I attended  the Google Unbound one day conference (my morning coverage is posted here, here and here) at the New York Public Library today (which I wrote up in detail on my Webmetricsguru.com blog) and, while there, happened to notice a Jim Dine Pinocchio print show that was located on the 3rd floor of the library.  I decided to take a brake, go up to the third floor and take a look at the Dine’s work.  The only sculpture in the Jim Dine show is shown below.

My biggest problem with these works is I don’t understand why Jim Dine painted them in the first place.  What about Pinocchio does he find so fascinating?

“….Painter, print-maker, sculptor, photographer, performance artist, and poet, Jim Dine (b. 1935) has devoted the last three years to a personal interpretation of a story that has engaged and intrigued him for much of his life, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. Dine has made his own the tale of the temptations, trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumph of this mischievous but endearing wooden boy in a series of thirty-nine prints, on view in this exhibition, which have been reproduced in a new edition of Pinocchio published by Steidl. This exhibition celebrates Dine’s promised gift of these uniquely hand-colored lithographs to the Spencer Collection of The New York Public Library. “

Ok, I find it so hard to relate why someone would go out of their way to paint a fairy tale - and honestly, I can’t see anything about this series of Pinocchio that stands out and says - I’m unique - I deserve to be remembered.

“….Of his fascination with Pinocchio, who first appeared in his prints in 1998, Dine writes: “Thanks to Carlo Collodi, the real creator of Pinocchio, I have for many years been able to live thru the wooden boy…. His poor burned feet, his misguided judgment, his vanity about his large nose, his temporary donkey ears all add up to the real sum of his parts. In the end it is his great heart that holds me.” Dine perceives that “this idea of a talking stick becoming a boy, it’s like a metaphor for art, and it’s the ultimate alchemical transformation.” His Geppetto is a self-portrait, alluding to the artist as creator, who in giving life has a connection with the Divine. “

Ok Jim, if the Pinocchio story works that way for you, great.  To me, the idea of a Pinocchio as a metaphor for my art sounds like a romantic, good idea till you start thinking about it more.   Likening art to Pinocchio is like saying your life is a lie and only though “art” can you redeem yourself and become real.   

Hmm… Pinocchio as Jesus, or the Pope…sorry, it just does not work for me …. and the more I think about it, I get a worse and worse headache.

I was glad to get back to party that was going on at the end of Google Unbound.