You can’t blame Bob Dylan for his vision. In a career that has spanned well over half a century, the musician has recorded in song the social milieu, the cultural tapestry and the very human experience of an ever-changing country. Her practice of the visual arts is no less observant and, in recent years, has herself attracted attention with the traveling exhibition “Retrospectrum.” Its content is so vast that Dylan’s first artist monograph has now arrived to examine its scope.
Released to coincide with the show’s European debut at the MAXXI in Rome, Italythe book, also titled Retrospectrumbrings together over 100 works of art that Dylan has created over the past six decades. It includes his early ink sketches, silkscreen collages, iron sculptures and acrylic paintings, all confirming his eye for haunting detail in everyday moments.
(The first and most visible of Dylan’s self-portraits, printed on the cover of his 1970 album self-portraitwhich has been criticized.)
“Dylan’s works of visual art speak to his creative breadth and depth,” Shai Baitel, artistic director of the Shanghai Museum of Modern Art, which edited the volume, told Artnet News. “We feel that, as in his writing, his art gives us a distinct perspective of and of Dylan, providing both a representation of many moments and feelings as well as a reflection of society – of us.”
Bob Dylan. Photo: William Claxton.
Indeed, for a songwriter who observed New York party crowd as well as a country stream in Woodstock; who detailed dissolution of a marriage And a spiritual awakening; who sang a socialite in a leopard-skin pillbox hat as he has black man falsely convicted of murderDylan would take an equally insightful take on the canvas.
Where his early works on paper saw him simply scribbling his immediate surroundings – “the typewriter, a crucifix, a rose, pencils, knives and pins”, according to him – his more mature works captured in scenes of color earthy stories of his life on the road and his travels in New Orleans and Asia. There’s a bike parked on a sidewalk, a motel sign, a theater marquee, and the endless open road. This distillation of moments emerges again in his most recent series of paintings “Deep Focus”, which is inspired by scenes from films.
Bob Dylan, Marlboro Man (2021). Photo: © 2021 Bob Dylan.
According to Baitel, “Dylan is an attentive observer, a historian, capturing a moment in time, in all its dimensions and meanings.”
But for Richard Prince, who wrote one of the essays in Retrospectrum, you don’t have to read the meaning into Dylan’s visual art for it to be “awesome.” Dylan’s simple, figurative paintings, Prince writes, are “professional and do their job. They don’t try to be something they are not.
Reminiscent of Dylan’s roots in folk lore, where clear narratives invite the listener’s myriad interpretations (what, after all, could the answer “blow in the wind” be?). And for what it’s worth, Dylan described the purpose of his work as “simple, not experimental or exploratory.”
Bob Dylan, Spiked Chain Ring Wall Hanging (2016). Photo: © 2016 Bob Dylan.
And for Dylan fans looking for his greatest hits, his “Mondo Scripto” group of works might stand out with a new look at his compositions. As presented in Retrospectrumthe series juxtaposes Dylan’s handwritten lyrics with his graphite drawings, completed in 2018, each illustrating a scene or theme from his respective song.
“Like a Rolling Stone” is accompanied by a sketch of a crestfallen Napoleon, echoing the song’s lyrics of a “Ragged Napoleon”. An image of a woman looking out her window represents the lover he abandoned in “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, just as the illustration of a man swallowing a taco aptly captures the tone. from “Workingman’s Blues #2”.
As Baitel says, the series could be “a fascinating find for those unfamiliar with his visual work.” More so, he added, “The series offers the opportunity to witness the crystallization of Dylan’s complex creativity in different mediums.”
Bob Dylan, dark clouds (2021). Photo: © 2021 Bob Dylan.
Dylan himself hasn’t been particularly vocal about his visual art, but quotes strewn throughout Retrospectrum offer windows into how even his most spontaneous sketch “purified the experience of my eye”.
“Seeing many of my works years after I completed them is a fascinating experience,” he said. “I don’t really associate them with any particular time, place or state of mind, but I see them as part of a long arc; a continuation of how we move through the world and how our perceptions are shaped and changed by life.
See more images from the book below.
Bob Dylan, Balcony view (2009). Photo: © 2009 Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan, Double Door (Delivered) (2017). Photo: © 2017 Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan, Elevated train (2020). Photo: © 2020 Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan, red sunset (2019). Photo: © 2019 Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan, gentleman’s club (2021). Photo: © 2021 Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum, edited by Shai Baitel, is published by Skira Editore. “Bob Dylan. Retrospectrum” is on view at MAXXI, Via Guido Reni, 4 A, Rome, Italy, until April 30.
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