Skip to Content
Today Open today 11–8

Green Suit

A work made of corduroy suit, corrugated cardboard, wire, and oil paint.

Image actions

  • A work made of corduroy suit, corrugated cardboard, wire, and oil paint.

Date:

1959

Artist:

Jim Dine
American, born 1935

About this artwork

In late-1950s New York, Jim Dine was a key early practitioner of Happenings—antic, loosely scripted, multidisciplinary performance events. He was painting avidly as well, often incorporating personal, domestic objects into both his canvases and his performances. In Green Suit, thought to be Dine’s first sculpture, the paint-daubed object itself takes precedent. Indeed, this was not just any found object, but clothing taken from the artist’s own closet. The suit’s trousers are shredded into strips, some of them suggestively bundled. Painted cardboard stands in for a shirt and tie. If in his performance work Dine made use of his body, in this assemblage he offered up the trappings of a slack, nearly two-dimensional “everyman,” untidy and poignant, anonymous yet familiar.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Jim Dine

Title

Green Suit

Place

United States (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1959

Medium

Corduroy suit, corrugated cardboard, wire, and oil paint

Dimensions

166.7 × 73 cm (65 3/4 × 28 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Diana Michener and Jim Dine

Reference Number

2013.1421

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share