Page 36 - Studio International - October 1967

Perspectives of American sculpture

1 'Nancy and I at Ithaca'—Jim Dine's Cornell project

William C. Lipke

will have to be as committed (to them) as I am.'
Dine's task, then, seems more ambitious than that of
David Smith who copped out of the gallery space by
placing his pieces in the landscape near Bolton's Landing.
And his project was not related to the recent 'monuments'
of his contemporary, Claes Oldenburg, for Oldenburg's
`monuments' seem to be always `imaginings'; mockups
which are executed in the mind only. Instead, Nancy and
I at Ithaca must be seen as an attempt to break down the
`gallery aesthetic' : the dictated, neat, conventional
layout that every artist must follow when finally hanging
his show. When confronted with the 'objects' of the
Cornell scheme, the spectator is thrown off balance, not
because of the sheer scale alone, but finally the way in
which the pieces are casually strewn about the squared-
off space. Works come down off the walls and are now
fixed on the ground plane, like high relief sculpture.
I
Initially, Dine's scheme involved an unlimited number
of pieces that could be placed—indefinitely—at different
points to each other creating shifting relationships. Even
at the planning stage, Dine excluded the possibilities of
showing the completed works outside: 'Putting these
pieces outside eliminates the possibility really of any
figure-ground relationship taking place.'
He began a number of preliminary drawings in his
studio: large tracing sheets tacked up on the wall on
which he occasionally penned forms and ideas that came
'I'm positive now that I know all I really want to to his mind. One of the first ideas that Dine worked out
know about putting objects on a canvas. regarding the Cornell project was a large, five foot form
I'm just not interested in doing natural things, that, seen together, spelled the word 'Niagara'. (When
things happening naturally. I'm more interested in queried as to why he should use such an idea Dine noted:
how you force yourself to do things.' `It's a word you hear aroud here a lot. I guess I just like
the sound of it.') Although Niagara was never executed,
the idea (Niagara Falls), the scale which the word
Jim Dine's series of 'objects', executed while Visiting denoted, the simplicity of the image itself, were all
Critic at Cornell University during the 1966-7 academic incorporated into the project. To have included Niagara
year, are—in terms of scale—the largest statements, ex- finally, would have been for Dine an overstatement:
cluding the earlier Happenings, which the artist has yet `You have to find the right kind of metaphor, but that's
created. They are, as it were, concrete realizations of a always the case. That's the only kind of art that I'm
statement made by the artist when he noted that if any interested in.'
commission were feasible, he would use 'all the billboard That was how the project progressed; Dine writing
space between any two towns.' Yet the comment is words, throwing up rough felt-pen sketches on the brown
misleading, for Dine's Cornell 'objects' were never transparent paper on the studio wall; and as October
intended—like billboards—to be placed outside. Rather, waned, words like 'Bucket', 'Moon', 'Heart', 'Lips', and
as the artist noted at the start of the project in October `Phone Booth' appeared in script and sketch form.
1966: 'I want something that will be of such size that it The first actually constructed piece was a large tri-
will crowd out the room. I want the shapes to be of an angular form executed in steel. Ingeniously supported,
impossible size, so that anybody who wants these pieces the base of the piece was not a base, but an integral part