Lady's Slipper 1984

This is Jim Dine’s ‘Lady’s Slipper’, an etching made with a metal plate and acid. I love how Dine works with tone and how he evokes his subjects with the bare minimum. The flower feels both present and ghostly. I can imagine him in the studio, pushing the needle across the plate, wiping ink, making multiple passes through the press. It’s all trial and error, seeing what emerges. Maybe he started off wanting something sharper or more defined, but look how all those lines coalesce! It’s like he’s creating a feeling as much as an image. Think of all the other artists who have looked at flowers – Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Mapplethorpe, or even Warhol’s screenprints – but Dine is after something different, a more primal kind of representation. You can almost smell the earth. When you’re looking at a work of art, you’re entering into an ongoing conversation, joining a long lineage of mark-makers. That’s what keeps me going anyway.