Tool Box 7 1966

Jim Dine made 'Tool Box 7' with lithography on paper. It's not clear exactly when, but it's likely to be sometime in the 1960s. The cultural context here is Pop Art and its focus on the everyday. Dine is known for his series of commonplace objects, often tools, presented with a stark realism. But the grid background of this print introduces something else. Grids speak to the modernist attempt to bring rationality and order into the chaos of modern life. The grid is a tool for thinking, like the tools depicted. Dine’s work often blurs the line between the mass-produced and the personal. As art historians, we can look to exhibition catalogues, artist interviews, and critical reviews to find evidence for these varying interpretations. But ultimately, the meaning of art is contingent on its social context and its reception by different audiences.