Jim Dine's Pinocchios at PaceWildenstein

The sculptures show a larger than life wooden boy, his nose elongated, his arms in match stick square, his groin with folds resembling a codpiece. Charmed by the Carlo Collodi classic since he was six, Jim Dine crafted 17 sculptures in charred wood and enamel so that the viewer can see just how the puppet was put together. In one structure, he stands before a table of tools, signature Dine image from a previous series. In another, his arms are raised, priestlike. In another he appears with the sly Fox and Cat in black, the animals that tricked him out of the gold coins meant for Geppetto. You wouldn't think from the subject that we would be viewing something this substantial, this painterly with Pinocchios in traditional “history of art” poses.
Chuck Close was there at yesterday's opening in the large Pace space on 25 Street, in his special chair that rises up on its hind wheels like a palomino pony on its hind legs, so that the artist who loves parties can talk at eyelevel.
Alex Katz conversed animatedly with Ada, his muse. I wanted to ask them, what each thought of the recent show at the Jewish Museum, a knockout in my opinion. Katz worships his wife it seems, but others tell me otherwise. It is a marriage after all. Poet Bob Holman in an embroidered hat tells me the ups and downs of his wife Elizabeth Murray with a brain tumor and cancer. He says the doctors tell him they would like to predict what may happen from here but no one with her condition has ever lived this long. I say, seeing her paintings at MOMA, they are so joyful. He agrees and says that they are funny too, adding, poets cannot be funny and be taken seriously. Do you want to hear one of mine? Yes, I say. “If you see something, say something. Banana.” Now there's a word you seldom see in a poem. Judith Solodkin of Solo Press was there, wearing a pink cowboy hat in felt; she made it herself.  And poet Anne Waldman in flowy long skirt, to match her disposition, was en route to Naropa in Boulder, for the summer session of the school she founded with Allen Ginsberg, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. We had shared a cab recently following a reading by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the 92 Street Y. She said then she had just returned from speaking at a scholarly seminar on Bob Dylan.
                                                                                                                     Regina Weinreich

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