Jim Dine, Some Drawings

Book excerpt: This book of 85 drawings by Jim Dine illustrates the range and mastery of the artist's draftsmanship over more than four decades. The variety and breadth of the selection shows the intense way Dine observes the world around him and the excitement with which he records it on paper. Dine has said that his ability to draw is both a privilege and the result of hard physical training, compelling him to move inexorably forward to capture the next idea or the next psychological insight in drawings that are extraordinarily human. The selection includes early tool pencil drawings and collages, as well as powerful portrait and figure studies in a variety of media. Also included are large painterly pastels executed with a bravura that places them somewhere between painting and drawing. Dine sees his paintings and drawings as essentially conceived and developed in the same way--requiring the same amount of time, emotion and physicality of medium. The only difference, in the end, is that the drawings are on paper.