The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Jim Dine

If ever you wished to peer inside the mind of an artist, then Jim Dine’s work, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is the perfect book for you.  The work was produced ​created in response to a stage production of Oscar Wilde’s evocative story being produced by Dine in 1968.  The book itself is an amalgam of the production notes, script and artist’s illustrations bound inside a beautiful leather cover adorned with silver.  In ​the process of creating this work, Dine permits you backstage access into the mind of an artist under the strain of taking a literary masterpiece and evolving it into an entirely different visionary vehicle.  Dine puts form, shape and design to the imagined characters of a story which explores the depths of the human psyche.  You can feel the tremendous effort in his diligent craft.  He scripts, rescripts and edits, designing down to each and every inch of stage space and surface of each page in the book.

The story itself, or the play in this case, follows the endless life of the book’s protagonist, Dorian Gray, whom who ceases to age at some point early on in his beautiful life.  This leads his endeavors to turn more and more extreme, sociopathic and depraved in his search to find meaningful experiences as the world moves on around him.  His own portrait, which he meticulously maintains, however devolves with each passing act of self-interest into a nightmarish caricature of something truly inhuman. The neo-dada and unique expressionist art of Dine seems perfect for what was then the contemporary retelling of the tale in the late 1960s.  Against the backdrop of a Flower Child generation fighting against the trappings of their society and with musicians the likes of Mick Jagger and David Bowie turning themselves into onstage Rock n’ Roll deities, you almost feel like Dorian would have finally felt at home in this era. 

The book itself does not gloss over the elements of its revisions and evolution but portrays them with great effect.  If you think that artistry is strictly a fluid and serendipitous adventure, you would be hard pressed ​find it difficult to argue your hypothesis in light of Dine’s great success.  Even in the colophone colophon, he (perhaps with a playful purpose) is still correcting his own notes, crossing out errors and correcting his own spelling composition.  Dine utilized color lithographs, etchings and text which were created from aluminum plates printed on Velin Arch paper.  The binding and the beautiful slipcase was ​were designed by Rudolph Rieser in Cologne Germany.  There were two hundred copies made, of which the Jaffe Center owns number 175. 

Finally, ​if you are looking for how the all-important picture of Dorian is portrayed by Dine, you will be hard-pressed to find it in the book but this I can promise, it is there staring you in the face.
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- Eric Bush