Remembering Wallace Ting

When Walasse Ting passed away in 2010, Jim Dine created this lithograph in his honor. In an essay on 1¢ Life published in Artnews the year after the book was completed, Ting wrote a tongue-in-cheek description of each artist who had contributed a lithograph. He affectionately wrote of Dine, referencing the artist’s ubiquitous bathrobe motif: “Great thinker as Newton. He must feel cool all the time, that’s why he makes so many robes for winter.”

Dine developed a distinctive approach to the depiction and interpretation of common images and everyday objects in paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture, elevating them to an almost iconic stature. He repeated selected themes, such as the heart shape seen here, over and over. Through repetition of the motif detached from its normal context, it became identified with the artist and his personal iconography. Here, though, the bright colors and vigorous patterns evoke Ting’s art.