Robes

Though Jim Dine doesn’t own or wear a bathrobe in his personal life, he has dedicated much of his artistic career to the subject, viewing the garment as a kind of self-portrait. In 1963, Dine discovered a newspaper ad in The New York Times that featured an airbrushed image of a bathrobe floating in space. “Well, it somehow looked like me,” Dine remembers thinking at the time, “and I thought I’d make that a symbol for me.” In the five decades since, Dine’s passion for this source image hasn’t waned, with each of his bathrobes similarly floating in the air without a human body represented underneath. In the years spent repeating this motif, Dine has freed himself to experiment with colors, textures, and techniques, as well as cheeky titles like Double Isometric Self Portrait and Bill Clinton Robe.