Jim Dine’s poems are the voices between his paintings, the questions between his drawings, the whispers and shouts between his sculptures: an unceasing, probing flow that augments and energizes his visual work. Dine writes through a process of collage, arranging and re-arranging fragments as they come to him, noting them on scraps of paper, on the studio wall, even (a favorite medium) on the sick bags of airplanes.

A Beautiful Day presents 17 poems; some are recent pieces written during the intensity of corona quarantine, others are older creations he has now rediscovered and re-shaped, as a sculptor returns to a work after many years with a fresh eye and hand. As always, Dine’s poetry is densely autobiographical and grapples with the polarities of experience: with delight and melancholy, with criticism and celebration, with nostalgia (“Childhood mood / The soul / complete and elegant / Constructed of wishes / And clouds”), rage (“I ran into him at the airport, / ‘I hope you die a miserable death / You fat fascist fuck’”), and, inevitably, the passing of time: “The magic falls, / Years go by, / Hitting the window / They get used up.”

Author Biography

Born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jim Dine completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Ohio University in 1957 and has since become one of the most profound and prolific contemporary artists. Dine’s unparalleled career spans more than 60 years, and his work is held in numerous private and public collections. His books with Steidl include Pinocchio (2006), Hot Dream (52 Books) (2008), A Printmaker’s Document (2013), Paris Reconnaissance (2018), 3 Cats and a Dog (Self-portrait) (2019) and The Secret Drawings (2020).

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