BOB DYLAN THE BRAZIL SERIES - WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY JOHN ELDERFIELD KASPER MONRAD
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BOB DYLAN THE BRAZIL SERIES WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY JOHN ELDERFIELD KASPER MONRAD Statens Museum for Kunst National Gallery of Denmark
BOB DYLAN THE BRAZIL SERIES WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY JOHN ELDERFIELD KASPER MONRAD Statens Museum for Kunst National Gallery of Denmark
Book
Reserarch: Kasper Monrad
INDHOLD
Editor: Sven Bjerkhof
Picture editor: Pernille Feldt
Proofs: Annette Bjørg Koeller
Monrad’s articles in English: James Manley 6 Preface
Graphic design: Pernille Ferdinandsen
Photos: Joshua White / jwpictures.com Karsten Ohrt
Reproduction, printing and binding: Narayana Press, Odder, Denmark
Font: Yoga. Paper: Scheufelen BVS matt white 170 g
© 2010 Statens Museum for Kunst / National Gallery of Denmark
8 The painter Bob Dylan
ISBN 978-87-92023-47-6 English version
ISBN 978-87-92023-46-9 Danish version An introduction
Kasper Monrad
Exhibition
16 Across the Borderline
Statens Museum for Kunst
National Gallery of Denmark John Elderfield
4 September 2010 – 20 February 2011
Research: Kasper Monrad
Education: Ulla Norton Kierkgaard 58 The Paintings
Architect: Anne Schnettler
Assistant: Jacob Helbo Bøstrup Jensen
Exhibition producer: Gitte Kikkenberg
Exhibition coordinator: Lene Christiansen 28 The Brazil Series
Transportation: Thor Nørmark-Larsen
Conservation: Karen-Marie Henriksen og Anja Scocozza Kasper Monrad
Art handling: Erik Kjærby Jensen, Mogens Kristiansen,
Morten Sørensen, Mikkel Thomsen og Jørgen Trolle
THE BRAZIL SERIES SIDE 6 FORORD KARSTEN OHRT SIDE 7
PREFACE
Karsten Ohrt
PAGE 9
Kasper Monrad
THE PAINTER
When Bob Dylan presented a large selection of watercolours from The Drawn
Blank Series1 at the art museum in Chemnitz, Germany, in 2007, this marked the
first occasion on which he made a public appearance as a visual artist.2 This is
BOB DYLAN
not, however, to say that painting was an entirely new aspect of his artistic en-
deavours. He had been painting concurrently with his musical career for several
years, but as he had largely kept this interest to himself, only few knew about
AN INTRODUCTION
it before the exhibition.
The exhibition in Chemnitz met with great interest from the general
public and was followed by an exhibition of a different selection of watercolou-
rs from the same series at a London gallery the following year.3 It would seem
that this exhibition served to strengthen the artist’s desire to further explore
this aspect of his creative talent.
In the autumn of 2008, when the National Gallery of Denmark estab-
lished contact with Bob Dylan through his manager and entered into an agree-
ment on staging an exhibition in Copenhagen, Dylan regarded The Drawn Blank
Series as a finished project and embarked on an entirely new series of paintings.
This time, he would work with acrylics on canvas. The agreement to stage an
exhibition clearly proved an incentive to the artist, heralding a period of inten-
sive work. . Over the course of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 he executed a
series of just under 50 paintings, all of them showing motifs from Brazil. Hence
the umbrella title The Brazil Series.
The presentations of the two series described in the above marked,
then, the first occasions where the general public was able to form a compre-
hensive impression of Dylan’s work as an artist. He has not, however, concealed
his interest in painting. As far back as 1978 he made the following statement: ”I
have always painted. I have always held on to that one way or another.”4 This is
borne out by his autobiography, where he emphasises how he began drawing
during the very early 1960s.5 In the early summer of 1974 Dylan even took a few
months of painting lessons in New York, studying under ageing Expressionist
painter Norman Raeben (1901-78). This would have an impact on him on several
levels (for more on the influence Raeben had on Dylan, see John Elderfield’s
essay).
The preceding year, 1973, Dylan published the book Writings and Dra-
wings, which featured illustration in the form of a range of very loose sketches.
Prior to this he had done a few paintings which had been used as cover art for
three albums, the first being The Band’s Music from Big Pink from 1968, with the
next being his own album Self Portrait from 1970. He also did a drawing for the
THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 10 KASPER MONRAD THE PAINTER BOB DYLAN – AN INTRODUCTION PAGE 11
cover of Planet Waves in 1973. Apart from these examples he has not exhibited 1). In the photograph the artist is seen surrounded by a number of quite large
his visual art to the public before 2007. He has been painting throughout all the drawings – mainly portraits – that he has hung in serried ranks above the win-
years, but has definitely worked with greater focus on painting and with more dows. The large drawings all share the same format. Perhaps he regarded them
concerted effort in recent years, prompted by specific occasions – or a sense as a cohesive series even then. One of the portraits in question was included
of purpose. ”The paintings must have a reason to exist”, as he himself puts it.6 in the book.
Bob says that it really works without the quote but if you need something here In 2007, when Dylan let himself be enticed into returning to the illu-
this quote more accurately reflects his sentiments. strations in Drawn Blank, he used the drawings in the book as the foundation of
As a visual artist Dylan has ties to a figurative tradition that has re- more than 300 watercolours and gouaches in which he took a more or less libe-
mained vibrant up through the 20th century, taking on various guises and styles. ral approach to the drawn sketches.8 One could say that the series encompas-
The tradition has been particularly tenacious within American painting, defying ses an inherent conflict, for the drawings were often executed as rapid, loose
all avant-garde attempts at putting it to rest. Within this vein of art, images sketches, created in a matter of moments, whereas the watercolour versions of
take their point of departure in reality as we see it, and they often feature a the motifs took on a far more definitive quality. Today, Dylan believes that the
narrative with a clearly discernable plot. In other words, the subject matter is series cannot be regarded as representative of his art, and he himself is more
vital to the overall artistic mode of expression. As regards the painterly mode interested in directing attention to The Brazil Series, which he feels is a far more
of expression – i.e. technique and colour schemes – Dylan’s paintings seem to accurate reflection of his endeavours within pictorial art.9
continue past trends, especially from French modernist painting from the 1920s Compared to the watercolours, there can be no doubt that the new
(for details, see the article ”The Brazil Series”). paintings were created as part of a process that is more characteristic of how
PHOTOGRAPH OF BOB DYLAN IN HIS STUDIO, C. 1990
FIG. 1
Over the years, Bob Dylan has occasionally made brief references to the artist works. Here, he selected his subject matter with paintings in mind.
his drawings and paintings in his many interviews. The most specific comment In several cases, the paintings are based on drawn sketches intended as preli-
on his work as a painter was made in an interview conducted in the spring of minary studies.
2009: The motifs of the watercolours very much reflect the circumstances
”I just draw what’s interesting to me, and then I paint it. Rows of under which the original drawn studies were made. Dylan did most of the dra-
houses, orchard acres, lines of tree trunks, could be anything. I can take a bowl wings on his journeys; it seems that he would often act on impulse, capturing
of fruit and turn it into a life and death drama. Women are power figures, so I the motif he happened to have in front of him at the given time. Such subject
depict them that way. I can find people to paint in mobile home communities. matter might the furniture in the room of the hotel or motel he was staying
I could paint bourgeois people too. I’m not trying to make social comment or in, or the more or less random view from the room. He also captured people
fulfill somebody’s vision and I can find subject matter anywhere. I guess in passing by – in the street or at a café or bar, often depicted in an ephemeral
some way that comes out of the folk world that I came up in.”7 manner, capturing the fleeting quality of the moment. The drawings and wa-
This statement was made while the artist was engaged on the paintings tercolours have a common denominator in that the motifs are generally viewed
from The Brazil Series, and it elucidates his choice of subject matter as well as from a distance and depicted with a certain detachment.
his work on the new paintings. The paintings of The Brazil Series come across as far more direct and
The watercolours that form part of The Drawn Blank Series had their insistent. The artist moves in closer on the people depicted. In painterly terms
genesis in very special circumstances. The point of departure was a number of the paintings do have a certain kinship with the watercolours, but even so they
drawings which Dylan had executed during the years 1989-1991/92, of which represent a clear development of Dylan’s artistic mode of expression. Some
around 90 drawings and sketches were reproduced in the book Drawn Blank of the Brazilian scenes depict motifs that continue trends seen in some of the BOB DYLAN VIEW FROM TWO WINDOWS 2007
PRIVATE OWNER
from 1994. The original drawings would appear to have been lost, but can be watercolours, such as Rain Forrest (cat. no. 14), which shows a room where a FIG. 2
seen on the wall in a rare photograph from Dylan’s studio from around 1990 (fig. half-open balcony door offers a view of a verdant forest. A similar effect ap-
THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 12 KASPER MONRAD THE PAINTER BOB DYLAN – AN INTRODUCTION PAGE 13
pears in the watercolour View from Two Windows (fig. 2). Other than this, there during the course of his work. In many cases he obviously changed the colour
are crucial differences between the paintings and watercolours. The paintings scheme in small or large areas of a given painting; the original colour will often
incorporate figures to a much greater extent, and a strong narrative element be visible through the topmost layer of colour. This creates rich and varied co-
has been added to the pictures. What is more, the artist did not relate to lour effects with areas of shimmering hues. In no case did he choose entirely
people as a remote watcher; he has stepped out among the people he wished neutral planes of colour.
to depict. This impression is corroborated by the artist’s own description of The watercolours and paintings differ in many respects. Still, the two
how the paintings were created. In many cases he would be struck by a sudden series share a key common feature: In both cases the artist selected motifs
impulse and would initially draw his intended motif rapidly on a piece of paper, that are very different from those chosen for his songs. Generally speaking,
perhaps a paper napkin or paper bag that was immediately at hand; only later the visual images are more simple and direct, less laden with significance than
would he embark on painting.10 the often complex songs. Unlike the songs, the images contain no chains of
Thus, a number of motifs bear the hallmarks of having been experi- association where you are taken from one kind of image or illusion to another.
enced in real life. For example, the night scene from the small town of Bahia Each individual image sticks to a single, cohesive illusion.
(cat. no. 3) in north Brazil was undoubtedly experienced by the artist himself. The difference between songs and pictures is accentuated by the song
CAT. 5 Similarly, the artist would certainly himself have seen the proud hunters po- in which Dylan makes his most overt reference to his work as a painter, i.e.
sing with their game in the painting The Hunters (cat. no. 10), and would also “When I Paint My Masterpiece”.11 Here, Bob Dylan the songwriter first conjures
have seen poor grape pickers such as those shown in The Vineyard (cat. no. 5) up a visual impression of the streets of Rome “filled with rubble” only to ele-
standing among the vines as they are monitored by the wine grower or his gantly jump on to a fantasy about a tryst with the niece of Renaissance painter
caretaker. Botticelli. Dylan the painter makes no corresponding leaps in his pictures. One
In other cases the artist’s own imagination played the main part in might find parallels to the rubble of Rome in his paintings, but no counterparts
sparking off ideas for subjects – even if there is always a certain element of to the imaginative date with Botticelli’s niece. The visual images do not mix
personal experience in the paintings. The artist wishes to tell stories with the- different realities, nor do they mix reality with dream or reverie as is the case
se images, and several paintings show dramatic scenes being played out. The in e.g. Marc Chagall.
events depicted range from marital clashes in Renunciation (cat. no. 27) to the As a painter, Dylan often selects subject matter that would lose its
CAT. 39
results of a violent gang war in The Incident. attraction if set in words. Paintings and songs seem to belong to separate uni-
In several cases Dylan can very accurately account for the narrative verses, completing each other. This view is supported by the artist himself. He
unfolding in the paintings, e.g. in Courtroom (cat. no. 39), where he can describe strongly opposes any attempts at seeing individual paintings as illustrations for
the role played by each individual character (see page XX). In other cases he a given song: ” If I could have expressed the same in a song, I would have writ-
has recorded a scene without knowing exactly what is going on, not settling ten a song instead!”12
on a single, particular interpretation. This is true of e.g. Countrymen (cat. no. 9), In terms of working processes, songs and pictures are by their very
which essentially captures a brief moment involving some men by a river. In nature different. When Dylan has written the lyrics for a song, the music is
this case, the artist can offer no detailed account of any narrative. often created in a collective process where individual musicians help shape
Unlike the preliminary drawn sketches, none of the paintings outside the final result. By contrast, the paintings are the work of a single man. But
of the drawings,was executed in Brazil. In most cases some time had elapsed just as Dylan the musician is open to input from others, Dylan the artist is also
between the initial impulse to depict a given subject and the actual execution surprisingly open to comments on the shaping of his paintings – undoubtedly
of the final painting. far more open than the majority of contemporary artists.
The paintings testify to how the artist has deliberated extensively on In one particular aspect, however, Dylan’s paintings from The Brazil
how each individual subject should be depicted, frequently making changes Series share a common feature with his songs. Paintings and songs are both part
THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 14 KASPER MONRAD THE PAINTER BOB DYLAN – AN INTRODUCTION PAGE 15
NOTES
of a particular project – an exhibition and an album, respectively – and both 1
The title Drawn Blank plays on the dual meanings of the phrase; the
projects have a finite end result: the opening of the exhibition or the release act of drawing on blank paper and the act of “drawing a blank”.
of the album. Just as Dylan would never write a new song for a finished album, 2
Ingrid Mössinger (ed.), The Drawn Blank Series. Exhibition cata-
he has made up his mind to not paint any more scenes from Brazil once The logue. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz 2007.
Brazil Series shipped to Copenhagen. 3
Andrew Graham-Dixon et al., The Drawn Blank Series. Exhibition
This is not, however, to say that Dylan is about to lay down his brushes. catalogue. The Halcyon Gallery, London 2008. As a result of the exhibi-
He is busy contemplating what theme to address next. tion Bob Dylan engaged in treating some of the motifs from The Drawn
Blank Series further, only now painted in acrylics on canvas, cf. Maurice
Cockrill, Bob Dylan on Canvas. Exhibition catalogue. The Halcyon Gal-
Kasper Monrad lery, London 2010.
Kasper Monrad was born in 1952 and read Art History at the University of 4
Jonathan Cott (ed.), Bob Dylan: Essential Interviews. New York
Copenhagen, graduating as MA in 1981 and Phil.D. in 1989. He is an expert on 2006, p. 221.
Danish Golden Age art, i.e. from the first half of the 19th century. Employed at 5
Bob Dylan, Chronicles. Vol. 1. New York 2004, p. 269f.
the National Gallery of Denmark since 1985; since 2001 as Chief Curator. His 6
As stated by the artist in May 2010.
published books include Hverdagsbilleder. Dansk guldalder – kunstnerne og deres 7
Interview with Bill Flanagan at Bob Dylan’s website (http://www.
vilkår (1989, dissertation; summary in English: Pictures of Everyday Life. The Gol- bobdylan.com/#/conversation?page=2).
den Age of Danish Painting and Sculpture. The Artists and their Circumstances) 8
The drawings were scanned from the book and digitally transferred
and Dansk Guldalder. Hovedværker på Statens Museum for Kunst (1994), and he has to watercolour paper, often several copies of each drawing. The water-
helped arrange a number of exhibitions about the Danish Golden Age in Denmark colours were then done on these reproductions of the drawings.
and abroad, most notably Mellem guder og helte. Historiemaleriet i Rom, Paris og 9
Conversations with the artist on 10 December 2009 and 1 March
København 1770-1820 (Statens Museum for Kunst, 1990), Caspar David Friedrich og 2010.
Danmark/Caspar David Friedrich und Dänemark (Statens Museum for Kunst, 1991), 10
Conversation between the artist and the author of this piece, 10
The Golden Age of Danish Painting (Los Angeles & New York, 1993–94), Christen December 2009.
Købke (Statens Museum for Kunst, 1996), Baltic Light/Im Lichte Caspar David Frie- 11
Bob Dylan, Lyrics 1962-2001. New York, London, Toronto & Sydney,
drichs/Under samme himmel (Ottawa, Hamburg, and Copenhagen, 1999-2000), 2004, s. 271.
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (Washington, 2003), and Turner and Romantic Na- 12
Conversation with the artist, 10 December 2009.
ture (Statens Museum for Kunst, 2004). He was also responsible for the exhibi-
tion Henri Matisse: Four Great Collectors (Statens Museum for Kunst, 1999).
THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 16 SIDE 17
John Elderfield
ACROSS
Songs are journeys that may tell of journeys, and in Bob Dylan’s songbook
there are miles of journeys told in lines: the rolling lines of tracks and high-
ways; and the city lines, skylines, and other such borderlines that lie across
THE
the way. These journeys are also quests: looking for a timeless new morning,
a transformational experience, or maybe just to have some fun; and many of
them seem to work out, although some end badly, and a fair number turn out
BORDERLINE
to have been dreams. All, however, catch us with their familiarity, journeys like
this being among the subjects of the earliest of all ballads and stories, and ones
that regularly reappear in – and indeed identify – liminal times and places. Fre-
quently filled, as in Dylan’s work, with metaphoric imagining, such stories tell
of and reflect transitions between or confluences of traditions and civilizations,
reaching across the borderline.1
In early modernism, a frequent borderline was the one that divided
the modern city from an imagined arcadia imagined because it never existed;
what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the hectic of disease of modern civili-
zation was as rampant in Paul Gauguins Tahiti as back home in Paris, and it
continued to remain as much of a danger in Juárez as on ”Desolation Row”2.
But the dream has remained more-or-less consistent: of being delivered by the
hand of fate into an experience of fusion with some new but somehow familiar
object – a place, a person, a sound, a sense – that exists outside quotidian rea-
lity and cognitive coherence.3 And the geography has remained fairly consistent,
too, the imaginary Eden of modernism being nearly always further south than
from where you came.4
CAT. 19
This gets us to Dylan’s recent Brazil Series of paintings, which defy
expectations insofar as there is hardly anything Edenic in their subjects at all,
the closest thing to it being a glimpse of untamed rainforest (cat. 14), a few
exotic dancers (cat. 19), and what looks like a great spaghetti dinner (cat. 17).
Eden is invoked by some illustration of its opposite, dystopian aspects – a huffy
argument (cat. 26), a street fight (cat. 38), a poisoning on a stage (cat. 31) –
and, to complicate things further, there are two paintings of favelas (cat. 1 &
2), the notorious hillside shantytowns on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, that
make them look positively cheerful. But the majority of the paintings show an
ecumenical array of people, places, and things that together read a bit like a
modern anthropologist’s report on the variety that is Brazil. So what is Dylan
up to here?
Those who have followed his career will know that his involvement in
the visual arts, as a regular draftsman of everyday scenes and a deeply engaged
viewer of paintings ancient and modern, goes back to his very beginnings as
THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 18 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 19
a mature songwriter and performer.5 He has occasionally published some dra- documentary concerns, and that of his longstanding, snapshot-like approach
wings and has acknowledged the influence of painting on the composition of to performance, being in fact neither documentary nor snapshot-like – how,
some songs, thereby offering us glimpses of his understanding of pictorial art; then, do these paintings partake of his visual imagination as we know it from
but only glimpses. He has made some serious forays into film; the visual art his recent as well as longstanding work outside painting? Given the length and
that the director Jim Jarmusch has claimed is closest to musical performance. productivity of his career, this is a large subject: like the streets of Rome, the
However, it is only with The Brazil Series, and The Drawn Blank Series of 2007, road to Brazil is filled with rubble too deep and ancient footprints far too nu-
based on drawings first published over a decade earlier, that formed the lead merous to possibly be dug up for this occasion. Therefore, what now follows
up to it,6 that he has now stepped forward publicly into the role of a painter. are two short essays that pick and choose among the evidential record to offer
It deserves notice that his assumption of this role comes on the heels a single view of Dylan’s pictorial enterprise, asking what the experience of The
of his assuming other new roles – notably as the author of his autobiographical Brazil Series tells us about the imperatives of his visual imagination as it travels
Chronicles; as the highly communicative subject of Martin Scorsese’s film docu- back and forth across the borderline between painting and song. Like the ver-
mentary; and as host of thematic radio programs of historical popular music – ses of some of his songs, the two parts of this diptych do not have to be taken
even as his own recent recordings have increasingly taken upon themselves the in the order that they are printed.
task of simultaneously documenting his musical heritage and his own personal
changes both as a performer and as a mortal being. Given these memorializing Lost in time
activities, we should not be too surprised that The Brazil Series somewhat re- “The work of art; a stopping of time,” wrote Pierre Bonnard in his diary on No-
sembles an anthropological report. vember 16, 1936.11 A work of art, Dylan said on January 26, 1978, should “hold
Nonetheless, although these paintings may at first resemble picture that time, breathe in that time, and stop time (...)”12 Let us start with this; and
postcards of Brazil, it soon becomes obvious that the figures look posed and end with it as well.
the scenes staged. In this respect, they differ from his recent documentary en- Stories are composed of events and existents: that is to say, of actions,
terprises, which indubitably were carefully prepared but do not show it; rather, on the one hand; and of the actors and the settings of actions, on the other.
were prepared to seem as unprepared as his recordings. Events shape the temporality of a narrative, one event after another, while
Musicians who have worked with Dylan speak of his recording process existents shape its spatiality, one location after another.13 This is why the tem-
CAT. 17
as being utterly opposed to any trace of contrivance. Rob Stoner: “Bob’s music poral dimension of song, and other word-chain compositions, has traditionally
really is dependent on catching a moment – they’re like snapshots, Polaro- seemed more suited to the telling of events, whereas the spatial dimension of
ids (…) The first take is gonna be better – even if it’s got some wrong notes painting, and other pictorial arts, to the describing of appearances. Needless to
or something.”7 Kris Kristoffersen: He “wanted first impressions, like a certain say, a song can be descriptive and a painting narrative; however, in both song
kind of painter.”8 But certainly not like the kind of painter who made The Bra- and painting, passages of description often slow down the narrative as our at-
zil Series. The paintings may ultimately derive from the quick capture of data, tention is shifted from the temporal to the spatial.
sights suddenly come upon and recorded in drawings, but they do not look like The ways and means by which the temporal and narrative, on the one
snapshots or film stills;9 rather, they show that they have been rehearsed and hand, answer to the spatial and descriptive, on the other, are critical to the
edited, posed for the viewer to look at them. Indeed, Dylan has said that, in realization of the Brazil paintings, most especially to the multi-figure composi-
making these paintings, he consciously reached out to an audience, as a painter tions in the series. Each painting typically shows a moment frozen in time and
who is also an entertainer is accustomed to do; only in a way that is consciously space, populated by figures whose suspended movements point out directions
different from how he reaches out in his songs.10 around the painting for the eyes of viewers to follow. The classic account of
The obvious question at this point is: If the character of Dylan’s Brazil constraints on the depiction of narrativity in visual art, in Gotthold Ephraim
paintings merely resembles that of his other recent productions, with their Lessing’s Laokoon of 1766, argued that, since painting was limited to the de-THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 20 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 21
piction of arrested actions, the best recourse would be to show “the pregnant spatial. In Bob Dylan (1962), his first album, there is little description to slow
moment” of action stopped at a climactic moment; ideally, one that implied, down the narrative because the songs are ballads with a “traditional sense
because unable to show, those that preceded and followed it. of time,”16 telling stories with one event happening after the next. However,
The painting called Talebearer (cat. 25) adopts such an approach; but description being a potential attribute, even means, of narration as well as a
this is not quite what happens in most of the other figure compositions. Ar- potential constraint on its momentum, a firm distinction between the two is
rested actions do, to a greater or lesser degree, explicate the narrative subject difficult to maintain.17 Dylan made it impossible to maintain in “A Hard Rain’s
of a painting: to a greater degree in The Argument (cat. 26); a lesser degree in A-Gonna Fall,” in The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), for there the narrative is
Renunciation (cat. 27); and a much lesser degree in Gypsies (cat. 7). Therefore, composed of one description after the next; more precisely, the descriptions
these are paintings that frequently call out for titles more specific than those are given narrative momentum as records of actions, one after another, of loo-
the artist has given them. But perhaps he has been less than specific in his titles king (“Oh, what did you see (…)?”), listening (“And what did you hear (…)?”),
because the principal task of the arrested actions is not to explicate the nar- and describing (“Oh, who did you meet (…)?”). Showing and telling are as one.
rative subjects; is not, in fact, to unfreeze and extend the action of the subject Grasping this option, Dylan was off and running.
in the viewer’s imagination by implying preceding and following moments. It The narrative of “One Too Many Mornings,” in The Times They Are-
is, rather, to maintain the freeze even while pointing out where to look – from A-Changing (1964), comprises a description of looking forward and backward
here to there, and then over there, extending the pictorial time of the painting “from the crossroads of my doorstep” down onto a street and back into a room.
by extending the duration of the viewer’s experience. Hence, in Gypsies, dissi- “Chimes of Freedom,” in Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), carries the “A Hard
milar elements made similar in a manner akin to that of rhymes – among them, Rain” approach further in interposed descriptions of the appearances produced
a pointing hand, a pointing bridge, a bench a bit like a bridge, and counting by the actions of an electric storm and of the human characters to which these
fingers forming a bridge – comprise a directional signage, what Dylan calls “a actions are dedicated – all wrapped within a narrative of looking, listening, and
rhythmic code,”14 that urges the viewer’s eyes around the painting. describing within an artificially extended reach of time, not simply between,
In order to understand how Dylan arrived at this approach, we need but “Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll.” The storm re-
briefly to remind ourselves of the changing give-and-take between description turns, as “The wind howls like a hammer,” at the end of “Love Minus Zero
and narration, and with it, between sight and sound, in the development of his / No Limit,” in Bringing It All Back Home (1965), a song in which the element
CAT. 26 CAT. 7
early songs. In so doing, we quickly come back to painting because the visual, of description increases (and increasingly puzzles) as the narrative progresses;
and painting in particular, had gained in importance for him by the mid-1970s to only here, as Christopher Ricks has observed, to seem to repudiate the tem-
such an extent that his songs adopted modalities of pictorial composition. The perate message that the narrative had been carrying.18 This gets us to Highway
actual practice of painting on Dylan’s part accompanied and aided this develop- 61 Revisited (1965) and the apotheosis of narrative-picturing subtleties of “Like a
ment; and the sources of his present, even more committed, preoccupation Rolling Stone,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” and, most
with painting may be found in what happened thirty years ago. The very terms notably, of “Desolation Row” – all songs in which the potential for propulsive-
that he has used to describe the changes brought by the experience of painting ness in narrative, especially sung narrative, is given its head, and pulls picturing
to the composition, most notably, of Blood on the Tracks (1974) – “There’s a along with it at break-neck speed, only to end in exhaustion. (“I do believe I’ve
certain structure to the lyrics which works under its own chronology. Shadows had enough.”)19
move – morning noon and night interacting with each other at the same time.”15 The pictorialism of “Desolation Row” is exceptional; the effect is per-
– are substantially the same as those he recently applied to the composition of haps of Dylan as Weegee, or some other roaming crime photographer. Accor-
The Brazil Series. ding to Al Kooper, ”Desolation Row” was Eighth Avenue in New York City, “an
I said that, in both song and painting, passages of description often area infested with whore houses, sleazy bars, and porno-supermarkets totally
slow down the narrative as our attention is shifted from the temporal to the beyond renovation or redemption.”20 And yet, that is not what Dylan shows us,THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 22 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE SIDE 23
but, rather, an analogous scenic universe of stock fictional or historical charac- ble to suppose that his withholding of visibility is a way of speaking of unavai-
ters in usually unspecified places; and his showing, while linked to his telling, is lability – of the unavailability of women, that is; one of his perennial subjects.
more frequently a matter of inducing visualization than of showing-and-telling So why would Dylan restore in the pencil and paint of The Drawn Blank Series
us what these characters or places actually look like. This is to say, descriptions what a description of desire and its impediments had withheld in his songs? As
are piled up to tell stories but not to specify appearances; it is our job to do the Ricks observes in a brilliant essay, influential on mine, on making visual images
visualizing, and they provide information enough for that. of Keats’s poetry, this would be no more than “the condescending granting of
So what does that visualizing comprise? Referring to Dylan’s next, se- pictorial assistance to words that were designed to stand in no need of support
venth album, a reviewer of his recent Drawn Blank paintings observed: “The from a sister art.”24
real Dylan fan is going to find songs (or lines from them) visualized in this or Likewise, The Brazil Series paintings cannot be thought to “visualize”
that painting. Take a long look at “Woman in Red Lion Pub” (fig. 1) (…) and images in Dylan’s songs. At the same time, the give-and-take between visual de-
songs including “Visions of Johanna” and “Just Like a Woman” from Blonde on scription and narrative exposition in the songs is also manifest in his paintings.
Blonde (1966) are bound to cross your mind.”21 In the songs, exchanges between sight and sound are enrolled in this larger re-
Is this, in fact, true? The woman who is “Just Like a Woman,” therefore ciprocation. For example, in “Visions of Johanna,” the potential of visualizing at
not always or entirely like a woman, is characterized visually in the song only by its most vivid is reserved for things not seen but heard: “In this room the heat
means of appurtenances that either de-individualize her (“her fog, her amphe- pipes just cough.” “We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight.” And,
tamine and her pearls”) or that she no longer possesses (“her ribbons and her in a different mode, “The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain.”
bows”). In the latter respect, it is a bit like the famous story of an Irishman We look for these sights as we hear of them, just as we look for sights
giving directions to a visitor by listing a string of landmarks that have all burned when prompted by movements in our peripheral vision. That is to say, we are
down. As for “Visions of Johanna,” the title points out that Johanna exists in turned unexpectedly but expectantly to these details as to the appurtenances
the words of the song not in visualizations but in visions, the most striking of in “Just Like a Woman”; both are accessories clustered around and periphe-
which is the very famous one glimpsed in the face of the near-at-hand charac- ral to our vision of the actual protagonists that, catching our attention, offer
BOB DYLAN WOMAN IN RED LION PUB 2007
GOUACHE, WATERCOLOUR OVER DIGITAL
ter, Louise: “The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face / Where themselves as moments of unforeseen revelation.25 It is with a similar sense of
FINE ART PRINT ON DECKLE-EDGE PAPER
76.5 X 61 CM
these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.” Not Johanna’s place but prompting that, in the Brazil figure paintings, we are caught by gestures and ex-
FIG. 1 “my place” – because, looking at the mirror of Louise’s face (“She’s delicate and pressions that sponsor our shifts of attention and swerves of distraction from
seems like a mirror”),22 I see the vision of my face reflected there, only to see part to part of their compositions. Their sustaining grasp carries us, at times
it replaced by visions of Johanna. How can a face that mutates from Louise’s to without our quite knowing why, across the space and time that is internal to
mine to Johanna’s be thought to be visualized in Dylan’s painting of one Woman these paintings – as the artist might say, spellbound:
in Red Lion Pub? – a woman seen from the back, for that matter.23 Of his film, Renaldo and Clara (1977), he recently said, Ever look at
This is not to say, however, that we cannot ourselves visualize these a painting by Paul Cézanne, any one, take your pick Boy in the Red Vest, Les
very imperfectly described heroines. Visualizing means forming a mental image Grandes Baigneuses, any number of others – you get lost in the painting for that
of something not visible, and that is what we find ourselves doing as we follow period of time. And you breathe – minutes are going by and you wouldn’t know
these songs. In fact, it is because Dylan withholds things from full descriptive it, you’re spellbound. Paintings have a certain power. The movie was supposed
visibility in the words of his songs that we find ourselves wanting to visualize to have been like that.”26
them. Wanting is akin to desiring, and unsatisfied want will increase desire just Even the most wishful of Edenic dreams do not, at heart, express a
as impediments will extend it. Therefore, when Dylan throws up barriers to craving for some particular object or place; “the quest,” as the psychoanalyst
visibility in his songs, we should stop and wonder why he is doing this impeding Christopher Bollas puts it, “is not to possess the object; rather, the object is
and encouraging of our visualizing. In the case of these heroines, it is reasona- pursued in order to surrender to it as a medium that alters the self.”27 Therefore,THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 24 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 25
it is not a matter of geography, or indeed of subject matter, at all. Although pick something out and create a song out of them.” He recently enlarged upon
travel narratives and associated forms of transitional fiction, like ballads and this:
children’s stories, are particularly adept at the telling of transformational expe- “George Bellows can take a barn that is standing right in front of him,
riences – which is why they play so prominent a role in Dylan’s work – it is not hook it up with an old Packard from 20 miles away, a strutting peacock from
travel but transformation that they sponsor. And sponsorship of transformation around the corner, a whole bunch of models that he poses and paints individu-
in an experiential context brings with it commitment to the efficacy of the ally, casts it all in a certain shadow and light, maybe even throw in some prize
artistic; and to an artistic engagement as, again in Bollas’s words, “a caesura in fighters and an overhanging bridge and call it a painting. The experience didn’t
time when the subject feels held in symmetry and solitude by the spirit of the exist before, nor will it ever in the future, however the reality of it is undenia-
object.”28 It does matter whether or not a work of art can describe an Edenic ble. It’s not that he starts out willfully to paint this picture, but the feel of the
encounter, but it matters a great deal more whether or not it can deliver one. idea comes to reveal itself. It’s something for the viewer to deal with.”32
Born in time That’s also more or less what Dylan seems to have done in making the bright,
Dylan took drawing lessons in high school and returned to drawing in the early strong Music from Big Pink cover. However, in the songs, the images are revea-
1960s in New York, which is also when he began to visit the city’s art museums, led one after another in a prescribed sequence, whereas in the Band cover, they
particularly The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern are shown simultaneously to be taken sequentially at the viewer’s discretion,
BOB DYLAN MUSIC FROM BIG PINK 1968
Art.29 It is unclear when he took up painting, but it may have not been until the visual artist being able only to suggest or urge particular pathways for per- ALBUM COVER
FIG. 2
his wife Sara bought him a box of oil paints for his twenty-seventh birthday, in ceptual experience.
Woodstock in 1968.30 In any event, one of the two best known of his early pain- By this time, Dylan was already putting together images in his songs
tings was made that year, as the cover for the Band’s Music from Big Pink (1968) in a way that pulled against the temporal sequences of their delivery. Hence,
(fig. 2); the second for the cover of his Self-Portrait (1970) (fig. 3). For the artist, in this same interview he speaks of how those on the album John Wesley Har-
their continuing circulation is, at best, a reminder of how far he has come since ding (1967) “lack this traditional sense of time,” as compared to conventional
then. They have that function for his viewers, too; but they are additionally ballads.33 One example he gives is of “the cycle of events working in a rather
instructive in isolating two ways of composing that Dylan will bring together in reverse order” in “All Along the Watchtower.” With a song like this, “you have
later, more sophisticated works. to think about it after you hear it, and it sort of reveals itself backwards, but
The Band cover (fig. 4) is a fantasy in an apparently unschooled style, with a ballad, you don’t necessarily have to think about it after you hear it, it
showing a group of musicians, one sprawled over a piano, with a prickly looking can all unfold to you.” The difference is between time that unfolds sequentially
tree in the background and an elephant walking in from the right. It is a work over the duration of a ballad, forming a seamless narrative whole, and time that
of Dylanesque Surrealism in line with what had been developing in his work moves dissonantly and nonsequentially over that duration and that, therefore,
since Mr. Tambourine Man (1964). That it was intended to have a naïve and invites the listener to keep on replaying it in the mind in order to grasp the
chimerical appearance is suggested by the similar, but more sober cover that simultaneous order of its parts and the potential narratives that they may be
Dylan made the same year for the folk song magazine, Sing Out! 31 Moreover, in made to compose. Just like looking at a painting. Nonetheless, in a song the
the same issue of that magazine, there appeared an interview between Dylan events are still delivered one after the other in the time of the performance.
and John Cohen and Happy Traum, in which he used an analogy with painting A visual artist, who arranges events in space, can constrain, but not BOB DYLAN SELF-PORTRAIT 1970
ALBUM COVER
to respond to the suggestion that, “It seems that people are bombarded all the compel, the viewer to take them in a particular order; and the simplest way of FIG. 3
time with random thoughts and outside impulses, and it takes a songwriter to doing so – seen, for example, in Egyptian reliefs and Greek vases – is to estab-
lish a ground register along which the pictorial events can be arranged, one af-
ter the next, in such a way as to urge a single spatiotemporal reading. Given itsTHE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 26 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 27
clarity, this was a favored method of the “pregnant moment” approach to nar- to be composed by the rectangle it inhabits. This happens with the face on
rative representation, discussed in the “Lost in Time” essay, and we see it used the Self-Portrait cover; it seems to design the painting and to be designed by
with that approach in Dylan’s The Tale Bearer (cat. 25). A less linear narrative, it. With larger bodily shapes, in elongated rectangles rather than squares, the
however, may be produced by creating a color connection between pictorial posture of the figure will need to be engaged in order to activate this reciprocal
events; something we see in the work of great colorists from Titian through design process.
Henri Matisse, where a sometimes very complex pictorial time is produced by Jumping ahead to around 1990, a splendid example of this process is
the eye being urged to respond to contrasts and echoes of color, and thereby the Two Sisters pencil drawing published in the original, 1994 Drawn Blank book
to jump from instant to instant across and around a composition.34 This is, ne- (fig. 4). The twinned bodies are overlapped, but they are depicted in plane, so
edless to say, a more difficult approach to the issue, so it is fascinating to see that they appear in places to be abutted, as comprising tangential not in fact
Dylan attempting it in a very rudimentary manner in the Band cover image. He overlapping forms. It is, therefore, a single, two-figured shape that governs
associates the three musicians holding string instruments by the color pairings the space in which it is drawn, the artist seeming to submit his design to the
of their respective costumes – red-yellow, blue-yellow, and green-ocher – that force of its figuration. And yet, the shape of the figuration is governed by the
speak to and answer each other as notes or chords do.35 It is pretty basic stuff, geometry of the pictorial shape, the artist submitting to his material means in
CAT. 7 but it does show that Dylan is not merely setting down a fantasy image but order to gain command over the figural shape.37
thinking about how a picture can be constructed by pictorial means. Although many of the original Drawn Blank drawings are as strong as
Since the shape and size of area occupied by a color influence the the colored versions of 2007, the added coloration brings with it the associa-
intensity with which that color is perceived, the color-connection method is tion of a performance upon the original drawing, akin to the effect of timbre
closely related to the shape-connection method used in The Brazil Series. Dylan – mellow or reedy, dark or bright, clear or flat – in the musical performance of
makes us aware of this in, among other works, Barbershop (cat. 28), where the a lyric. In this case among others, however, coloration (seemingly helped by
rhyme of areas of similar shape and color but very different size associates the knowledge of Max Beckman’s paintings) assumes the additional pictorial func-
gown of the man having his hair cut and the beard of the foreground figure, in- tion of amplifying and complicating the fluctuations into and out of depth and
viting us, as Dylan’s rhymes often do, to infer a causal connection between un- lateral slides across the surface (fig. 4). Here, strange composite images ensue:
likely partners. However, color is muted in most of The Brazil Series, a limitation the bent leg of the foreground sister attaches to her sibling’s midriff, seemingly
that may well be a response to the less successful works in The Drawn Blank as much above as behind her; her bent arm attaches to her sibling’s face, and
Series often being those with high prismatic color, and having the advantage of the fanning fingers of that arm to the fanning verticals of a wall that is nomi-
giving the greater compositional role to more easily managed tonal likenesses nally but not visually in the far distance. Far more than in the rudimentary Mu-
and contrasts – as well as avoiding, except in a few works, a quality of south- sic from Big Pink cover, connections, and disconnections, made by the shaping
of-the-border picturesque. of color, albeit tonal color, make the Two Sisters sheets among the strongest of
Dylan has tended to shrug off the cover for Self-Portrait (cat. 3), saying the 2007 compositions.38 They set the pattern for the most compelling works
that nobody had remembered to commission cover art, so he did it himself in The Brazil Series – among them the puppet play of Gypsies (cat. 7), the bodily
in about five minutes.36 Be that as it may, it is a strong image, the disembo- network of Sideshow (cat. 19), and the diorama-like Countrymen (cat. 9) – which
died, ironically disengaged mask-face wedged into the pictorial rectangle and likewise offer us images of apparent reality, unlike the fantastic scenario on the
torqued there through asymmetries of drawing and color. This is an ancient Band cover.
BOB DYLAN TWO SISTERS 2007
manner of composing figural images, deriving from the need to fit them into A distinction between these two modes of forming mental images – one GOUACHE, WATERCOLOUR OVER DIGITAL
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assigned architectural compartments, and one that continues to serve artists consistent with reality, the other not so – had surfaced in the creation of Blonde 61 X 76.5 CM
FIG. 4
well; its remarkable longevity largely derives from how the bodily shape, con- on Blonde. As Michael Coyle and Debra Rae Cohen have observed, its fantastic,
tained in such a manner, may be adjusted so as to seem both to compose and Surrealistic representations of reality are consistently destabilized – most no-
CAT. 25THE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 28 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 29
ticeably in representations of women, causing them to seem absent from the Blocking out things. Being immune to distractions. Actuality. You can’t improve
songs ostensibly for or about them, but also in the self-representations that run on it actually.”45
through an album whose very title screams confusion of identities, while also In fact, the situation is a bit more complicated than that because, and
initializing BoB.39 (“Yeah, well, I’m everybody anyway.”40) This advancement of this is the third critical question we have to ask: If Dylan, the conscious ar-
and yet retreat from the fantastic speaks of an important moment of transition tist, is focused on actuality, what does he mean by doing consciously what he
in Dylan’s work; and he has spoken of the creation of Blonde on Blonde as the unconsciously felt? To start with, what does this mean in the context of his art
moment after which he lost his ability to compose “unconsciously,” presumably lessons? To my knowledge, the only example Dylan has given of what Raeben
meaning unselfconsciously.41 It was at this point that painting was called upon specifically asked him to do is: “he put this vase in front of me and he says,
to help. But neither the fantasy image on Music from Big Pink nor the deadpan ‘You see this vase?’ And he put it there for 30 seconds or so and then he took
Self-Portrait cover image quite served. it away and he said, ‘Draw it.’ Well, I mean, I started drawing it and I couldn’t
“It took me a long time to get to do consciously what I used to be able remember shit about this vase – I’d looked at it but I didn’t see it.”46
to do unconsciously,” he told Jonathan Cott in 1978.42 The echo is inescapable Effectively, Raeben was using the early modern, neo-Symbolist tea-
of Coleridge’s famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination: ching method that Matisse used, when he advised his students: “Close your
the former, spontaneous and elemental; the latter, mitigated by the conscious eyes and hold the vision, and then do the work with your own sensibility.”47 Of
act of imagining,43 which would now become Dylan’s method. He added: his own work, Matisse said, “if I close my eyes, I see objects better than with
“I had the good fortune to meet a man in New York City who taught my eyes open,”48 meaning that the affect produced by an object would better
me how to see. He put my mind and my hand together in a way that allowed be grasped after he had been looking at it, which aided the production of an
me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt. And I didn’t know how to pull image of the object in which denotation and connotation were combined.
it off. I wasn’t sure it could be done in songs because I hadn’t written a song Dylan speaks of how, with a song on John Wesley Harding (1967), “There
like that. But when I started doing it, the first album I made was Blood on the are walls within walls. Time itself is a shape. Everything happens within cer-
Tracks. Everybody agrees that that was pretty different, and what’s different tain perimeters.”49 So he was somewhat prepared for what Raeben, like Ma-
about it is that there are characters in the song that have their own specific tisse before him, was urging: basically, to listen to the Symbolist poet Stép-
code of behavior that might bump up against our sense of time. They all exist hane Mallarmés famous mandate, To paint not the thing but the effect it
CAT. 7 CAT. 19
in a common area yet they’re in personal territory. Also, you’ve got yesterday, produces;50 then paint both. To do so required that both looking and remem-
today, and tomorrow in the same room, and there’s very little that you can’t bering looking had to be done in a concentrated way: the deeper the concen-
imagine happening or not happening. When and where and to whom makes no tration on the object, in actuality and in memory, the more that the mind will
difference.” find in it associations that the mind provides, associations intrinsically, imagi-
natively connected to the object, and not fantasies. To this Dylan adds, What
The first critical question raised by this statement is: Why did Dylan speak Mallarmé says is true. Basically thats what a songwriter does. Its the sound of
of being taught how to see, not taught how to paint, when it was some four the words which make the effect. Im not sure if you can apply that technique
months of painting lessons in 1974 under the tutelage of an artist named Nor- to painting. Personally, my type of painting is just the opposite of that. I paint
man Raeben that effected this transformation?44 The answer, I take it, is that for the theater, for an audience.51
his painting lessons focused on painting visible objects, learning the discipli- Dylan said of Raeben, “He connected my hand and my eye up to some
ne of mind-eye-hand response to the perceptual world. Dylan says as much degree.”52 “I had a lot of fantasy dreams. He doesn’t respect fantasy. He respects
when answering, for Allen Ginsberg in 1977, the second question raised by this only imagination.”53 The 1966 songs in Blonde on Blonde distanced themselves
statement: What precisely does he means by doing something consciously? from their own Surrealism for its fantasy, but the 1968 Music from Big Pink pain-
Ginsberg: “And what does a conscious artist practice?” Dylan: “Being awake. ting epitomized a druggy Dylanesque Surrealism. Now, however, Dylan beganTHE BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 30 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROSS THE BORDERLINE PAGE 31
to push against fantasy in favor of imagination – “the voluntary summonings present: made at once absent and present as it is shaped by the imagination;
of the conception of things absent or impossible,” in John Ruskin’s celebrated shaped into “the code” of a painting with “no sense of time,” except for the
words; “and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination partly consists in its time created by following the trail laid down by the rhythmic code. There are
knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of their many ways of doing this. Dylan’s is a deeply atavistic way that pays the price
actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent presence or of not connecting with the most contemporary of idioms in order to retain
reality (….)”54 contact with the figurative art of the past.58 But, as T.S. Eliot cautioned, “The
Hence, the imaginative is based in a strong sense of the actual, but perpetual task of poetry is to make old things new. Not necessarily to make
focuses on the actual only to break up its fixity in time and space. Speaking of new things (….)”59 And what Dylan himself said of “traditional” songs, “they’re
subsequent songs that benefited from Raeben’s lessons, Dylan referred to “the not going to die,”60 reminds us that the old methods that he uses to make his
ones that more or less have the break-up of time, where pieces of it come at new paintings – “I didn’t invent this, you know. Many others have worked this
you from all angles.”55 It is the very intensity of a Ruskinian focus on the actual way.”61 – breathe still.
that causes the imaginative break-up of the actual into shards that reflect its
surrounding space and time; and hence, sights, sounds, odors in the sensible
world absent and impossible otherwise to make present and real. In the new
songs, this meant following the imperatives of painting. Of “Tangled Up in Blue,”
Dylan said,
“Look, the carpenter in the song is in the present. He’s up to date in
the moment. He’s carrying no baggage but he’s conjuring up a lot of past ima-
ges. You don’t know how far past. Could be yesterday could be ten years ago.
He’s under a flat roof but the ceiling could be sloping. You wouldn’t know it – it
all has the same reflection. I suppose the song is like a Rubens painting - maybe
Massacre of the Innocents or something - only difference is you hear it instead
of see it.”56
CAT. 7
But if a song becomes like a painting, what is left for a painting to do? Dylan
says,
“Nothing, concerning the song, but a lot concerning the composition
of a narrative painting. Mood always directly affects the nature of a song. You
can begin with it or end with it. But because painting is so tactile, mood has
little to do with its make-up - where it starts or where it ends. The two art
forms are worlds apart. Just because you can do one, it doesn’t necessarily fol-
low that you can do the other. Each has a different purpose in how you adjust
to life and expose things.”57
A song, like a painting, can make us spellbound, lost in time. But a painting
can also allow us to discover, found in the time of our viewing, what it means
for the actual actually to be seen to be absent, even as it is made apparentlyYou can also read
