The White Suit (Self-Portrait)

In the three-piece work ‘The White Suit (Self Portrait)’ Jim Dine combines an actual man’s suit with the painted version of a suit. Dine painted the same subject on three panels on a gray, white and black background respectively. Having undergone intensive psychoanalysis, Dine sought to make a self-portrait, but one without any overtly personal or identifiable features. He executed the work in different colors and techniques to refer to the different facets of the artist’s personality. Dine completed a series of self-portraits in which he painted and incorporated a variety or garments or parts of them. The use of and reference to everyday objects lead some to associate his work with the Pop Art movement, although Dine doesn’t consider himself a Pop artist. In an interview from 2012, Dine says: ‘New Realism more accurately captures my work, but even that isn’t quite specific enough. I am my work – only me’.