A Guide to Drawing. 8th ed. Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 182, 183
Status
Not on view