Page 71 - Studio International - June 1968

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2. Jim Dine

The original drawings in the Dorian Gray book were done for a pro­
duction that was going to take place. It should have opened in Dublin
at the end of March and it was going to come to the West End. The
reason it didn't go on was. on the surface, because of my costumes:
the star said that they were obscene and wouldn't wear them. I'm
getting a little tired of being called obscene in London. I was stuck
after three months of work with these drawings and things, so we
(Paul Cornwall-Jones and I) just decided to publish them in a book.
It was the logical thing to do.
I feel very schizophrenic about what I do. I mean I can do a lot of
things-not necessarily in different styles. but in different ways, and
things demand different ways. For instance, a production of Dorian
Gray done now demands a different content than a piece of sculpture
that I make and that I'm going to show now. I feel at a certain level it's
just a costume book; this is a valid thing to make-a book of costumes.
On another level it's a book of some highly articulated colour litho­
graphs. It's in certain ways a tour de force. the velvet cover and that
sort of thing-although I do like it as a total object. I think one of the
things about making it was that it fulfilled a need in me. There aren't The cover of Jim Dine's Dorian Grav
many places today where you can still use your hands and still talk
straight about something that's contemporary. Here was this opportu­
nity to scribble again. and to stool-smear again and to get your old in Studio. because I suddenly realized I do believe a lot of what
thumb in there and really I'd jump at any opportunity to do that. As an Greenberg said. I mean I really agree with him. I do think that a great
object itself the book's quite pretty, I think. and it's one of the most part of what was called Pop Art in America was genre painting. I do
indulged things I ever made. In a certain way that's how Dorian Gray and I think it was a very self-indulgent. show-business sort of thing.
was-completely indulged-and that's why I felt it was in keeping. It's not that I refute what I did or anybody else did; it's just that in fact
There's no point in giving it a cool plastic look if it's something like Blake and Hackney do do that kind of genre painting much better.
Dorian Gra y . It's a very unusual time for me. I'm trying to justify a lot of things I'm
It set up certain values. In the first place there is the book to be trying to do. This year in London I have hardly made any paintings;
understood. In fact it's a terrific book if it's taken on a level more than I've just done a lot of thinking about them and started them and I've
the camp level. It's a book about making art and it's a book about destroyed a lot. But mainly I've been writing poems. I've been thinking
personal freedom and it's a book about old age. Those are real things about other things than painting. Or really about the same thing, but
and Wilde was extremely brilliant about them. The fact is that Dorian I'm trying to like get my head together to get back to America and get
Gray isn't first and foremost a homosexual book. it's a book-a very back into the assault. I've had two years out. I was at Cornell last
sad one-about narcissism. So that dictates what you're going to do. year. Now I'm ready to get back. I want to have a new kind of dialogue
You don't want to just have dandy fashions or the 'New London·. all than I did before. And the two years away really did that for me. They
that crap that goes on here. Wilde was being extremely plastic and got me out of that other thing.
formal in what he said about what the characters were like. what they I have no dialogue here. Our points of reference are too different.
looked like. In designing the play I meant there to be no backdrop at There are some terrific artists here but I just think our references are
all. It was going to be objects in space. and in fact each costume. i.e. too different. I think things do happen naturally and it didn't happen
each character. would be an object in space like a piece of sculpture naturally that way. Plus the fact that I'm more interested in trying to
in an area. And there were going to be important pieces of furniture. figure out what to do now and how to start. How do you keep on ... ?
No flats. It was just going to be the back of the theatre, that's all. I'm thirty-three and I feel young, like I'm twelve. because I really don't
I'm more interested in formal things now anyway. No matter whether know hardly anything. I don't know anything. I feel so stupid. I don't
it looks like it or not. I'm eventually getting to that. It's a development. know anything now and I know less than I once thought f did. I'm
but it doesn't look like a development in the sense that there's nothing just starting to know a little bit more and that it's all not hopeless, you
plastic to show yet. But I know that's the way I'm thinking. I'm just know. because of what it's all become, which is not what it once was
thinking differently than I ever did. One of the things that changed me and not the reason a person became an artist. Because you couldn't
was reading that exchange with Lucie-Smith and Clement Greenberg help yourself, for instance. D
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