In 1959 Jim Dine settled in New York, where he and other artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow and John Cage developed the ‘happening’, a predecessor of performance art. In parallel with his happenings, he did paintings into which he incorporated concrete objects; these were his ‘combine paintings’. Although their highly graphic style, vivid colours and simple, popular visual elements often led to their being associated with Pop Art, Dine saw his work on canvas more as a continuation of Robert Rauschenberg’s collages and the work of Jasper Johns and the neo-dadaists. Unlike Pop Art, which is intended to represent modern society, Dine made use of personal images from his everyday surroundings.
