Post War & Contemporary Art  31 December 2022

Commission for the Biltmore Hotel

In 1976, Gene Summers and business partner Phyllis Lambert began the first restoration of the Los Angeles Biltmore. They commissioned Jim Dine to create new works for the historic hotel from carpets and mirrors to artworks and lamps. In 1982, Dine created the unique collection of wall-mounted bronze reliefs for the Biltmore.

In the early 1980s, Summers had also arranged for Dine to teach a class at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Dine created the bronzes at the school’s foundry and they were exhibited at the hotel’s restaurant, Bernard’s. The artist incorporated tools and materials found at the Biltmore during renovations into the bronzes themselves to create the resulting series of unique works.

Jim Dine
Untitled
$45,000

Jim Dine
Untitled
$45,000

Jim Dine
Untitled
$45,000

...Phyllis and I decided that it would be good to incorporate art with the building…both of us knew an artist by the name of Jim Dine...Each individual guest room had as many as…a minimum of six…pieces of artwork by Jim Dine.

Jim Dine b. 1935

For nearly six decades, American artist Jim Dine has evoked the power of symbolism, familiarity, and the search for self through a variety of mediums. A seeming critique on modern society, Dine places personal possessions and regular objects at the focal point of his prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. His evolving imagery includes reoccurring themes such as heart shapes, bathrobes, tools, and the human body for which he is best known.

Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935. His grandfather owned a hardware store where he worked throughout his youth later influencing his interest in ordinary objects. “I grew up with tools…I’ve always been enchanted by these objects made by anonymous hands,” he has stated. From 1953-1957 Dine studied poetry at the University of Cincinnati and later the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After receiving his BFA from the Ohio University in Athens, GA, he moved to New York in 1958.

Dine began participating in stage performances, later known as “Happenings”, alongside artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Robert Whitman, and John Cage. The performances helped to launch his career and his first solo exhibition was held in New York at the Reuben Gallery in 1960. While frequently associated with Pop Art that developed at this time, the artist does not identify with a specific movement. In 1966 he remarked, "Pop is concerned with exteriors…I'm concerned with interiors." He continued to develop his body of work expanding upon his iconic themes with series of flowers, trees, and the Venus di Milo.

His work has been exhibited internationally and been the focus of major retrospectives at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (1970), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1999), and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2004). Dine’s work is included in prestigious collections around the world including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Spain, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.

Jim Dine lives and works between New York, Paris, and Walla Walla, WA.