An oil painting with three-dimensional elements added to its surface, Four Coats derives from the assemblage tradition activated most notably in the U.S. by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in the mid-1950s. It was created fairly early in the painting career of Jim Dine, who was considered a central figure of the 1960s Pop group because he exhibited in New York with a number of those artists and because Dine’s paintings, drawings and prints were representations of everyday objects, as can be seen in this extremely close-up, almost abstracted view of four garments.
But Dine says about his work, “I’m not a Pop artist...because I’m too subjective. Pop is concerned with exteriors. I’m concerned with interiors...I think it’s important to be autobiographical. What I try to do in my work is explore myself in physical terms...”. He has also stated, “Pop Art is only one facet of my work. More than popular images, I’m interested in personal images...”. So Pop Art is a pigeonhole categorization for Dine’s work; his artistic voice lacks the ironic distance characteristic of Pop. Instead his works evoke a romantic notion of self-revelation, which is apparent even in his most enigmatic works, such as Four Coats.
With lively, layered brushstrokes evoking tweed or plaid, smooth vertical strokes suggesting pinstripes, and four rows of applied buttons, Four Coats ties the abstract vocabulary of pattern to the everyday. Dine recalls that while working as an art teacher in New York in the late 1950s, he would often spend his lunch hour at a men’s clothing store, admiring the folded suits arranged side by side on display tables—not unlike these four joined canvases. His painted recreation of fabrics conjures the bodies that wear them, resisting the self-referentiality and flatness prized in abstract painting throughout the 1950s. Here, Dine’s use of real buttons prefigures the incorporation of bulky and unconventional objects—from tools to a lawn mower—into his later paintings.
