'Not a Pop Artist' Says Painter Dine

Jim Dine, artist in residence with the Harvard-Radcliffe Learning From Performers series this week, told an overflow crowd at the Carpenter Center last night he is not a "pop" artist, as critics often call him, and that he now "competes with artists from 100 years ago."

"Now everybody is avante-garde," Dine said, adding, "I don't want to destroy history, I want to make what is beautiful." Dine now works primarily with oil paint.

Dine outlined his past, mentioning collaborations with Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in 1960s "Happenings." He called his work from this period "art of the insane."

When questioned by students about young artists today, Dine said there are "millions of them in New York and capitalism can't support them all; there are no subsidies." "Young artists have to put themselves on the line, wnd New York is the place to do it," he added.