Charcoal Self-Portrait in a Cement Garden

Jim Dine's work demonstrates the intense way the artist observes the world around him and the excitement with which he records and makes images his own. In Charcoal Self-Portrait in a Cement Garden, Dine deftly places charcoal and oil to canvas, adding three-dimensional cement objects that enter into the viewer's space. The imposing over-life-size scale of this piece and its emphasis on structure show the artist distilling form into a powerfully evocative self-portrait.

An advertisement in the New York Times originally inspired Dine's use of the bathrobe motif. The artist said he "was going to use the image arbitrarily but suddenly it looked as though it had me in it." Dine began work on his robes in 1964, and the repetition of this theme throughout his career has closely identified it with his personal iconography.

In 1965, a year after Charcoal Self- Portrait in a Cement Garden was made, professor Ellen Johnson invited the young Ohio-born artist to participate in Oberlin's artist-in-residence program. During Dine's residency, a selection of his work was exhibited at the AMAM, marking Dine's first solo museum show. At her death, Johnson bequeathed five works by Dine to the collection. Over the next four decades, the museum continued to acquire his work through purchase and gift. In 2005, an exhibition was held celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the artist's first visit to Oberlin, and Dine presented the museum with a promised gift of four major works on paper.