Headspace: Jim Dine’s Glyptotek

Headspace: Jim Dine’s Glyptotek

Inspired by a 1984 trip to Glyptothek, Munich’s museum dedicated to antique Greek and Roman sculpture, artist Jim Dine set out to create a book of prints inspired by the collection. He produced forty drawings uniquely designed to function as transparencies in the production of héliogravure prints, a printmaking process used to reproduce the earliest photographs. Dine’s prints exist both as individual works and as a collection, bound together in the oversized book, Glyptotek. According to Dine, each individual image in his Glyptotek can stand alone, but when viewed together they form a singular narrative “about learning from the Ancient World.”  

Headspace pairs Dine’s prints with sculptural works by other artists from Cranbrook Art Museum’s permanent collection. These pieces from the twentieth century draw aesthetic parallels to Dine’s gestural renderings. Many of the selected busts mimic Dine’s ancient source material, while other works abstract the figure and reduce the form to a simple suggestion of it represents.  

Virtual Tour of Headspace: Jim Dine’s Glyptotek

Headspace: Jim Dine’s Glyptotek is organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and curated by Kat Goffnett, the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow, and features works gifted by George Francouer and Gerald Earles.