3, from the series Tool Box,

1966

Dine’s interest in tools first developed in his family’s hardware store. Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, which brought together painting and everyday objects, Dine began affixing tools to canvases. For this portfolio of prints, he screen-printed images of tools from industrial design magazines or engineering textbooks onto different types of paper to create a variety of effects. He played with the relationship between commercial images of the tools, including scenes that depict a tool’s function—for example, the coiling shape of a tightening vise—and literal representations of a tool’s effect, such as the subtle dents that a hammer-head makes on the surface of silver Mylar.