Iris 1984

This is Jim Dine’s Iris, a print with all these scratchy marks, like he’s really digging into the plate. I like to think about what it must have been like for Dine to make this. I bet he was really looking at an Iris, but the kind of looking that then goes into translating what you see into a mark. It's not just the flower, but the energy of the flower. That spiky bloom on top is so heavy with tone. All those etched lines almost look like they're breathing! And underneath, you see the scratched lines that hold everything together. It reminds me of Twombly, all these lines on top of lines. You can see the history of the making. I see Dine trying to take something as beautiful as an iris and wrestle it into something of his own. And that’s what art is: one long conversation between us all.