The Glyptotek Drawings Timeline

1984

  • Dine first visits the Glyptothek: "I went to Munich in 1984," he wrote "to look at the great pictures in the Alte Pinakothek. I had no idea the Glyptothek existed. I just went by and thought I would go in."

 1986

  • Dine makes a subsequent trip to Munich, producing small sketches in the Glyptothek galleries.

 1987–88

  • Dine again visits the Glyptothek and continues to make small sketches in the galleries during opening hours. These on-site sketches will become source material for the forty Glyptotek Drawings.
  • From 1987 to 1988 in his studio in Venice, Jim Dine creates the Glyptotek Drawings , a series of forty figurative drawings inspired by antiquities in the Glyptothek, Munich, and other collections.

 1988

  • Dine publishes Glyptotek (New York: Pace Editions; London: Waddington Graphics, 1988), a book of intaglio prints from the Glyptotek Drawings. The project was done in consultation with Kurt Zein, master printer at Druckatelier Kurt Zein, Vienna, Austria.

 1989

  • Prints made from the Glyptotek Drawings are included in the exhibition Jim Dine: Youth and the Maiden and Related Works at the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. From this exhibition Dr. Klaus Vierneisel, director of the Munich Glyptothek, learned of Dine's Glyptotek Drawings project.
  • Klaus Vierneisel invites Dine to work in the museum after hours. Dine begins a series of seventeen large drawings titled "In der Glyptothek." While many of them were made in the galleries, some, such as Twisted Torso of A Youth (Ilioneus, ca. 300 BC) , were created in the artist's London studio.

 1990

  • The Glyptothek, Munich, presents the 1989 series "In der Glyptothek" among the sculptures that inspired them. The exhibition travels to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.
  • Dine visits the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; over the course of seven days, he works in the galleries to create Seven Views of the Hermaphrodite.

 1991

  • Back in his London studio, Dine continues to make drawings based on his visit to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, including Three Roman Heads.

 1992

  • Dine returns to the Munich Glyptothek where, working alone in the galleries, he begins a series of six drawings that he later finishes in his London studio. He makes these in anticipation of the 1993 exhibition Jim Dine: Drawings from the Glyptothek, which opens at the Madison Art Center, Wisconsin, and travels to the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

In der Glyptothek
Of this experience, Dine has written:

The museum was closed, there was no noise, there was nobody, no distractions, just a guard who let me in and out, and it was night so I relied on artificial light. I was focusing on something not alive. I was trying to bring the statues to life, but it was a lot easier than a live person, way easier. They don't move, and I was alone, I could look as long and as hard as I needed to in a place that was closed off and silent. In a certain way it was the optimal situation. But what is really the optimal situation for me is to get my brain around what I'm trying to do. That's all. I've got to be in that state when I make the drawing, then my heart and my hand do the 'looking.'

Image: Gallery view, Glyptothek, Munich
Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyprothek München
Photograph by : Renate Kühling

Jim Dine: Drawing with Light

During two winters from 1987 to 1988, Jim Dine worked in Venice to create the Glyptotek Drawings, a series of forty figurative drawings inspired by antiquities in the Glyptothek, Munich, and other collections. Working exclusively in a variety of wet and dry opaque black media on translucent paper and plastic supports, Dine created these drawings to be used as positive transparencies for the production of heliogravure plates and, ultimately, intaglio prints. Despite their intended intermediary printmaking function, the drawings were also created to be finished works of art. These two functions, one to transmit light and the other to be viewed in reflected light, set up challenges for Dine that guided his choice of materials and techniques. Through interviews with the artist, it was revealed that a variety of unorthodox substances were used to create these opaque drawings in combination with innovative subtractive techniques to allow light to pass through them.