Romancing in Late Winter 晩冬のロマンス

A heart fills the large picture. It is painted in rather unexpected greenish colors, and covered by dark shadows, it looks as if it is dripping with dark blood.The heart is one of the central motifs of Jim Dine along with the bathrobe and household tools, and since he first used it in 1965 in the stage set for Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream", it has appeared repeatedly in his works. The shape of heart has been used as symbol of love since antiquity. Jim Dine pours all his love and emotions as a painter into this motif. For him, to paint a heart means to create a painting. The heart, in being a symbol, transcends the division between the abstract and the figurative, and thus makes an ideal theme. Dine made his debut on the art scene in the late 195Os with his Happenings, and became a noted figure in Pop Art in the 196Os with his paintings employing objects from everyday life. His art, however, has been always characterized more by his own biographical elements than by anything else. Since the 1970s, he has been recognized as a powerful painter who revived the Expressionist tradition in contemporary American painting. In 1981, the year this work was produced, the artist is said to have been having hard days himself due to his friend's emotional crisis.