In 1959, Jim Dine traveled to New York, where he took part in some of the city’s early Happenings—spontaneous and experiential performances in which the audience was often encouraged to participate. A year later, he began to focus more on a painterly practice that incorporated physical objects, a love of which came from working in his family’s hardware stores as a youth. He frequently affixed everyday objects, such as tools, rope, and articles of clothing, to his canvases. Here, a tennis shoe camouflaged in a layer of piggy-pink pigment emerges from the lower portion of the picture plane. While Dine is associated with the development of Pop art, he downplayed this connection in a 1966 interview, stating, “I’m not a Pop artist. . . . When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don’t think Pop artists feel that way.”

Label from Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960s, June 30–December 30, 2018