Artist
Over a decade after Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, an exhibit of his art, The Drawn Blank Series, opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. This first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.
In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan's paintings. An exhibition of Dylan's art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20, displaying Dylan's paintings of scenes in China and the Far East. The New York Times reported that "some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer's own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan." The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan's paintings and six historic photos of Japan and China which had been posted on the Flickr website. Dylan's paintings also appeared to be based on photographs taken by Dmitri Kessel, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Jacob Aue Sobol. The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs.
Dylan's second show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened on November 28, 2012. The show consists of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines including Playboy and Babytalk.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Dylan
Famous quotes containing the word artist:
“What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice—the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)