Bob Dylan Rolls Out a Show of Nearly 100 New Paintings in London

Given Bob Dylan’s reticent public persona, his art has long seemed the closest one can get to standing in the songwriter’s shoes.

Much of the octogenarian’s work may be done on the road, in moments Dylan himself says help to “relax and refocus a restless mind,” but it is most certainly not a whimsical hobby. His easy sense of line is too assured and his eye too keen for any such condescension.

In recent years, the art world seems to have reached this consensus culminating with a major retrospective of Dylan’s work staged across three continents in the early 2020s. It brought together decades of expressive landscapes, intimate portraits, and Americana-filled sculptural works that showed Dylan’s insight on America endures irrespective of medium.

One organization that boarded the Dylan train long ago is London’s Halcyon Gallery. It has worked with the artist for nearly 18 years and has seen, first hand, how public perceptions towards Dylan’s art has changed. “It has been an extraordinary experience,” the gallery’s founder Paul Green said in a statement. “To watch this cultural icon develop into such a critically revered and important visual artist.”

Dylan’s latest show, “Point Blank” opens on May 9 and offers nearly 100 original paintings on paper that are looser and more intimate than his previous work. As with an earlier Dylan show, “Drawn Blank,” the paintings began as sketches before being worked over with color.

“The idea was not only to observe the human condition,” Dylan said, “but to throw myself into it with great urgency.” They’re hazy, snapshot things and with Dylan remaining noncommittal as to which derive from reality and which from his imagination, the viewer is encourage to partake in a little storytelling of their own.

We meet a cluster of three pale-faced men all holding books: one solemn, as if weighed down by the words in front of them, another appears performatively pensive, the third reads aloud with interest, his sleeves suitably rolled back. Elsewhere, there are portraits of devoted couples, some romantic, others platonic. They appear pulled from mantelpiece picture frames (or perhaps exuberant social media posts). Case in point: the well-dressed young couple that is locked in an amorous embrace, as though posing before prom night.

There is a grouping of nudes that seem to draw from European traditions of portraiture in the genre (minus the one with a dog) as well as brightly colored interiors of empty living rooms and bedrooms. All the same, the nods to mid-century Americana remain in the bucolic scene of a turquoise station wagon idling on a lawn, the pout of topless boxers, and the young man (shirt tucked-in) fixing his hair with a comb.

Dylan has reworked some of these as blue, red, and monochromatic studies for which he is inviting association with Picasso’s turn-of-the-century Blue Period. This might be something of a stretch, but there is without doubt a quiet discomfort and a heavy dose of isolation.

“People who attend the exhibition will discover that they provoke stories from our imagination,” the gallery’s creative director Kate Brown said. “These works on paper feel like memories, intangible windows into the life and imagination on of one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived.”

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com