In Winter Windows on Chapel Street Jim Dine returns once more to the heart motif, an image that, since the early 1960s, he has painted, sculpted, drawn, lithographed, etched, and silkscreened. The stylized sign that stands for the human heart provides him simultaneously with an opportunity to explore abstract form and with an instant symbol of romantic sentiment. The heart refers broadly to human feelings and, more specifically, to his wife, Nancy.
Dine’s graphic work — an area of artistic activity in which he particularly excels — has been extensive and varied. Often combining a variety of techniques, he creates from a simple motif a complex and texturally rich image. Many of the prints depict almost banal objects, but — unlike the cool, ironic detachment of most Pop Art - they are usually presented in a highly personal, expressive manner: neckties, bathrobes, — palettes, tools, and paintbrushes stand in for the artist's own image. Dine reveals his romantic tendencies by charging such simple motifs with symbolic or literary content, many of his works paying homage to writers such as Wilde, Flaubert, and Rimbaud. An artistic debt to Picabia is evident not only in the litho- graphic series bearing the Dadaist’s name, but in all of Dine’s works that incongruously juxtapose word and image.
In the prints Winter Windows on Chapel Street, A Heart on Rue de Grenelle, and The Heart Called Paris Spring Dine's hearts each evoke different moods, places, or sea- sons. The four individual sheets that compose Winter Windows — each containing one large white heart on a black field - suggest the separate panes of a window. The puddled fluid forms of the hearts resemble a coating of winter frost through which the night sky is visible.
Nancy Spector, The Modern Art of the Print, p. 142