Press Cuttings - halcyongallery.com · Press Cuttings Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008 ... entre 1989 y 1992, Dylan fue captando con sus lápices y pinceles ... 500 canciones

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International Press Cuttings Contents

El Periodico de Catalunya (Spain)Tuesday 10 June 2008 San Francisco Business TimesSaturday 10 May 2008

The Age Online (Australia)Tuesday 10 June 2008 Le Temps (Switzerland)Saturday 21 June 2008 Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 June 2008 Sunday Star Times magazine (New Zealand)Sunday 22 June 2008





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008El Periodico de CatalunyaTuesday 10 June 2008Circ. 167,804

(COLOR) - Pub: PERIODICO ND Doc: 06895M Red: 60% Ed: Primera EDICION Cb: 00 Enviado por: Dia: 09/06/2008 - Hora: 22:54

MARTES10 DE JUNIO DEL 200868 el PeriódicoConexión a internet: http://www.elperiodico.com

��ESPECTÁCULOSCULTURAGENTETELEVISIÓNi Faemino y Cansado regresan

con sus disparatados gags. Eldúo madrileño mantiene lachispa y el buen humor.

‘Son dos’TEATRE BORRÀS, 21.30 HORAS

[email protected]

Bob Dylan expone en Londres losdibujos que le inspiraban sus giras

BEGOÑA ARCELONDRES

Poeta, genio de la música, elgran Bob Dylan revela aho-ra una nueva faceta artísti-ca. La elegante galería Halc-

yon de Londres expondrá, desde estesábado y hasta finales de julio, unaamplia selección de pinturas y dibu-jos del cantante. The Drawn Blank Se-ries es una muestra de unas 300obras, llenas de fuerza y color.

Durante sus largas giras por losescenarios de América, Europa yAsia, entre 1989 y 1992, Dylan fuecaptando con sus lápices y pinceleslos paisajes, ambientes y personajesque desfilaban ante sus ojos. En mu-chas ocasiones eran las vías del trenvacías, cruzándose en el infinito. Enotras eran bocetos de las habitacio-nes de hotel por las que iba pasan-do, todas diferentes y tan iguales ala vez. Había también bares de carre-tera, con un cierto aire de desola-ción. A veces Dylan dibujaba retra-tos de seres anónimos que le llama-ban la atención. Abundan las muje-res anónimas, desnudas en ocasio-nes, con las que quizás hizo el amor.

Aquellos apuntes apresurados,realizados por puro placer se convir-tieron en lienzos y cuadros en el2007. Ahora cuelgan de los murosexquisitos de una de las galerías másprestigiosas de la capital británica.

Algunos críticos creen ver en laspinturas de Dylan trazos y coloresque serían influencias de impresio-nistas como Vicent van Gogh o

quizás Gaugin. El músico, que hacumplido 67 años y lleva 46 de ca-rrera, afirma no tener ningún maes-tro. De haber alguna influencia, «essimplemente por accidente o porinstinto». «No he tenido ninguna for-mación académica, donde aprendercómo hacer algo al estilo de Degas ode Van Gogh, o cómo copiar un DaVinci», ha comentado con humor aldiario The Times.

LIBRO DE BOCETOS / «No tengo facili-dad para copiar paso a paso». Fue ladirectora del museo de la ciudad ale-mana de Chemnitz, Ingrid Mössin-ger, quien descubrió el libro de boce-tos de Dylan, que había publicadoRandom House y le convenció paraque los trabajara poniéndoles color.Al músico le encantó la idea y se pu-so manos a la obra con entusias-mo. Escaneó y amplió los vie-jos dibujos y durante 8meses ensayó con acua-rela, guash, lápiz yotras técnicas. Con-cienzudo, tenaz, enalgunas ocasionesha realizado tresversiones diferen-tes a partir de unmismo original,como es el casode Woman neara window (Mujercerca de unaventana) o Kit-chen (Cocina).«Es un artista

que encara las artes plásticas comootras de sus facetas artísticas, condisciplina y talento», afirma la comi-saria de la exposición, Kate Ander-son. A pesar de los colores vibrantes,muchas de las pinturas de Dylan ha-blan de soledad y de abando-no. Su aten-ción se fija amenudo enalgún deta-

lle del espacio urbano, como un to-bogán para niños, una terraza, unabicicleta apoyada en un árbol, o lafachada de ladrillo de un viejo edifi-cio de viviendas. Abundan las esce-nas callejeras y los retratos de muje-res anónimas, como Woman en Red

Lion Pub (Mujer en el Pub el LeónRojo), una figura femeninasentada de espaldas en la ba-rra de un bar con un llamati-vo vestido de color amarillo.

O Two Sisters, (Dos her-manas), realizadaen fuertes tonosazules y verdes.

Más oscuro e intenso esel Portrait of Woman Smiling

(Retrato de Mujer sonriendo) ennegro y ocre. «En la mayoría de

los casos no sabemos quienesson estas mujeres. Era gente con la

que Dylan se iba encontrando du-rante sus giras y por alguna razóndecidía pintarlas», afirma Anderson.

La galería londinense Halcyon hapublicado un lujoso catálogo conuna cuidada reproducción de todoslos trabajos del artista, que es un im-pagable recuerdo de una experien-cia única. El músico, que ha escrito alo largo de toda su carrera más de500 canciones y ha publicado 44discos de los que ha vendido 110 mi-llones de ejemplares, estará en Es-paña este verano, donde tiene pre-vistos varios conciertos.H

La elitista galería Halcyon exhibe unas 300 obrasdel cantautor impregnadas de fuerza y de color

El músico captó entre 1989 y 1992 los paisajesy personajes que iban desfilando ante sus ojos

LA OTRA FACETA DE UN CREADOR ÚNICO

33 Cuatro de los cuadros dibujados y coloreados por Bob Dylan que expone la galería Halcyon de Londres. Abajo, el cantautor estadounidense.

IMÁGENES DE LOS CUADROS ENwww.elperiodico.com

nterferenciasi

Paolo Conte dedicó una de suscanciones más melancólicamen-te crueles a esos pobres diablosque trabajan en lo suyo de lunesa viernes y que los fines de sema-na desempolvan pinceles para serdurante unas horas lo que nuncahan podido ser a jornada comple-ta. Bob Dylan no es exactamenteun pobre diablo, sino uno de losseres más influyentes del sigloXX, pero sus obras recuerdan alas de esos pittori della domenica so-bre los que ironizaba el cantautorde Asti. ¿Llegarían a una galería sino estuvieran firmadas por el bar-do de Minnesota? Lo dudo. Sinser tan horripilantes como las deotros artistas de fin de semana–pensemos en Rafael Alberti, loslamentables dibujitos de GünterGrass o los cuadros de búhos he-chos con chinchetas de CamiloSesto–, la verdad es que las acua-relas del señor Zimmerman noson gran cosa.

De EspañaRAMÓN

El pintordominguero





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008San Francisco Business TimesSaturday 10 May 2008Unique Users. N/A





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008The Age Online (Australia)Tuesday 10 June 2008Unique Users. 2,967,282





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008Le Temps (Switzerland)Saturday 21 June 2008Circ. 50,000

Culture Le TempsSamedi 21 juin 200820

BobDylan chez lesmarchands d’artExposition Le musicien et poète américain présente et vend à Londres une centaine d’œuvres picturales,tirées de dessins réalisés en tournée. Succès commercial total pour une icône absente

Florence Gaillard, Londres

Pas sûr que, signés Robert Zim-merman, les 97 tableaux présen-tésdepuis ceweek-endaient eu lesfaveurs de la Halcyon Gallery. Onest àMayfair, chiquissimequartierde boutiques et de galeries d’artducœurdeLondres. Làoù lesbou-tiques font tout pour ressembler àdes galeries d’art et où les galeriesd’art ont des airs de défilés demode. Là où les maisons de venteaux enchères bondissent de re-cords en records, protégées contrevents et marées de crises financiè-res qui donnent comme un airsoucieux aux banquiers de la City.Pas sûr donc que, signés Robert

Zimmerman, les 97 tableaux aientété, en moins de deux jours, ven-dus entre – chut, c’est secret –150000 et 300000 francs chacun,au moins. Mais les tableaux sontsignés Bob Dylan. Un tableau delui, et c’est le mythe accroché au-dessus de la cheminée. Sa signa-ture,unpetitboutd’histoiregéné-rationnelle qui ne nous glisserapas entre les doigts. Et un fétichequi doit sûrement garantir à l’ac-

quéreurunepart intangibledu ta-lent, de la liberté, de l’aura del’auteur.Donc Dylan expose, c’est une

première. Si l’on en croit son auto-biographie (Chronicles: VolumeOne, 2004), il a toujours dessinédepuis 1961. Et puis, avant la mu-sique, Dylan a tenté une écoled’art, quelques mois, sans convic-tion.Outre des couvertures dedis-ques et demagazines, une série dedessins avait été rassemblée dansun livre en 1994. Et puis, l’au-tomne dernier, un musée alle-mand a présenté ses œuvres. Maisjamais le Zim, chanteur,musicien,poète, réalisateur, désormais PrixPulitzer, n’avait réuni ses dessinset peintures pour les présenterglobalement au public et les ven-dre.A l’origine, il s’agit de dessins

que l’artiste a réalisés à ses heuresperdues lors de tournées entre1982 et 1992. Bien plus tard, Dy-lan a scanné ses dessins, les a im-primés en grand format, puis y aposé la couleur – gouache ouaquarelle. D’où ces séries exposéesà Londres, d’un même motif dé-

cliné dansdes tons complètementdifférents, accentuant ici tel dé-tail, ignorant là tel autre. La mé-thode coule de source, elle s’appa-rente à celle de Dylan chanteur –toujours réinventer ses chansons,réinterpréter pour la dix-millièmefois «Blowin’ in the Wind», tenterselon l’humeur des versions folk,blues, rock, lentes, lasses ou fron-deuses. Ainsi de ces Deux Sœurs –déclinées plusieurs fois, compli-ces et rieuses ici, là indifférentesouplutôt rivales selon ledétail desexpressions, et dansdes tons com-plètement différents.Si Dylan a fait des portraits, la

majorité de ses sujets sont les dé-tails anodins de lieux anodins. Lacommode d’une chambre d’hôtel,le coin nocturne d’un bar, unecage d’escalier, la piscine d’unmo-tel. Les lieux sont vides de pré-sencehumaine,urbainsouperdusdans des recoins d’Etats ruraux; lepoint de vue est surélevé, mar-quant la distance et une sépara-tion d’avec le monde et ses cou-leurs vives, voire criardes.Une série de six pièces porte sur

les voies de trains. Du crayon noir

et des ciels en feu. Iconographiedu voyage et de la fuitemais, dansle cas du chanteur, retour au pay-sage rassurant. «J’ai vu des trainsdepuis tout enfant. Le son d’untrain dans le lointainme donne lesentiment d’être chez moi, d’êtrelà où rien ne manque», a com-mentéDylan.

Dans une interview donnée auTimes, Dylan cite Matisse, Derain,Monet et Gauguin comme lespeintres qui ont marqué sa jeu-nesse. Un Homme sur le pont qui ales traits d’un cousin de VincentVan Gogh pastiche le peintre hol-landais. Dans les textes de présen-tation des œuvres, des critiquesévoquent Degas ou, plus probant,Toulouse-Lautrec. Si Dylan, lesongwriter, a été l’avant-garde des

années folk et rock du XXe siècleaméricain, Dylan le peintre est da-vantage un illustrateur du XIXesiècle européen.Si Dylan est Dylan, ce n’est pas

grâce à sa peinture, on l’aura com-pris. Il ne prétend pas le contraire,d’ailleurs. La seule chose qu’il pré-tende toujours et encore, c’est l’in-capacité du monde entier à com-prendre ou interpréter ses gestes,y compris picturaux. En tournéescandinave (le Neverending Tourn’en finit pas de tourner), Dylanviendra à Londres ou ne viendrapas, le mystère est entretenu. Onse contente pour l’instant de quel-ques citations de l’artiste, gravéesici et là sur les murs de la galerie,toute vouée au culte du héros. Dugenre: «Le propos de mes dessinsest très indéfini. Ce sont des des-sins très personnels.» Ça n’aiderapas beaucoup les exégètes, maisc’est signéDylan.

TheDrawnBlank Series, de BobDylan. HalcyonGallery, 24 BrutonStreet, Londres.www.halcyongallery.comJusqu’au 13 juillet.

«Deux sœurs», Bob Dylan, 2007. Elles sont déclinées plusieurs fois, complices et rieuses ici, là indifférentes ou plutôt rivales, et dans des tons complètement différents. ARCHIVES

PROLITTERIS

Bob Dylan viendra-t-ilà Londres ou neviendra-t-il pas?Le mystèreest entretenu

La fortune de Stieg Larsson refuséeLa section du Parti socialiste suédois d’Umeaa arefusé jeudi l’argent que l’auteur de la trilogieMillé-nium, Stieg Larsson, lui avait attribué dans un testa-ment de 1977 retrouvé récemment. «Nous ne vou-lons pas participer à des querelles de testament etnous ne voulons pas toucher de l’argent de cettefaçon», a déclaré le porte-parole du parti. (AFP)

Brèves

MuséeU Lemusée consacré au peintreMathurinMéheut en Bretagne varendre 5000œuvres, données il ya plus de trente ans par la veuve del’artiste, à ses héritiers qui s’esti-ment lésés car la cote dupeintrebretonn’a cessé depuis demontersur lemarché de l’art. (AFP)

PicassoU Le tribunal correctionnel deParis a débouté vendredi la peti-te-fille de Picasso,Marina Picasso,qui poursuivait en diffamationl’auteure et l’éditeur d’un livre, Lavérité sur Jacqueline Picasso, quitente de réhabiliter la dernièreépouse de l’artiste. (AFP)

AGenève, BujarMarika crie à l’eauExposition Travail sur le réchauffement climatique

Il s’est dédié tardivement auxarts plastiques. Bujar Marika uti-lise les moyens d’un art construitpour rendre des idées et pour agirsur les consciences autant que surle goût. L’exposition à la galerieAndata.ritorno de l’artiste d’ori-gine albanaise, qui vit en Suissedepuis 1992, a pour thème le ré-chauffement climatique. L’inten-tion n’est pas d’alerter une fois deplus du danger imminent, de lan-cer un cri, vite perdudans le brou-haha; elle consiste à imprimerdans les regards, dans les esprits,des images simples et fortes, quimûriront en chacun.

Soit un agencement de pendu-les «aveugles», enhommageàBor-ges, l’écrivain devenu aveuglemais resté clair-lucide, agence-ment qui figure un mot inscrit enécriture braille. Blind Time, ce dis-positif de pois noirs, nous renvoieen miroir notre époque aveugleaux conséquences de son propreaveuglement… Les autres piècesmisent aussi sur le pouvoir sinis-tre du noir. Ce sont des masquesantipollution, imbibés de tein-ture, associés à un seul titre, 4 x 4,qui suffit à donner du sens au tra-vail; la photographie d’une pis-cine adossée à la mer; la vision

d’une baignoire – vide – flottantdans l’eau claire, bref la vision desabsurdités auxquelles mène l’in-conscience de notre société.

Kitde survieA la sortie, des bouteilles éti-

quetées «Larmes de la banquise»,titre de l’entier de l’exposition,sont proposées au visiteur, nonseulement comme souvenir d’unebrève expérience, mais, d’unema-nièreplusmenaçante, commeélé-ment essentiel d’un kit de survie:«ô eau!», est-il écrit sur le cartond’invitation. Né en 1943 à Tirana,Bujar Marika a rencontré Max Bill

à Berne dans les années 1990. Ils’est intéressé à l’art concret zuri-choismais, plus encore passionnépar Duchamp et les artistes con-ceptuels, il privilégie depuis unepratique qui recourt à une formeordonnée, pour donner corps àune pensée engagée.Laurence Chauvy

BujarMarika: Larmes de labanquise, installations.Andata.ritorno, laboratoire d’artcontemporain (rue du Stand 37,Genève, tél. 022/329 60 69).Me-sa 14-18h.Jusqu’au 28 juin.

L’Eurone videpas les sallesFootmania Cinémaset théâtres restenttrès fréquentés

Marie-Pierre Genecand

Les directeurs des cinémas etthéâtres romands sont soulagés.Contrairement au raz de maréeprévu, la footmania ne vide pasleurs salles. Après presque deuxsemaines de compétition, tous, deNeuchâtel à Genève, constatentune fréquentation inespérée. Lesraisons? Le mauvais temps, évi-demment, jusqu’aumilieude la se-maine passée, mais aussi la sortiedeblockbusters comme Indiana Jo-nesetSexand the city. Les footopho-bes peuvent donc se réjouir: cesjours enSuisse, il y aunevie socialeendehors duballon rond.«Avec le beau temps et l’Euro,

onavaitbudgété trèspeud’entréesen juin. Or, c’est tout le contrairequi sepasse, se réjouitCharlesVin-zio, directeur de Pathé-Genève.Notre fréquentation est si bonnequ’elle dépasse même celle d’unmois de juin ordinaire.» C’est quela météo, elle, n’a rien d’ordinaire.Et les exploitants de salles de ci-néma ont bénéficié de la sortieconsécutive de deux grosses poin-tures. «Sûr que ces coups de poucedu calendrier sont bienvenus»,confirme Teodor Teodorescu, di-recteur de Pathé-Lausanne dontles15 salles, réparties entre Le Flonet les Galeries, projettent large-ment Indiana Jones et Sex and TheCity. Sentiment identique chez Vi-tal Epelbaum, patron des cinémasneuchâtelois et biennois. «Les lo-comotives fonctionnent bien. Eton espère encore beaucoup desprochaines grosses sorties, Phéno-mènes ou Le journal d’une baby-sit-ter.»

Moinsde cinémaàBerneMais même du côté du cinéma

d’auteur, on ne note pas d’hémor-ragie dans l’affluence des specta-teurs. «Lapériode estmoins creusequ’on ne l’avait envisagé», observeMarc Salafa, directeur de Cinémo-tions, à Fribourg. «Pour moi, ledanger tient plutôt, tout au longde l’année, dans le recours abusifaux DVD. Les jeunes, notamment,n’ont plus la culture du grandécran.» De son combat avec l’Euro,le cinéma sortirait presque vain-queur. Sauf à Berne, où plusieurssalles ont choisi de fermer en juin.Rénovation et vacances annuellessont invoquées. Un cinéma va jus-qu’à mentionner l’Euro commeraisonde faire relâche.Et pour les théâtres qui n’ont

pas encore clos leur saison? Satis-faction, là aussi. Au Théâtre de Ca-rouge, bon score pour Caveman,one-man-show qui tombe à pointnommé puisqu’il traite des diffé-rences indépassables entre hom-mes et femmes. Quant à Vidy-Lau-sanne, les trois spectacles àl’affichenedésemplissentpas. «Lesgens apprécient que nous propo-sions encore du spectacle vivant àcette période», conclut Sarah Tu-rin, chef du service depresse.





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008Süddeutsche ZeitungSaturday 21 and Sunday 22 June 2008Circ. 543,265





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008Süddeutsche ZeitungSaturday 21 and Sunday 22 June 2008Circ. 543,265





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Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008Sunday Star Times magazineSunday 22 June 2008Circ. 200,000

Legendary singer-songwriter and now exhibited painter Bob Dylan loves to talk about his working life, but touch on the personal – past or present − and you risk his 1000-yard stare. Alan Jackson reports

prof i le

Odense, Denmark, and the not-quite-grand hotel that for the next two nights will be a home away from home for Bob Dylan. He arrived here from Reykjavik, four days after his 67th birthday and in the first stages of a lengthy itinerary that will take him through Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Austria, Italy, France, Andorra, Spain and Portugal between now and mid-July. To his irritation, others long ago gave this ongoing schedule the title of The Never-Ending Tour (habitually, he plays upwards of 100 concerts each year, often considerably more). As he prefers to see it: “I’m just making my living by plying a trade.”

Achieving my promised audience proves to be a two-step process. First, his road manager takes me from the lobby to a darkened, sparsely furnished meeting room in which an orange-haired woman is sitting straight-backed and reading a novel.

“If you could just wait here,” he begins, then disappears, his mobile clamped to his ear. Left alone, I introduce myself to the woman but she merely smiles enigmatically and continues with her book. Who is she? I still have no idea.

Minutes later I am collected, taken up a flight of stairs and ushered towards a door that is ajar. As I approach it is opened wide by Dylan, who welcomes me inside with a soft handshake and a volley of courtesies: “How have you been?” (I have interviewed him twice before, in 1997 and 2001), “What’s been going on in your life?” and “Are you okay with the dark?” (here in what appears to be his bedroom, all the curtains have been drawn).

My eyes adjusting to this premature twilight, I take in the fact that he is wearing boots, jeans and a loose sweatshirt, its sleeves pushed up above the elbows. That famous face is heavily lined and pale, but always warm and quick to smile. As we take seats at right angles to each other, he presses his fingertips into his grey-flecked curls and vigorously rubs his scalp, as if to do so will focus his mind.

I place on the low table between us the book that I have brought with me. “Heh, heh, heh!” Dylan chuckles, reaching out for it. “This is pretty handsome stuff.” He is looking at a straight-from-the-presses copy of The Drawn Blank

Series, produced by the Halcyon Gallery to coincide with the exhibition of his drawings in Mayfair, London. Will he visit the show itself? “I don’t know,” he says, seemingly transfixed by the book’s cover, his voice the familiar rasp that has inspired a million amateur impressionists. “I have all these dates to play. It might not be possible. I’d like to. We’ll have to see.”

The haphazard process leading to the London show began nearly 20 years ago when he was approached by an editor at the American publishing company Random House. “They’d seen some of my sketches somewhere and asked if I’d like to do a whole book. Why not, you know? There was no predetermined brief. ‘Just deal with the material to hand, whatever that is. And do it however you want. You can be fussy, you can be slam-bang; it doesn’t matter.’

“Then they gave me a drawing book. I took it away with me and turned it back in again, full three years later.”

Published in 1994 under the abbreviated title Drawn Blank, the resultant images had been executed both on the hoof while he was touring and in a more structured way in studios, using models (“Just anyone who’d be open to doing it”) and lights. What was going on in his life during that three-year period to inform or provide a back story to the work? “Just the usual,” Dylan shrugs, fixed in the hunkered-forward, hands-clasped position he will maintain for most of our time together. “I try to live as simply as is possible and was just drawing whatever I felt like drawing, whenever I felt like doing it. The idea was always to do it without affectation or self-reference, to provide some kind of panoramic view of the world as I was seeing it.”

Built up of work that is often contemplative, sometimes exuberant but consistently technically accomplished and engaging, that view is of train halts, diners and dockyards, barflies, dandies and uniformed drivers glimpsed in New Orleans or New York, Stockholm or South Dakota. And of women. We’re left in no doubt that Dylan likes women. “They weren’t actually there at the same time,” he notes quickly, pointing, when his page-turning reveals the painting

22 sunday

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ON

don’t look back

sunday 23





Press Cuttings


Legendary singer-songwriter and now exhibited painter Bob Dylan loves to talk about his working life, but touch on the personal – past or present − and you risk his 1000-yard stare. Alan Jackson reports

prof i le

Odense, Denmark, and the not-quite-grand hotel that for the next two nights will be a home away from home for Bob Dylan. He arrived here from Reykjavik, four days after his 67th birthday and in the first stages of a lengthy itinerary that will take him through Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Austria, Italy, France, Andorra, Spain and Portugal between now and mid-July. To his irritation, others long ago gave this ongoing schedule the title of The Never-Ending Tour (habitually, he plays upwards of 100 concerts each year, often considerably more). As he prefers to see it: “I’m just making my living by plying a trade.”

Achieving my promised audience proves to be a two-step process. First, his road manager takes me from the lobby to a darkened, sparsely furnished meeting room in which an orange-haired woman is sitting straight-backed and reading a novel.

“If you could just wait here,” he begins, then disappears, his mobile clamped to his ear. Left alone, I introduce myself to the woman but she merely smiles enigmatically and continues with her book. Who is she? I still have no idea.

Minutes later I am collected, taken up a flight of stairs and ushered towards a door that is ajar. As I approach it is opened wide by Dylan, who welcomes me inside with a soft handshake and a volley of courtesies: “How have you been?” (I have interviewed him twice before, in 1997 and 2001), “What’s been going on in your life?” and “Are you okay with the dark?” (here in what appears to be his bedroom, all the curtains have been drawn).

My eyes adjusting to this premature twilight, I take in the fact that he is wearing boots, jeans and a loose sweatshirt, its sleeves pushed up above the elbows. That famous face is heavily lined and pale, but always warm and quick to smile. As we take seats at right angles to each other, he presses his fingertips into his grey-flecked curls and vigorously rubs his scalp, as if to do so will focus his mind.

I place on the low table between us the book that I have brought with me. “Heh, heh, heh!” Dylan chuckles, reaching out for it. “This is pretty handsome stuff.” He is looking at a straight-from-the-presses copy of The Drawn Blank

Series, produced by the Halcyon Gallery to coincide with the exhibition of his drawings in Mayfair, London. Will he visit the show itself? “I don’t know,” he says, seemingly transfixed by the book’s cover, his voice the familiar rasp that has inspired a million amateur impressionists. “I have all these dates to play. It might not be possible. I’d like to. We’ll have to see.”

The haphazard process leading to the London show began nearly 20 years ago when he was approached by an editor at the American publishing company Random House. “They’d seen some of my sketches somewhere and asked if I’d like to do a whole book. Why not, you know? There was no predetermined brief. ‘Just deal with the material to hand, whatever that is. And do it however you want. You can be fussy, you can be slam-bang; it doesn’t matter.’

“Then they gave me a drawing book. I took it away with me and turned it back in again, full three years later.”

Published in 1994 under the abbreviated title Drawn Blank, the resultant images had been executed both on the hoof while he was touring and in a more structured way in studios, using models (“Just anyone who’d be open to doing it”) and lights. What was going on in his life during that three-year period to inform or provide a back story to the work? “Just the usual,” Dylan shrugs, fixed in the hunkered-forward, hands-clasped position he will maintain for most of our time together. “I try to live as simply as is possible and was just drawing whatever I felt like drawing, whenever I felt like doing it. The idea was always to do it without affectation or self-reference, to provide some kind of panoramic view of the world as I was seeing it.”

Built up of work that is often contemplative, sometimes exuberant but consistently technically accomplished and engaging, that view is of train halts, diners and dockyards, barflies, dandies and uniformed drivers glimpsed in New Orleans or New York, Stockholm or South Dakota. And of women. We’re left in no doubt that Dylan likes women. “They weren’t actually there at the same time,” he notes quickly, pointing, when his page-turning reveals the painting

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or think such a thing.” And the idea that, in framing various images with windows and doors, he is revealing himself as a perennial outsider, forced by his name and status to observe the world rather than connect directly with it? Dylan rolls his eyes.

“I just find it to be less satisfying to have the ends [by which he means the edges of the image] being endless, so I’ll put a window there or block it in some way. It just looks better to me that way.”

So he would prefer a purely emotional, instinctive response to the work rather than any searching for themes and insights? “If it pleases the eye of the beholder...There’s no more to it than that, to my mind. Or even if it repels the eye. Either one is fine.”

On both our previous meetings, Dylan voiced his disdain for those completists who wish to see every scrap of paper he has written on or hear every studio out-take that he has rejected. With that in mind, I ask if it was a big deal for him to sign his name on each of the Drawn Blank paintings. “Yes!” he exclaims, laughing. “I finally grew into it, but yes, it was.” And did he perhaps practise his signature in advance? “I did, because it’s tricky getting it just right. Finally you think, ‘Oh, to hell...’ and just go for it, like you’re writing a cheque or something.”

He has, he says, no particular favourite among the images. “It’s the same as with the early songs... In the Sixties, by the time they came out we were way past the recorded versions and were saying, ‘No, don’t release that. We are playing it this way now.’ So it is with the art. I find myself thinking, ‘I could have done this or that to make it better.’

In the end, though, you’ve just got to let the work go and hope you’ll know to do better next time.”

When I ask if he finds the art establishment preferable to the one he is more used to, Dylan grins and pulls a face of mock disgust. “The music world’s a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish. I know from publishing a memoir [2004’s Chronicles

Volume One] that the book people are a whole lot saner. And the art world? From the small steps I’ve taken in it, I’d say, yeah, the people are honest, upfront and deliver what they say. Basically, they are who they say they are. They don’t pretend. And having been in the music world most of my life [he laughs again], I can tell you it’s not that way. Let’s just say it’s less... dignified.”

He tells me that he continued to draw for his pleasure after the Random House commission was fulfilled. “Not as intensely but yes, I have sketchbooks from the years since then. Of course, what I release to the public and what I keep for myself are two different things.”

He has had proposals for two future series of paintings, the first of which would involve having celebrities sit for him. “I could pick the names but don’t want to. I’d rather be given a list and have someone else contact the people to find out if they’re up for it. So I’m waiting to see who they might be thinking of. I assume it’s movers and shakers. You know, inventors, mathematicians, scientists, business people, actors... We’ll see.

“But what interests me more is the idea of a collection based on historically romantic figures: Napoleon and Josephine, Dante and Beatrice, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, Brad and Angelina [here he laughs]... I could use my own imagination for that. It wouldn’t have to be the actual people, obviously.” But the latter two might be delighted to sit for him, no? Dylan chuckles. “Maybe. Who knows? All I’ll say is that I’m intrigued by the basic idea. Whether or not it comes to fruition, time will tell. This [exhibition] was easy to do because

it didn’t clash with any other commitments. If something does, then I simply cannot do it.”

By commitments, one presumes Dylan means not just his touring schedule but also his personal and familial relationships. Only the bald facts are known in this regard. He has four grown-up children (Jesse, Anna Lea, Samuel and rock singer Jakob) from a 10-year marriage to former model Sara Lowndes that ended in divorce in 1977. And in 2001 it was revealed by a biographer that he was married from 1986 to 1992 to one of his former backing singers, Carol Dennis, and has another daughter, Desiree, also now an adult, from the union.

But inquiries about his non-work life cause him to shut down. Not even a fact as basic as that of where he lives (his main home is believed to be a mansion on the coast beyond Los Angeles) receives ready validation, and when I ask if he has a studio in which he worked on the paintings, he will offer only, “Well, there are spaces in some of the properties where I can do just about any old thing”, before

looking off into the middle distance, awaiting the next question.

Such reticence has earned him a reputation as rock’s grumpy old man, a curmudgeon who refuses to appear grateful that he is revered and adored. But whether or not he intends it to do so, such determined self-protection merely enhances the myth and mystery. Today and after spending much of the 1980s through to the mid-1990s out in the critical cold, Dylan’s star is higher than at any time since the 1960s, the decade with which he is most closely associated (erroneously in his view). Honours, awards and citations all but rain down upon him these days: it is as if we have all

“The music world’s a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish. The book world is a lot saner. Having been in the music world most of my life... let’s just say it’s less ...dignified”

Two Sisters, its subjects lounging, one clothed, the other naked but for her bra. “They posed separately and I put them together afterwards.”

There was little precedent within his own family for this talented eye, it seems. “Instead of playing cards, my maternal grandmother would do these little still lives, but I can’t really say that had any influence on what I’ve done.” Art formed no part of his formal education and he recalls there being no public galleries in the Minnesotan communities (first Duluth, then Hibbing) of his youth. “I was in my teens before I started to see books of paintings in the school library – frescoes or the work of Michelangelo – that kind of thing. And I didn’t really see the stuff that properly had an impact on me – Matisse, Derain, Monet, Gauguin – ‘til later on, when I was in my twenties.”

By then, Dylan the university dropout and fledgling folk performer had gravitated to New York, where he quickly discovered the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It was overwhelming for me at the time – the immensity and sheer variety of stuff on display. The first exhibition I saw there was of Gauguin paintings and I found I could stand in front of any one of them for as long as I’d sit at the movies, yet not get tired on my feet. I’d lose all sense of time. It was an intriguing thing.” It was as his music career gathered pace that he found himself first trying his own hand at drawing. “Mostly when I was on a train or in a café, just to make sense of what was in my immediate world. I found it relaxed me. Some of the stuff I kept, some I didn’t.”

It was sketches completed in this manner and spirit that, years later, came to the attention of Random House. However, little accord was given to the book on its eventual publication. “The critics didn’t want to review it. The publisher told me they couldn’t get past the idea of another singer who dabbled. You know, like, ‘David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney... Everyone’s doing it these days.’ No one from the singing profession was going to be taken seriously by the art world, I was told, but that was okay. I wasn’t expecting anything phenomenal to happen. It’s not like the drawings were revolutionary. They weren’t going to change anyone’s way of thinking.”

But years later there came an approach from the Chemnitz City Art Gallery in Germany. Ingrid Mössinger, its director and a fan of the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, had felt it likely that someone as adept as Dylan in the use of metaphoric and abstract language might also draw or paint. Her research led her to the book Drawn Blank, in the preface of which Dylan wrote of hoping to “eventually complete” its collection of sketches. She encouraged him to do just that.

Digital scans were made of the original drawings and then they were enlarged and transferred on to heavy paper ready for reworking. Dylan experimented with a variety of colours. “And doing so subverted the light. Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied.”

Attempts have been made to pin down and name his influences. When I mention

this, Dylan wrongly takes it as a suggestion that the work is pastiche or somehow derivative. “I haven’t trained in any academy where you learn how to do something in the style of Degas or Van Gogh, or how to copy Da Vinci,” he retorts. “I don’t have that facility to copy note for note. Influenced by? If I had the ability to paint like any of those guys I might see the similarity, but I don’t. If there is anything it’s just by accident and instinctive.” Which is all that any critic was suggesting, after all. But, it seems, he is as uncomfortable at having his paintings deconstructed as he is his songs.

Of the latter process, he said on our last meeting: “These so-called connoisseurs of Bob Dylan music? I don’t feel they know a thing or have an inkling of who I am and what I’m about. That such people have spent so much time thinking about who? Me? Get a life, please.”

Today he expresses similar impatience with the critics who have read into his art a variety of underlying feelings – anonymity, transience, rootlessness, even loneliness. Reaching again for the Halcyon book. “Let’s have a look, shall we?” The pages fall open at Woman in Red Lion Pub, her dress executed in a vivid yellow. “Do you see loneliness in that? I don’t. And this one’s just a pastoral scene. What’s rootless, transient and lonely about that? It’s a mystery why anybody would say

“These ‘connoisseurs’ of Bob Dylan. I don’t feel they have an inkling of who I am and what I’m about. That such people have spent so much time thinking about me? Get a life”

prof i le

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sunday 25

or think such a thing.” And the idea that, in framing various images with windows and doors, he is revealing himself as a perennial outsider, forced by his name and status to observe the world rather than connect directly with it? Dylan rolls his eyes.

“I just find it to be less satisfying to have the ends [by which he means the edges of the image] being endless, so I’ll put a window there or block it in some way. It just looks better to me that way.”

So he would prefer a purely emotional, instinctive response to the work rather than any searching for themes and insights? “If it pleases the eye of the beholder...There’s no more to it than that, to my mind. Or even if it repels the eye. Either one is fine.”

On both our previous meetings, Dylan voiced his disdain for those completists who wish to see every scrap of paper he has written on or hear every studio out-take that he has rejected. With that in mind, I ask if it was a big deal for him to sign his name on each of the Drawn Blank paintings. “Yes!” he exclaims, laughing. “I finally grew into it, but yes, it was.” And did he perhaps practise his signature in advance? “I did, because it’s tricky getting it just right. Finally you think, ‘Oh, to hell...’ and just go for it, like you’re writing a cheque or something.”

He has, he says, no particular favourite among the images. “It’s the same as with the early songs... In the Sixties, by the time they came out we were way past the recorded versions and were saying, ‘No, don’t release that. We are playing it this way now.’ So it is with the art. I find myself thinking, ‘I could have done this or that to make it better.’

In the end, though, you’ve just got to let the work go and hope you’ll know to do better next time.”

When I ask if he finds the art establishment preferable to the one he is more used to, Dylan grins and pulls a face of mock disgust. “The music world’s a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish. I know from publishing a memoir [2004’s Chronicles

Volume One] that the book people are a whole lot saner. And the art world? From the small steps I’ve taken in it, I’d say, yeah, the people are honest, upfront and deliver what they say. Basically, they are who they say they are. They don’t pretend. And having been in the music world most of my life [he laughs again], I can tell you it’s not that way. Let’s just say it’s less... dignified.”

He tells me that he continued to draw for his pleasure after the Random House commission was fulfilled. “Not as intensely but yes, I have sketchbooks from the years since then. Of course, what I release to the public and what I keep for myself are two different things.”

He has had proposals for two future series of paintings, the first of which would involve having celebrities sit for him. “I could pick the names but don’t want to. I’d rather be given a list and have someone else contact the people to find out if they’re up for it. So I’m waiting to see who they might be thinking of. I assume it’s movers and shakers. You know, inventors, mathematicians, scientists, business people, actors... We’ll see.

“But what interests me more is the idea of a collection based on historically romantic figures: Napoleon and Josephine, Dante and Beatrice, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, Brad and Angelina [here he laughs]... I could use my own imagination for that. It wouldn’t have to be the actual people, obviously.” But the latter two might be delighted to sit for him, no? Dylan chuckles. “Maybe. Who knows? All I’ll say is that I’m intrigued by the basic idea. Whether or not it comes to fruition, time will tell. This [exhibition] was easy to do because

it didn’t clash with any other commitments. If something does, then I simply cannot do it.”

By commitments, one presumes Dylan means not just his touring schedule but also his personal and familial relationships. Only the bald facts are known in this regard. He has four grown-up children (Jesse, Anna Lea, Samuel and rock singer Jakob) from a 10-year marriage to former model Sara Lowndes that ended in divorce in 1977. And in 2001 it was revealed by a biographer that he was married from 1986 to 1992 to one of his former backing singers, Carol Dennis, and has another daughter, Desiree, also now an adult, from the union.

But inquiries about his non-work life cause him to shut down. Not even a fact as basic as that of where he lives (his main home is believed to be a mansion on the coast beyond Los Angeles) receives ready validation, and when I ask if he has a studio in which he worked on the paintings, he will offer only, “Well, there are spaces in some of the properties where I can do just about any old thing”, before

looking off into the middle distance, awaiting the next question.

Such reticence has earned him a reputation as rock’s grumpy old man, a curmudgeon who refuses to appear grateful that he is revered and adored. But whether or not he intends it to do so, such determined self-protection merely enhances the myth and mystery. Today and after spending much of the 1980s through to the mid-1990s out in the critical cold, Dylan’s star is higher than at any time since the 1960s, the decade with which he is most closely associated (erroneously in his view). Honours, awards and citations all but rain down upon him these days: it is as if we have all

“The music world’s a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish. The book world is a lot saner. Having been in the music world most of my life... let’s just say it’s less ...dignified”

Two Sisters, its subjects lounging, one clothed, the other naked but for her bra. “They posed separately and I put them together afterwards.”

There was little precedent within his own family for this talented eye, it seems. “Instead of playing cards, my maternal grandmother would do these little still lives, but I can’t really say that had any influence on what I’ve done.” Art formed no part of his formal education and he recalls there being no public galleries in the Minnesotan communities (first Duluth, then Hibbing) of his youth. “I was in my teens before I started to see books of paintings in the school library – frescoes or the work of Michelangelo – that kind of thing. And I didn’t really see the stuff that properly had an impact on me – Matisse, Derain, Monet, Gauguin – ‘til later on, when I was in my twenties.”

By then, Dylan the university dropout and fledgling folk performer had gravitated to New York, where he quickly discovered the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It was overwhelming for me at the time – the immensity and sheer variety of stuff on display. The first exhibition I saw there was of Gauguin paintings and I found I could stand in front of any one of them for as long as I’d sit at the movies, yet not get tired on my feet. I’d lose all sense of time. It was an intriguing thing.” It was as his music career gathered pace that he found himself first trying his own hand at drawing. “Mostly when I was on a train or in a café, just to make sense of what was in my immediate world. I found it relaxed me. Some of the stuff I kept, some I didn’t.”

It was sketches completed in this manner and spirit that, years later, came to the attention of Random House. However, little accord was given to the book on its eventual publication. “The critics didn’t want to review it. The publisher told me they couldn’t get past the idea of another singer who dabbled. You know, like, ‘David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney... Everyone’s doing it these days.’ No one from the singing profession was going to be taken seriously by the art world, I was told, but that was okay. I wasn’t expecting anything phenomenal to happen. It’s not like the drawings were revolutionary. They weren’t going to change anyone’s way of thinking.”

But years later there came an approach from the Chemnitz City Art Gallery in Germany. Ingrid Mössinger, its director and a fan of the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, had felt it likely that someone as adept as Dylan in the use of metaphoric and abstract language might also draw or paint. Her research led her to the book Drawn Blank, in the preface of which Dylan wrote of hoping to “eventually complete” its collection of sketches. She encouraged him to do just that.

Digital scans were made of the original drawings and then they were enlarged and transferred on to heavy paper ready for reworking. Dylan experimented with a variety of colours. “And doing so subverted the light. Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied.”

Attempts have been made to pin down and name his influences. When I mention

this, Dylan wrongly takes it as a suggestion that the work is pastiche or somehow derivative. “I haven’t trained in any academy where you learn how to do something in the style of Degas or Van Gogh, or how to copy Da Vinci,” he retorts. “I don’t have that facility to copy note for note. Influenced by? If I had the ability to paint like any of those guys I might see the similarity, but I don’t. If there is anything it’s just by accident and instinctive.” Which is all that any critic was suggesting, after all. But, it seems, he is as uncomfortable at having his paintings deconstructed as he is his songs.

Of the latter process, he said on our last meeting: “These so-called connoisseurs of Bob Dylan music? I don’t feel they know a thing or have an inkling of who I am and what I’m about. That such people have spent so much time thinking about who? Me? Get a life, please.”

Today he expresses similar impatience with the critics who have read into his art a variety of underlying feelings – anonymity, transience, rootlessness, even loneliness. Reaching again for the Halcyon book. “Let’s have a look, shall we?” The pages fall open at Woman in Red Lion Pub, her dress executed in a vivid yellow. “Do you see loneliness in that? I don’t. And this one’s just a pastoral scene. What’s rootless, transient and lonely about that? It’s a mystery why anybody would say

“These ‘connoisseurs’ of Bob Dylan. I don’t feel they have an inkling of who I am and what I’m about. That such people have spent so much time thinking about me? Get a life”

prof i le

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Press Cuttings


awoken to the fact that we will not see his like again. Not that anyone doubts that he has a long life still to live. “Well, thank you for that!” he notes with a laugh.

For any further insights into his private world we must wait to see if any crumbs are thrown in the next instalment of the intended three-book Chronicles (“I could do more. It wouldn’t be a problem in terms of material”), at which he is already at work. Yes, he allows, he was gratified by the critical and commercial success of Volume One.

“Especially given the effort that went into it. Writing any kind of book is a lonely thing. You cut yourself off from friends and family to find that necessarily quiet place in your mind. You have to disassociate and detach yourself from just about everything and everybody. I didn’t like that part of it at all.

“It took me maybe two years in total. I was touring so much in the beginning. On days off or on a bus, I’d write my thoughts out in longhand or on a typewriter. It was the transcribing of the stuff, the rereading and retelling of it, that was time-consuming and I came to figure that there had to be a better way. I know what that is now. You need a full-time secretary so that you can get the ideas down immediately, then deal with them later.”

Meanwhile, there is the continuing delight that is his own radio show (he smiles at the mention of it), Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan, the brainchild of America’s XM Satellite Radio. And later this year he will release a further volume within the ongoing Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, featuring

unreleased or rare material alongside alternative versions of existing tracks recorded between 1989 and 2006.

Coming on top of the recent award to him of a special Pulitzer prize recognising “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power” (“I hope they don’t ask for it back!”), all of this would suggest that he has arrived at a very creative but also contented period within his life. “I’ve always felt that,” he says. “It’s just sometimes I’ve got more going on than at other times.” But life is good? “To me, it’s never been otherwise.”

My time with Dylan is up and we stand in preparation for my leaving the room. As a last aside, I ask for his take on the US political situation in the run-up to November’s presidential election.

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval,” he says. “Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up... Barack Obama. He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.”

He offers a parting handshake. “You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future,” he notes as the door closes between us.

For more of Dylan’s art, see www.halcyongallery.com and www.bobdylanart.com

“Writing any kind of book is a lonely thing… You have to disassociate and detach yourself from just about everything and everybody… I didn’t like that part of it all”

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Press Cuttings - halcyongallery.com · Press Cuttings Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series 2008 ... entre 1989 y 1992, Dylan fue captando con sus lápices y pinceles ... 500 canciones