Pinocchio, Jim Dine

Pinocchio, Jim Dine

Propelled to the front of the post-war artistic scene by his happenings and his diversions of everyday objects, Jim Dine (1935, Cincinnati, USA) developed, in the following decades, the main part of his work around recurring motifs, such as the tools, the heart, the bathrobe, the Venus de Milo or more recently Pinocchio. If the puppet entered the life of Jim Dine in 1941 thanks to the cartoon directed by Walt Disney, it was not until 1997 that it came to haunt many of his photographs, paintings, sculptures and prints.

This story of turning a piece of wood into a wise little boy has autobiographical resonances for Jim Dine. He identifies with Pinocchio, the disobedient and lying puppet, but also with Geppetto, the craftsman who shaped him with his hands and the father who guided him through a series of harsh trials. Difficult to achieve, the metamorphosis is also for Dine "clearly a metaphor for artistic creation", a theme which is particularly dear to her.

The exhibition features the Pinocchio portfolio, a suite of forty-four lithographs offered by the artist following the museum’s exhibition dedicated to him in 2007.