Jim Dine valuation
Hearts, bathrobes, tools and Pinocchio, from a Pop artist who never accepted the label.
Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati in 1935 and grew up around his grandfather's hardware store, which supplied a vocabulary he has used ever since.
What a work by Jim Dine is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati in 1935 and grew up around his grandfather's hardware store, which supplied a vocabulary he has used ever since. He made Happenings in New York alongside Oldenburg and Kaprow, was grouped with Pop in the early 1960s and has objected to it consistently, on the grounds that the objects he paints are autobiographical rather than commercial. The recurring motifs are the heart, the bathrobe standing in for a self-portrait, hand tools, Venus, skulls and Pinocchio. He has worked between America, Germany and France, and has produced an exceptional quantity of printed work.
Dine is one of the most prolific printmakers alive, working in etching, lithography, woodcut and combinations of all three, often heavily hand-coloured after printing so that individual impressions within an edition differ substantially. That variation is intentional and is why two sheets from the same edition can be valued differently. Editions run from a handful to several hundred; publisher, date and hand-work all need establishing. Paintings and the mixed-media works incorporating real tools and objects are unique, and the attached objects are a condition question in themselves.
Where the print stops and the unique work starts
Dine is among the most prolific printmakers of his generation, and he also works over his own prints — painting, drawing, sanding and adding to an impression until it is no longer one of an edition in any meaningful sense. The result is a spectrum rather than two categories: a plain impression from a numbered edition at one end, a heavily reworked unique variant at the other, and a great deal in between that needs looking at rather than classifying from a photograph.
Where a sheet sits on that spectrum is usually the largest single factor in what it is worth, and it is the thing least visible in a listing. The related complication is the constructed work: objects, tools and hardware attached to the surface, which makes condition reporting a physical question about attachment and corrosion as much as a question about the image. Photograph the surface raked from one side so any working over the print shows, and photograph any attached object separately.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
