Jim Dine

Jim Dine was born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began seriously studying art in high school, and attended the Cincinnati Art Academy at night. He later attended the University of Cincinnati, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Ohio University. Dine, along with Allan Kaprown, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Whitman, was a pioneer of Happenings, a series of antinarrative theatrical pieces that challenged the traditional role of the audience by encouraging participation and often assaulting the audience with aggressive sounds, language, and images. Dine is partially credited with the beginnings of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, and his work exemplifies the use of popular images and symbols as artistic pieces, in Dine’s case, often autobiographical. Additionally, Dine has written and illustrated several books of poetry and lectured on art at the university level. Retrospectives of Dine’s work have been displayed in both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City.