Jim Dine has often rendered ordinary objectsa coat, a zipper, neckties, hatswith a wry and knowing line. He has whimsically strung C-clamps and wrenches, hammers and saws, along the edges of his paint-splashed canvases. His works are partly autobiographical, since he was entranced as a child by the tools in his father's hardware store in Cincinnati. But unlike most of the artists clustered under the umbrella of Pop art, Dine claimed issue from the expressionist tradition. "My work is the opposite to cool," he once remarked.
In his new show at Manhattan's Pace Gallery (through Feb. 12), Dine once again deals with...