Bob Dylan - The Brazil Series

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WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BYJOHN ELDERFIELDKASPER MONRAD

Statens Museum for KunstNational Gallery of Denmark

BOB DYLANTHE BRAZIL SERIES


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WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BYJOHN ELDERFIELDKASPER MONRAD

Statens Museum for KunstNational Gallery of Denmark


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INDHOLD

PrefaceKarsten Ohrt

The painter Bob DylanAn introductionKasper Monrad

Across the BorderlineJohn Elderfield

The Paintings

The Brazil SeriesKasper Monrad

BookReserarch: Kasper Monrad

Editor: Sven Bjerkhof

Picture editor: Pernille Feldt

Proofs: Annette Bjrg Koeller

Monrads articles in English: James Manley

Graphic design: Pernille Ferdinandsen

Photos: Joshua White / jwpictures.com

Reproduction, printing and binding: Narayana Press, Odder, Denmark

Font: Yoga. Paper: Scheufelen BVS matt white g

Statens Museum for Kunst / National Gallery of Denmark

ISBN ---- English version

ISBN ---- Danish version

ExhibitionStatens Museum for Kunst

National Gallery of Denmark

September February

Research: Kasper Monrad

Education: Ulla Norton Kierkgaard

Architect: Anne Schnettler

Assistant: Jacob Helbo Bstrup Jensen

Exhibition producer: Gitte Kikkenberg

Exhibition coordinator: Lene Christiansen

Transportation: Thor Nrmark-Larsen

Conservation: Karen-Marie Henriksen og Anja Scocozza

Art handling: Erik Kjrby Jensen, Mogens Kristiansen,

Morten Srensen, Mikkel Thomsen og Jrgen Trolle


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FOROBRAZIL SERIES SIDE 6

Karsten Ohrt

PREFACE


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Kasper Monrad

THE PAINTERBOB DYLANAN INTRODUCTION

When Bob Dylan presented a large selection of watercolours from The Dawn

Blank Seies at the art museum in Chemnitz, Germany, in , this marked the

first occasion on which he made a public appearance as a visual artist. This is

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

it before the exhibition.

The exhibition in Chemnitz met with great interest from the generalpublic and was followed by an exhibition of a different selection of watercolou-

rs from the same series at a London gallery the following year. It would seem

that this exhibition served to strengthen the artists desire to further explore

this aspect of his creative talent.

In the autumn of , 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 Dawn Blank

Seies 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 and the beginning of he executed a

series of just under paintings, all of them showing motifs from Brazil. Hence

the umbrella title The Bazil Seies.

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 Dylans work as an artist. He has not, however, concealed

his interest in painting. As far back as he made the following statement: I

have always painted. I have always held on to that one way or another. This is

borne out by his autobiography, where he emphasises how he began drawing

during the very early s. In the early summer of Dylan even took a few

months of painting lessons in New York, studying under ageing Expressionist

painter Norman Raeben (-). This would have an impact on him on several

levels (for more on the influence Raeben had on Dylan, see John Elderfields

essay).

The preceding year, , Dylan published the book Witings and Da-

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 Bands Music fom Big Pinkfrom , with the

next being his own album Self Potaitfrom . He also did a drawing for the


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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 10 KASPER MONRAD THE PAINTER BOB DYLAN

). In the photograph the artist is seen surrounded by a number of quite large

drawings mainly portraits that he has hung in serried ranks above the win-

dows. The large drawings all share the same format. Perhaps he regarded them

as a cohesive series even then. One of the portraits in question was included

in the book.

In , when Dylan let himself be enticed into returning to the illu-

strations in Dawn Blank, he used the drawings in the book as the foundation of

more than watercolours and gouaches in which he took a more or less libe-ral approach to the drawn sketches. One could say that the series encompas-

ses an inherent conflict, for the drawings were often executed as rapid, loose

sketches, created in a matter of moments, whereas the watercolour versions of

the motifs took on a far more definitive quality. Today, Dylan believes that the

series cannot be regarded as representative of his art, and he himself is more

interested in directing attention to The Bazil Seies, which he feels is a far more

accurate reflection of his endeavours within pictorial art.

Compared to the watercolours, there can be no doubt that the new

paintings were created as part of a process that is more characteristic of how

the artist works. Here, he selected his subject matter with paintings in mind.

In several cases, the paintings are based on drawn sketches intended as preli-

minary studies.

The motifs of the watercolours very much reflect the circumstances

under which the original drawn studies were made. Dylan did most of the dra-

wings on his journeys; it seems that he would often act on impulse, capturing

the motif he happened to have in front of him at the given time. Such subject

matter might the furniture in the room of the hotel or motel he was staying

in, or the more or less random view from the room. He also captured people

passing by in the street or at a caf or bar, often depicted in an ephemeral

manner, capturing the fleeting quality of the moment. The drawings and wa-

tercolours have a common denominator in that the motifs are generally viewed

from a distance and depicted with a certain detachment.

The paintings ofThe Bazil Seies come across as far more direct and

insistent. The artist moves in closer on the people depicted. In painterly terms

the paintings do have a certain kinship with the watercolours, but even so they

represent a clear development of Dylans artistic mode of expression. Some

of the Brazilian scenes depict motifs that continue trends seen in some of the

watercolours, such as Rain Foest (cat. no. ), which shows a room where a

half-open balcony door offers a view of a verdant forest. A similar effect ap-

cover ofPlanet Waves in . Apart from these examples he has not exhibited

his visual art to the public before . He has been painting throughout all the

years, but has definitely worked with greater focus on painting and with more

concerted effort in recent years, prompted by specific occasions or a sense

of purpose. The paintings must have a reason to exist, as he himself puts it.

Bob says that it really works without the quote but if you need something here

this quote more accurately reflects his sentiments.

As a visual artist Dylan has ties to a figurative tradition that has re-mained vibrant up through the th century, taking on various guises and styles.

The tradition has been particularly tenacious within American painting, defying

all avant-garde attempts at putting it to rest. Within this vein of art, images

take their point of departure in reality as we see it, and they often feature a

narrative with a clearly discernable plot. In other words, the subject matter is

vital to the overall artistic mode of expression. As regards the painterly mode

of expression i.e. technique and colour schemes Dylans paintings seem to

continue past trends, especially from French modernist painting from the s

(for details, see the article The Brazil Series).

Over the years, Bob Dylan has occasionally made brief references to

his drawings and paintings in his many interviews. The most specific comment

on his work as a painter was made in an interview conducted in the spring of

:

I just draw whats interesting to me, and then I paint it. Rows of

houses, orchard acres, lines of tree trunks, could be anything. I can take a bowl

of fruit and turn it into a life and death drama. Women are power figures, so I

depict them that way. I can find people to paint in mobile home communities.

I could paint bourgeois people too. Im not trying to make social comment or

fulfill somebodys vision and I can find subject matter anywhere. I guess in

some way that comes out of the folk world that I came up in .7

This statement was made while the artist was engaged on the paintings

from The Bazil Seies, and it elucidates his choice of subject matter as well as

his work on the new paintings.

The watercolours that form part of The Dawn Blank Seies had their

genesis in very special circumstances. The point of departure was a number of

drawings which Dylan had executed during the years -/, of which

around drawings and sketches were reproduced in the book Dawn Blank

from . The original drawings would appear to have been lost, but can be

seen on the wall in a rare photograph from Dylans studio from around (fig.

BOB DYLAN VIEW

OTOGRAPH OF BOB DYLAN IN HIS STUDIO, C. 19901


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during the course of his work. In many cases he obviously changed the colour

scheme in small or large areas of a given painting; the original colour will often

be visible through the topmost layer of colour. This creates rich and varied co-

lour effects with areas of shimmering hues. In no case did he choose entirely

neutral planes of colour.

The watercolours and paintings differ in many respects. Still, the two

series share a key common feature: In both cases the artist selected motifs

that are very different from those chosen for his songs. Generally speaking,the visual images are more simple and direct, less laden with significance than

the often complex songs. Unlike the songs, the images contain no chains of

association where you are taken from one kind of image or illusion to another.

Each individual image sticks to a single, cohesive illusion.

The difference between songs and pictures is accentuated by the song

in which Dylan makes his most overt reference to his work as a painter, i.e.

When I Paint My Masterpiece. Here, Bob Dylan the songwitefirst conjures

up a visual impression of the streets of Rome filled with rubble only to ele-

gantly jump on to a fantasy about a tryst with the niece of Renaissance painter

Botticelli. Dylan the paintemakes no corresponding leaps in his pictures. One

might find parallels to the rubble of Rome in his paintings, but no counterparts

to the imaginative date with Botticellis niece. The visual images do not mix

different realities, nor do they mix reality with dream or reverie as is the case

in e.g. Marc Chagall.

As a painter, Dylan often selects subject matter that would lose its

attraction if set in words. Paintings and songs seem to belong to separate uni-

verses, completing each other. This view is supported by the artist himself. He

strongly opposes any attempts at seeing individual paintings as illustrations for

a given song: If I could have expressed the same in a song, I would have writ-

ten a song instead!

In terms of working processes, songs and pictures are by their very

nature different. When Dylan has written the lyrics for a song, the music is

often created in a collective process where individual musicians help shape

the final result. By contrast, the paintings are the work of a single man. But

just as Dylan the musician is open to input from others, Dylan the artist is also

surprisingly open to comments on the shaping of his paintings undoubtedly

far more open than the majority of contemporary artists.

In one particular aspect, however, Dylans paintings from The Bazil

Seies share a common feature with his songs. Paintings and songs are both part

pears in the watercolour View fom Two Windows (fig. ). Other than this, there

are crucial differences between the paintings and watercolours. The paintings

incorporate figures to a much greater extent, and a strong narrative element

has been added to the pictures. What is more, the artist did not relate to

people as a remote watcher; he has stepped out among the people he wished

to depict. This impression is corroborated by the artists own description of

how the paintings were created. In many cases he would be struck by a sudden

impulse and would initially draw his intended motif rapidly on a piece of paper,perhaps a paper napkin or paper bag that was immediately at hand; only later

would he embark on painting.

Thus, a number of motifs bear the hallmarks of having been experi-

enced in real life. For example, the night scene from the small town of Bahia

(cat. no. ) in north Brazil was undoubtedly experienced by the artist himself.

Similarly, the artist would certainly himself have seen the proud hunters po-

sing with their game in the painting The Huntes (cat. no. ), and would also

have seen poor grape pickers such as those shown in The Vineyad(cat. no. )

standing among the vines as they are monitored by the wine grower or his

caretaker.

In other cases the artists own imagination played the main part in

sparking off ideas for subjects even if there is always a certain element of

personal experience in the paintings. The artist wishes to tell stories with the-

se images, and several paintings show dramatic scenes being played out. The

events depicted range from marital clashes in Renunciation (cat. no. ) to the

results of a violent gang war in The Incident.

In several cases Dylan can very accurately account for the narrative

unfolding in the paintings, e.g. in Coutoom (cat. no. ), where he can des cribe

the role played by each individual character (see page XX). In other cases he

has recorded a scene without knowing exactly what is going on, not settling

on a single, particular interpretation. This is true of e.g. Countrymen (cat. no. ),

which essentially captures a brief moment involving some men by a river. In

this case, the artist can offer no detailed account of any narrative.

Unlike the preliminary drawn sketches, none of the paintings outside

of the drawings,was executed in Brazil. In most cases some time had elapsed

between the initial impulse to depict a given subject and the actual execution

of the final painting.

The paintings testify to how the artist has deliberated extensively on

how each individual subject should be depicted, frequently making changes

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NOTES The title Drawn Blank plays on the dual meanings of the phrase; the

act of drawing on blank paper and the act of drawing a blank.

Ingrid Mssinger (ed.), The Drawn Blank Series. Exhibition cata-

logue. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz .

Andrew Graham-Dixon et al., The Drawn Blank Series. Exhibition

catalogue. The Halcyon Gallery, London . As a result of the exhibi-

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-

lery, London .

Jonathan Cott (ed.), Bob Dylan: Essential Interviews. New York

, p. .

Bob Dylan, Chronicles. Vol. . New York , p. f.

As stated by the artist in May .

Interview with Bill Flanagan at Bob Dylans website (http://www.

bobdylan.com/#/conversation?page=).

The drawings were scanned from the book and digitally transferred

to watercolour paper, often several copies of each drawing. The water-

colours were then done on these reproductions of the drawings.

Conversations with the artist on December and March

.

Conversation between the artist and the author of this piece,

December .

Bob Dylan, Lyrics -. New York, London, Toronto & Sydney,

, s. .

Conversation with the artist, December .

of a particular project an exhibition and an album, respectively and both

projects have a finite end result: the opening of the exhibition or the releaseof the album. Just as Dylan would never write a new song for a finished album,

he has made up his mind to not paint any more scenes from Brazil once The

Bazil Seies shipped to Copenhagen.

This is not, however, to say that Dylan is about to lay down his brushes.

He is busy contemplating what theme to address next.

Kasper Monrad

Kasper Monrad was born in and read Art History at the University of

Copenhagen, graduating as MA in and Phil.D. in . He is an expert on

Danish Golden Age art, i.e. from the first half of the th century. Employed at

the National Gallery of Denmark since ; since as Chief Curator. His

published books include Hvedagsbillede. Dansk guldalde kunstnene og dees

vilk (, dissertation; summary in English: Pictures of Everyday Life. The Gol-

den Age of Danish Painting and Sculpture. The Artists and their Circumstances)

and Dansk Guldalde. Hovedvke p Statens Museum fo Kunst (), and he has

helped arrange a number of exhibitions about the Danish Golden Age in Denmark

and abroad, most notably Mellem gude og helte. Histoiemaleiet i Rom, Pais og

Kbenhavn 1770-1820 (Statens Museum for Kunst, ), Caspa David Fiedich og

Danmak/Caspa David Fiedich und Dnemak (Statens Museum for Kunst, ),

The Golden Age of Danish Painting (Los Angeles & New York, ), Chisten

Kbke (Statens Museum for Kunst, ), Baltic Light/Im Lichte Caspa David Fie-

dichs/Unde samme himmel (Ottawa, Hamburg, and Copenhagen, -),

Chistoffe Wilhelm Eckesbeg(Washington, ), and Tune and Romantic Na-

tue (Statens Museum for Kunst, ). He was also responsible for the exhibi-

tion Heni Matisse: Fou Geat Collectos (Statens Museum for Kunst, ).


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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 16

Songs are journeys that may tell of journeys, and in Bob Dylans 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 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

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 onesthat regularly reappear in and indeed identify liminal times and places. Fre-

quently filled, as in Dylans work, with metaphoric imagining, such stories tell

of and reflect transitions between or confluences of traditions and civilizations,

reaching across the borderline.

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 Jurez as on Desolation Row .

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. And the geography has remained fairly consistent,

too, the imaginary Eden of modernism being nearly always further south than

from where you came.

This gets us to Dylans recent Bazil Seies 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. ), a few

exotic dancers (cat. ), and what looks like a great spaghetti dinner (cat. ).

Eden is invoked by some illustration of its opposite, dystopian aspects a huffy

argument (cat. ), a street fight (cat. ), a poisoning on a stage (cat. )

and, to complicate things further, there are two paintings offavelas (cat. &

), 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 anthropologists 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

John Elderfield

ACROSSTHEBORDERLINE


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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 18 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACRO

documentary concerns, and that of his longstanding, snapshot-like approach

to performance, being in fact neither documentary nor snapshot-like how,

then, do these paintings partake of his visual imagination as we know it from

his recent as well as longstanding work outside painting? Given the length and

productivity of his career, this is a large subject: like the streets of Rome, the

road to Brazil is filled with rubble too deep and ancient footprints far too nu-

merous to possibly be dug up for this occasion. Therefore, what now follows

are two short essays that pick and choose among the evidential record to offera single view of Dylans pictorial enterprise, asking what the experience of The

Bazil Seies tells us about the imperatives of his visual imagination as it travels

back and forth across the borderline between painting and song. Like the ver-

ses of some of his songs, the two parts of this diptych do not have to be taken

in the order that they are printed.

Lost in time

The work of art; a stopping of time, wrote Pierre Bonnard in his diary on No-

vember , . A work of art, Dylan said on January , , should hold

that time, breathe in that time, and stop time (...) Let us start with this; and

end with it as well.

Stories are composed of events and existents: that is to say, of actions,

on the one hand; and of the actors and the settings of actions, on the other.

Events shape the temporality of a narrative, one event after another, while

existents shape its spatiality, one location after another. This is why the tem-

poral dimension of song, and other word-chain compositions, has traditionally

seemed more suited to the telling of events, whereas the spatial dimension of

painting, and other pictorial arts, to the describing of appearances. Needless to

say, a song can be descriptive and a painting narrative; however, in both song

and painting, passages of description often slow down the narrative as our at-

tention is shifted from the temporal to the spatial.

The ways and means by which the temporal and narrative, on the one

hand, answer to the spatial and descriptive, on the other, are critical to the

realization of the Brazil paintings, most especially to the multi-figure composi-

tions in the series. Each painting typically shows a moment frozen in time and

space, populated by figures whose suspended movements point out directions

around the painting for the eyes of viewers to follow. The classic account of

constraints on the depiction of narrativity in visual art, in Gotthold Ephraim

Lessings Laokoon of , argued that, since painting was limited to the de-

a mature songwriter and performer. He has occasionally published some dra-

wings and has acknowledged the influence of painting on the composition of

some songs, thereby offering us glimpses of his understanding of pictorial art;

but only glimpses. He has made some serious forays into film; the visual art

that the director Jim Jarmusch has claimed is closest to musical performance.

However, it is only with The Bazil Seies, and The Dawn Blank Seies of ,

based on drawings first published over a decade earlier, that formed the lead

up to it, that he has now stepped forward publicly into the role of a painter.It deserves notice that his assumption of this role comes on the heels

of his assuming other new roles notably as the author of his autobiographical

Chonicles; as the highly communicative subject of Martin Scorseses film docu-

mentary;and as host of thematic radio programs of historical popular music

even as his own recent recordings have increasingly taken upon themselves the

task of simultaneously documenting his musical heritage and his own personal

changes both as a performer and as a mortal being. Given these memorializing

activities, we should not be too surprised that The Bazil Seies somewhat re-

sembles an anthropological report.

Nonetheless, although these paintings may at first resemble picture

postcards of Brazil, it soon becomes obvious that the figures look posed and

the scenes staged. In this respect, they differ from his recent documentary en-

terprises, which indubitably were carefully prepared but do not show it; rather,

were prepared to seem as unprepared as his recordings.

Musicians who have worked with Dylan speak of his re cording process

as being utterly opposed to any trace of contrivance. Rob Stoner: Bobs music

really is dependent on catching a moment theyre like snapshots, Polaro-

ids () The first take is gonna be better even if its got some wrong notes

or something. Kris Kristoffersen: He wanted first impressions, like a certain

kind of painter. But certainly not like the kind of painter who made The Ba-

zil Seies . The paintings may ultimately derive from the quick capture of data,

sights suddenly come upon and recorde d in drawings, but they do not lo ok like

snapshots or film stills; rather, they show that they have been rehearsed and

edited, posed for the viewer to look at them. Indeed, Dylan has said that, in

making these paintings, he consciously reached out to an audience, as a painter

who is also an entertainer is accustomed to do; only in a way that is consciously

different from how he reaches out in his songs.

The obvious question at this point is: If the character of Dylans Brazil

paintings merely resembles that of his other recent productions, with their

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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 20 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACRO S

spatial. In Bob Dylan (), his first album, there is little description to slow

down the narrative because the songs are ball ads with a traditional sense

of time, telling stories with one event happening after the next. However,

description being a potential attribute, even means, of narration as well as a

potential constraint on its momentum, a firm distinction between the two is

difficult to maintain. Dylan made it impossible to maintain in A Hard Rains

A-Gonna Fall, in The Feewheelin Bob Dylan (), for there the narrative is

composed of one description after the next; more precisely, the descriptionsare given narrative momentum as records of actions, one after another, of loo-

king (Oh, what did you see ()?), listening (And what did you hear ()?),

and describing (Oh, who did you meet ()?). Showing and telling are as one.

Grasping this option, Dylan was off and running.

The narrative of One Too Many Mornings, in The Times They Ae-

A-Changing (), comprises a description of looking forward and backward

from the crossroads of my doorstep down onto a street and back into a room.

Chimes of Freedom, in Anothe Side of Bob Dylan (), carries the A Hard

Rain approach further in interposed descriptions of the appearances produced

by the actions of an electric storm and of the human characters to which these

actions are dedicated all wrapped within a narrative of looking, listening, and

describing within an artificially extended reach of time, not simply between,

but Far between sundowns finish an midnights broken toll. The storm re-

turns, as The wind howls like a hammer, at the end of Love Minus Zero

/ No Limit, in Binging It All Back Home (), a song in which the element

of description increases (and increasingly puzzles) as the narrative progresses;

only here, as Christopher Ricks has observed, to seem to repudiate the tem-

perate message that the narrative had been carrying. This gets us to Highway

61 Revisited() and the apotheosis of narrative-picturing subtleties of Like a

Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Just like Tom Thumbs Blues, and, most

notably, of Desolation Row all songs in which the potential for propulsive-

ness in narrative, especially sung narrative, is given its head, and pulls picturing

along with it at break-neck speed, only to end in exhaustion. (I do believe Ive

had enough.)

The pictorialism of Desolation Row is exceptional; the effect is per-

haps of Dylan as Weegee, or some other roaming crime photographer. Accor-

ding to Al Kooper, Desolation Row was Eighth Avenue in New York City, an

area infested with whore houses, sleazy bars, and porno-supermarkets totally

beyond renovation or redemption. And yet, that is not what Dylan shows us,

piction of arrested actions, the best recourse would be to show the pregnant

moment of action stopped at a climactic moment; ideally, one that implied,

because unable to show, those that preceded and followed it.

The painting called Talebeae(cat. ) adopts such an approach; but

this is not quite what happens in most of the other figure compositions. Ar-

rested actions do, to a greater or lesser degree, explicate the narrative subject

of a painting: to a greater degree in The Agument(cat. ); a lesser degree in

Renunciation (cat. );and a much lesser degree in Gypsies (cat. ). Therefore,these are paintings that frequently call out for titles more specific than those

the artist has given them. But perhaps he has been less than specific in his titles

because the principal task of the arrested actions is not to explicate the nar-

rative subjects; is not, in fact, to unfreeze and extend the action of the subject

in the viewers imagination by implying preceding and following moments. It

is, rather, to maintain the freeze even while pointing out where to look from

here to there, and then over there, extending the pictorial time of the painting

by extending the duration of the viewers experience. Hence, in Gypsies, dissi-

milar elements made similar in a manner akin to that of rhymes among them,

a pointing hand, a pointing bridge, a bench a bit like a bridge, and counting

fingers forming a bridge comprise a directional signage, what Dylan calls a

rhythmic code, that urges the viewers eyes around the painting.

In order to understand how Dylan arrived at this approach, we need

briefly to remind ourselves of the changing give-and-take between description

and narration, and with it, between sight and sound, in the development of his

early songs. In so doing, we quickly come back to painting because the visual,

and painting in particular, had gained in importance for him by the mid-s to

such an extent that his songs adopted modalities of pictorial composition. The

actual practice of painting on Dylans part accompanied and aided this develop-

ment; and the sources of his present, even more committed, preoccupation

with painting may be found in what happened thirty years ago. The very terms

that he has used to describe the changes brought by the experience of painting

to the composition, most notably, of Blood on the Tacks () Theres a

certain structure to the lyrics which works under its own chronology. Shadows

move morning noon and night interacting with each other at the same time.

are substantially the same as those he recently applied to the composition of

The Bazil Seies.

I said that, in both song and painting, passages of description often

slow down the narrative as our attention is shifted from the temporal to the

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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 22 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACRO

ble to suppose that his withholding of visibility is a way of speaking of unavai-

lability of the unavailability of women, that is; one of his perennial subjects.

So why would Dylan restore in the pencil and paint ofThe Dawn Blank Seies

what a description of desire and its impediments had withheld in his songs? As

Ricks observes in a brilliant essay, influential on mine, on making visual images

of Keatss poetry, this would be no more than the condescending granting of

pictorial assistance to words that were designed to stand in no need of support

from a sister art.

Likewise, The Bazil Seies paintings cannot be thought to visualize

images in Dylans songs. At the same time, the give-and-take between visual de-

scription and narrative exposition in the songs is also manifest in his paintings.

In the songs, exchanges between sight and sound are enrolled in this larger re-

ciprocation. For example, in Visions of Johanna, the potential of visualizing at

its most vivid is reserved for things not seen but heard: In this room the heat

pipes just cough. We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight. And,

in a different mode, The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain.

We look for these sights as we hear of them, just as we look for sights

when prompted by movements in our peripheral vision. That is to say, we are

turned unexpectedly but expectantly to these details as to the appurtenances

in Just Like a Woman; both are accessories clustered around and periphe-

ral to our vision of the actual protagonists that, catching our attention, offer

themselves as moments of unforeseen revelation. It is with a similar sense of

prompting that, in the Bazilfigure paintings, we are caught by gestures and ex-

pressions that sponsor our shifts of attention and swerves of distraction from

part to part of their compositions. Their sustaining grasp carries us, at times

without our quite knowing why, across the space and time that is internal to

these paintings as the artist might say, spellbound:

Of his film, Renaldo and Claa (), he recently said, Ever look at

a painting by Paul Czanne, any one, take your pick Boy in the Red Vest, Les

Gandes Baigneuses, any number of others you get lost in the painting for that

period of time. And you breathe minutes are going by and you wouldnt know

it, youre spellbound. Paintings have a certain power. The movie was supposed

to have been like that.

Even the most wishful of Edenic dreams do not, at heart, express a

craving for some particular object or place; the quest, as the psychoanalyst

Christopher Bollas puts it, is not to possess the object; rather, the object is

pursued in order to surrender to it as a medium that alters the self. Therefore,

but, rather, an analogous scenic universe of stock fictional or historical charac-

ters in usually unspecified places; and his showing, while linked to his telling, is

more frequently a matter of inducing visualization than of showing-and-telling

us what these characters or places actually look like. This is to say, descriptions

are piled up to tell stories but not to specify appearances; it is our job to do the

visualizing, and they provide information enough for that.

So what does that visualizing comprise? Referring to Dylans next, se-

venth album, a reviewer of his recent Dawn Blank paintings observed: Thereal Dylan fan is going to find songs (or lines from them) visualized in this or

that painting. Take a long look at Woman in Red Lion Pub (fig. ) () and

songs including Visions of Johanna and Just Like a Woman from Blonde on

Blonde () are bound to cross your mind.

Is this, in fact, true? The woman who is Just Like a Woman, therefore

not always or entirely like a woman, is characterized visually in the song only by

means of appurtenances that either de-individualize her (her fog, her amphe-

tamine and her pearls) or that she no longer possesses (her ribbons and her

bows). In the latter respect, it is a bit like the famous story of an Irishman

giving directions to a visitor by listing a string of landmarks that have all burned

down. As for Visions of Johanna, the title points out that Johanna exists in

the words of the song not in visualizations but in visions, the most striking of

which is the very famous one glimpsed in the face of the near-at-hand charac-

ter, Louise: The ghost of lectricity howls in the bones of her face / Where

these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. Not Johannas place but

my place because, looking at the mirror of Louises face (Shes delicate and

seems like a mirror), I see the vision of my face reflected there, only to see

it replaced by visions of Johanna. How can a face that mutates from Louises to

mine to Johannas be thought to be visualized in Dylans painting of one Woman

in Red Lion Pub? a woman seen from the back, for that matter.

This is not to say, however, that we cannot ourselves visualize these

very imperfectly described heroines. Visualizing means forming a mental image

of something not visible, and that is what we find ourselves doing as we follow

these songs. In fact, it is because Dylan withholds things from full descriptive

visibility in the words of his songs that we find ourselves wanting to visualize

them. Wanting is akin to desiring, and unsatisfied want will increase desire just

as impediments will extend it. Therefore, when Dylan throws up barriers to

visibility in his songs, we should stop and wonder why he is doing this impeding

and encouraging of our visualizing. In the case of these heroines, it is reasona-

DYLAN WOMAN IN RED LION PUB 2007ACHE, WATERCOLOUR OVER DIGITAL

E ART PRINT ON DECKLE-EDGE PAPERX 61 CM1


13/97

BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 24 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACR OS

pick something out and create a song out of them. He recently enlarged upon

this:

George Bellows can take a barn that is standing right in front of him,

hook it up with an old Packard from miles away, a strutting peacock from

around the corner, a whole bunch of models that he poses and paints individu-

ally, casts it all in a certain shadow and light, maybe even throw in some prize

fighters and an overhanging bridge and call it a painting. The experience didnt

exist before, nor will it ever in the future, however the reality of it is undenia-ble. Its not that he starts out willfully to paint this picture, but the feel of the

idea comes to reveal itself. Its something for the viewer to deal with.

Thats also more or less what Dylan seems to have done in making the bright,

strong Music fom Big Pinkcover. However, in the songs, the images are revea-

led one after another in a prescribed sequence, whereas in the Band cover, they

are shown simultaneously to be taken sequentially at the viewers discretion,

the visual artist being able only to suggest or urge particular pathways for per-

ceptual experience.

By this time, Dylan was already putting together images in his songs

in a way that pulled against the temporal sequences of their delivery. Hence,

in this same interview he speaks of how those on the album John Wesley Ha-

ding () lack this traditional sense of time, as compared to conventional

ballads. One example he gives is of the cycle of events working in a rather

reverse order in All Along the Watchtower. With a song like this, you have

to think about it after you hear it, and it sort of reveals itself backwards, but

with a ballad, you dont necessarily have to think about it after you hear it, it

can all unfold to you. The difference is between time that unfolds sequentially

over the duration of a b allad, forming a seamless narrative whole, and time that

moves dissonantly and nonsequentially over that duration and that, therefore,

invites the listener to keep on replaying it in the mind in order to grasp the

simultaneous order of its parts and the potential narratives that they may be

made to compose. Just like looking at a painting. Nonetheless, in a song the

events are still delivered one after the other in the time of the performance.

A visual artist, who arranges events in space, can constrain, but not

compel, the viewer to take them in a particular order; and the simplest way of

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 its

it is not a matter of geography, or indeed of subject matter, at all. Although

travel narratives and associated forms of transitional fiction, like ballads and

childrens stories, are particularly adept at the telling of transformational expe-

riences which is why they play so prominent a role in Dylans work it is not

travel but transformation that they sponsor. And sponsorship of transformation

in an experiential context brings with it commitment to the efficacy of the

artistic; and to an artistic engagement as, again in Bollass words, a caesura in

time when the subject feels held in symmetry and solitude by the spirit of theobject. It does matter whether or not a work of art can describe an Edenic

encounter, but it matters a great deal more whether or not it can deliver one.

Born in time

Dylan took drawing lessons in high school and returned to drawing in the early

s in New York, which is also when he began to visit the citys art museums,

particularly The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern

Art. It is unclear when he took up painting, but it may have not been until

his wife Sara bought him a box of oil paints for his twenty-seventh birthday, in

Woodstock in . In any event, one of the two best known of his early pain-

tings was made that year, as the cover for the Bands Music fom Big Pink()

(fig. ); the second for the cover of his Self-Potait() (fig. ). For the artist,

their continuing circulation is, at best, a reminder of how far he has come since

then. They have that function for his viewers, too; but they are additionally

instructive in isolating two ways of composing that Dylan will bring together in

later, more sophisticated works.

The Band cover (fig. ) is a fantasy in an apparently unschooled style,

showing a group of musicians, one sprawled over a piano, with a prickly looking

tree in the background and an elephant walking in from the right. It is a work

of Dylanesque Surrealism in line with what had been developing in his work

since Mr. Tambourine Man (). That it was intended to have a nave and

chimerical appearance is suggested by the similar, but more sober cover that

Dylan made the same year for the folk song magazine, Sing Out! Moreover, in

the same issue of that magazine, there appeared an interview between Dylan

and John Cohen and Happy Traum, in which he used an analogy with painting

to respond to the suggestion that, It seems that people are bombarded all the

time with random thoughts and outside impulses, and it takes a songwriter to

BOB DYLAN

BOB


14/97


to be composed by the rectangle it inhabits. This happens with the face on

the Self-Potaitcover; it seems to design the painting and to be designed by

it. With larger bodily shapes, in elongated rectangles rather than squares, the

posture of the figure will need to be engaged in order to activate this reciprocal

design process.

Jumping ahead to around , a splendid example of this process is

the Two Sistes pencil drawing published in the original, Dawn Blankbook

(fig. ). The twinned bodies are overlapped, but they are depicted in plane, sothat they appear in places to be abutted, as comprising tangential not in fact

overlapping forms. It is, therefore, a single, two-figured shape that governs

the space in which it is drawn, the artist seeming to submit his design to the

force of its figuration. And yet, the shape of the figuration is governed by the

geometry of the pictorial shape, the artist submitting to his material means in

order to gain command over the figural shape.

Although many of the original Drawn Blank drawings are as strong as

the colored versions of , the added coloration brings with it the associa-

tion of a performance upon the original drawing, akin to the effect of timbre

mellow or reedy, dark or bright, clear or flat in the musical performance of

a lyric. In this case among others, however, coloration (seemingly helped by

knowledge of Max Beckmans paintings) assumes the additional pictorial func-

tion of amplifying and complicating the fluctuations into and out of depth and

lateral slides across the surface (fig. ). Here, strange composite images ensue:

the bent leg of the foreground sister attaches to her siblings midriff, seemingly

as much above as behind her; her bent arm attaches to her siblings face, and

the fanning fingers of that arm to the fanning verticals of a wall that is nomi-

nally but not visually in the far distance. Far more than in the rudimentary Mu-

sic fom Big Pinkcover, connections, and disconnections, made by the shaping

of color, albeit tonal color, make the Two Sistes sheets among the strongest of

the compositions. They set the pattern for the most compelling works

in The Bazil Seies among them the puppet play ofGypsies (cat. ), the bodily

network ofSideshow(cat. ), and the diorama-like Countrymen (cat. ) which

likewise offer us images of apparent reality, unlike the fantastic scenario on the

Band cover.

A distinction between these two modes of forming mental images one

consistent with reality, the other not so had surfaced in the creation ofBlonde

on Blonde. As Michael Coyle and Debra Rae Cohen have observed, its fantastic,

Surrealistic representations of reality are consistently destabilized most no-

clarity, this was a favored method of the pregnant moment approach to nar-

rative representation, discussed in the Lost in Time essay, and we see it used

with that approach in Dylans The Tale Beae (cat. ). A less linear narrative,

however, may be produced by creating a color connection between pictorial

events; something we see in the work of great colorists from Titian through

Henri Matisse, where a sometimes very complex pictorial time is produced by

the eye being urged to respond to contrasts and echoes of color, and thereby

to jump from instant to instant across and around a composition. This is, ne-edless to say, a more difficult approach to the issue, so it is fascinating to see

Dylan attempting it in a very rudimentary manner in the Band cover image. He

associates the three musicians holding string instruments by the color pairings

of their respective costumes red-yellow, blue-yellow, and green-ocher that

speak to and answer each other as notes or chords do. It is pretty basic stuff,

but it does show that Dylan is not merely setting down a fantasy image but

thinking about how a picture can be constructed by pictorial means.

Since the shape and size of area occupied by a color influence the

intensity with which that color is perceived, the color-connection method is

closely related to the shape-connection method used in The Bazil Seies. Dylan

makes us aware of this in, among other works, Babeshop (cat. ), where the

rhyme of areas of similar shape and color but very different size associates the

gown of the man having his hair cut and the beard of the foreground figure, in-

viting us, as Dylans rhymes often do, to infer a causal connection between un-

likely partners. However, color is muted in most of The Bazil Seies, a limitation

that may well be a response to the less successful works in The Dawn Blank

Seies often being those with high prismatic color, and having the advantage of

giving the greater compositional role to more easily managed tonal likenesses

and contrasts as well as avoiding, except in a few works, a quality of south-

of-the-border picturesque.

Dylan has tended to shrug off the cover for Self-Potait(cat. ), saying

that nobody had remembered to commission cover art, so he did it himself

in about five minutes. Be that as it may, it is a strong image, the disembo-

died, ironically disengaged mask-face wedged into the pictorial rectangle and

torqued there through asymmetries of drawing and color. This is an ancient

manner of composing figural images, deriving from the need to fit them into

assigned architectural compartments, and one that continues to serve artists

well; its remarkable longevity largely derives from how the bodily shape, con-

tained in such a manner, may be adjusted so as to seem both to compose and

. 25

BOGOUACHE, WFINE ART PR

. 7


15/97


Blocking out things. Being immune to distractions. Actuality. You cant improve

on it actually.

In fact, the situation is a bit more complicated than that because, and

this is the third critical question we have to ask: If Dylan, the conscious ar-

tist, is focused on actuality, what does he mean by doing consciously what he

unconsciously felt? To start with, what does this mean in the context of his art

lessons? To my knowledge, the only example Dylan has given of what Raeben

specifically asked him to do is: he put this vase in front of me and he says,You see this vase? And he put it there for seconds or so and then he took

it away and he said, Draw it. Well, I mean, I started drawing it and I couldnt

remember shit about this vase Id looked at it but I didnt see it.

Effectively, Raeben was using the early modern, neo-Symbolist tea-

ching method that Matisse used, when he advised his students: Close your

eyes and hold the vision, and then do the work with your own sensibility. Of

his own work, Matisse said, if I close my eyes, I see objects better than with

my eyes open, meaning that the affect produced by an object would better

be grasped after he had been looking at it, which aided the production of an

image of the object in which denotation and connotation were combined.

Dylan speaks of how, with a song on John Wesley Hading(), There

are walls within walls. Time itself is a shape. Everything happens within cer-

tain perimeters. So he was somewhat prepared for what Raeben, like Ma-

tisse before him, was urging: basically, to listen to the Symbolist poet Stp-

hane Mallarms famous mandate, To paint not the thing but the effect it

produces; then paint both. To do so required that both looking and remem-

bering looking had to be done in a concentrated way: the deeper the concen-

tration on the object, in actuality and in memory, the more that the mind will

find in it associations that the mind provides, associations intrinsically, imagi-

natively connected to the object, and not fantasies. To this Dylan adds, What

Mallarm says is true. Basically thats what a songwriter does. Its the sound of

the words which make the effect. Im not sure if you can appl y that technique

to painting. Personally, my type of painting is just the opposite of that. I paint

for the theater, for an audience.

Dylan said of Raeben, He connected my hand and my eye up to some

degree. I had a lot of fantasy dreams. He doesnt respect fantasy. He respects

only imagination. The songs in Blonde on Blonde distanced themselves

from their own Surrealism for its fantasy, but the Music fom Big Pinkpain-

ting epitomized a druggy Dylanesque Surrealism. Now, however, Dylan began

ticeably in representations of women, causing them to seem absent from the

songs ostensibly for or about them, but also in the self-representations that run

through an albumwhose very title screams confusion of identities, while also

initializing BoB. (Yeah, well, Im everybody anyway.) This advancement of

and yet retreat from the fantastic speaks of an important moment of transition

in Dylans work; and he has spoken of the creation ofBlonde on Blonde as the

moment after which he lost his ability to compose unconsciously, presumably

meaning unselfconsciously. It was at this point that painting was called uponto help. But neither the fantasy image on Music fom Big Pinknor the deadpan

Self-Potaitcover image quite served.

It took me a long time to get to do consciously what I used to be able

to do unconsciously, he told Jonathan Cott in . The echo is inescapable

of Coleridges famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination:

the former, spontaneous and elemental; the latter, mitigated by the conscious

act of imagining, which would now become Dylans method. He added:

I had the good fortune to meet a man in New York City who taught

me how to see. He put my mind and my hand together in a way that allowed

me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt. And I didnt know how to pull

it off. I wasnt sure it could be done in songs because I hadnt written a song

like that. But when I started doing it, the first album I made was Blood on the

Tacks. Everybody agrees that that was pretty different, and whats different

about it is that there are characters in the song that have their own specific

code of behavior that might bump up against our sense of time. They all exist

in a common area yet theyre in personal territory. Also, youve got yesterday,

today, and tomorrow in the same room, and theres very little that you cant

imagine happening or not happening. When and where and to whom makes no

difference.

The first critical question raised by this statement is: Why did Dylan speak

of being taught how to see, not taught how to paint, when it was some four

months of painting lessons in under the tutelage of an artist named Nor-

man Raeben that effected this transformation? The answer, I take it, is that

his painting lessons focused on painting visible objects, learning the discipli-

ne of mind-eye-hand response to the perceptual world. Dylan says as much

when answering, for Allen Ginsberg in , the second question raised by this

statement: What precisely does he means by doing something consciously?

Ginsberg: And what does a conscious artist practice? Dylan: Being awake.

7


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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 30 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACR OS

present: made at once absent and present as it is shaped by the imagination;

shaped into the code of a painting with no sense of time, except for the

time created by following the trail laid down by the rhythmic code. There are

many ways of doing this. Dylans is a deeply atavistic way that pays the price

of not connecting with the most contemporary of idioms in order to retain

contact with the figurative art of the past. But, as T.S. Eliot cautioned, The

perpetual task of poetry is to make old things new. Not necessarily to make

new things (.) And what Dylan himself said of traditional songs, theyrenot going to die, reminds us that the old methods that he uses to make his

new paintings I didnt invent this, you know. Many others have worked this

way. breathe still.

to push against fantasy in favor of imagination the voluntary summonings

of the conception of things absent or impossible, in John Ruskins celebrated

words; and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination partly consists in its

knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of their

actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent presence or

reality (.)

Hence, the imaginative is based in a strong sense of the actual, but

focuses on the actual only to break up its fixity in time and space. Speaking ofsubsequent songs that benefited from Raebens lessons, Dylan referred to the

ones that more or less have the break-up of time, where pieces of it come at

you from all angles. It is the very intensity of a Ruskinian focus on the actual

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. Hes up to date in

the moment. Hes carrying no baggage but hes conjuring up a lot of past ima-

ges. You dont know how far past. Could be yesterday could be ten years ago.

Hes under a flat roof but the ceiling could be sloping. You wouldnt know it it

all has the same reflection. I suppose the song is like a Rubens painting - maybe

Massace of the Innocents or something - only difference is you hear it instead

of see it.

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 doesnt necessarily fol-

low that you can do the other. Each has a different purpose in how you adjust

to life and expose things.

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 apparently

CAT. 7


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BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 32 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROS

John ElderfieldJohn Elderfield (born ) is an independent curator and art historian, and

Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern

Art, New York, where he has directed more than twenty exhibitions, ranging

from Fauvism and its Affinities () and Kut Schwittes () to the celebrated

Heni Matisse: A Retospective (), and more recently, Manet and the Execu-

tion of Maximilian (),Amando Reven (), and Matisse: Radical Invention,

1913-17(). As Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum, he

reinstalled that collection in in its newly rebuilt premises. He earned B.A.

and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Leeds and a Ph.D. from the Cour-

tauld Institute of Art, London University, and has been awarded a Harkness

Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the first Mit-

chell Prize for a book on twentieth-century art. In addition to his exhibition

catalogues, he has published books on Hugo Ball (/), Helen Frankent-

haler (), and Pierre-Paul Prudhon (), among others; some seventy-five

articles on modern art and related subjects; and he lectures widely. Among

his recent affiliations and awards, he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Getty

Research Institute in Los Angeles (); an Associate Fellow at the American

Academy in Rome (); named by Time magazine as one of the Most

Influential People of the Year (); was made Officier dans lOrdre des Arts

et des Lettres by the French Government (); and awarded an honorary

D. Litt. from the University of Leeds (). He serves on the board of the

Dedalus Foundation, the Members Board of the Phillips Collection, Washingt-

on, D.C, the American Advisory Committee of the Courtauld Institute of Art,

and the American Committee of the Premium Imperiale Prize. His immediate

projects include the exhibition, with accompanying publication, De Kooning: A

Retospective ().

bobdylan.com/#/songs, which allows one to search for

and phrases. On occasion, however, I quote silently; t

puzzled by such unexpected constructions as than

came (from Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues) might

search feature.

Rather than clutter the pages with references for e

career, I suggest that neophytes consult Nigel William

Guide to Bob Dylan, London , and that the adventu

taxhelp.com/reference, a portal onto the vast bibliogra

Ingrid Mssinger and Kerstin Drechsel (ed.): Bob D

Blank Seies, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz

Dawn Blank, New York and Toronto .

Quoted in Clinton Heylin: Bob Dylan. Behind the

New York , p. .

Ibid., p. .

However, they do bear comparison with contrived

for publicity purposes, as opposed to prints made from

and Dylans deep interest in film clearly informs The B

To the author, March .

Loeuvre dart; un arrt du temps.Quoted in

Georges Pompidou, Paris , p. .

Interview with Jonathan Cott, Rolling Stone, Janu

Cott, , p. .

Seymour Chatman: Story and Discouse: Naative

on and Film, Ithaca and London , p. . In this discus

I draw upon my Manet and the Execution of Maximilia

of Modern Art, New York, pp. -, -, a public

owns.

To the author, March .

To the author, commenting on this text in April

Interview with John Cohen and Happy Traum, Sin

For their close and careful reading of the penultimate version of this

text, and their very helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Jeanne Collins,

Terry Winters, and especially Christopher Ricks. I am also particularly

grateful to Bob Dylan, not only for talking to me about his paintings,

but also for his illuminating comments on this text, now incorporated

into it, and refinement of a number of his earlier statements that I have

quoted.

The relationship of metamorphic imagining and cultural transitions

is intrinsic to the subject of two fascinating volumes, Caroline Walker

Bynum: Metamophosis and Identity, New York , and Marina Warner:

Fantastic Metamophoses, Othe Wolds: Ways of Telling the Self, Oxford

. Their plates could well serve as illustrations for Dylans famous

statement on metamorphic imagery in traditional music. See In-

terview with Nat Hentoff, Playboy, March ; reprinted in Jonathan

Cott (ed.): Bob Dylan. The Essential Interviews , New York, , p. . I

should add here that, while the phrase on the borderline appears in

two of Dylans songs (Girl from The North Country and Idiot Wind),

Across the Borderline is the title of a song by Ry Cooder. However,

Dylan told his audience at Montreux on July , that he was going

to (and he did) play them again a song (this song by Cooder) they had

already heard that evening because its so good.

T. Colmer [ed.]: On the Constitution of the Chuch and State. Vol.

ofThe Collected Woks of Samuel Taylo Coleidge, London , p. .

See Christopher Bollas: The Shadow of the Object. Psychoanalysis of

the Unthought Known,New York , especially chapters and , The

transformational object and The spirit of the object as the hand of

fate, pp. -.

Rather than provide multiple references to phrases in Dylans songs,

I usually give the song title only, the full text of songs being readily

available in Bob Dylan. Lyics, 1962-2001, New York , and in www.

NOTES


18/97

BRAZIL SERIES PAGE 34 JOHN ELDERFIELD ACROS

November , in Cott, , p. .

For a technical summary of the problem, see Wallace Martin: Re-

cent Theoies of Naative, Ithaca and London , pp. -.

Christopher Ricks: Dylans Visions of Sin, New York , pp. -

. I wonder if Dylan also pulls against the repudiation by invoking just

a hint of the It was a dark and stormy night genre in his description.

On the difficulty of stopping in Dylans songs, see Ricks, , pp.

-.

Quoted in Grail Marcus: Like a Rolling Stone. Bob Dylan at the Coss-

oads, New York , pp. -.

Bob Dylan Paints Some Masterpieces. I Hear that He Sings Too,

November , , www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/.

In the some half-dozen versions of Visions of Johanna I have li-

stened to, including that on Blonde and Blonde, it may sound as if Dylan

sings, Shes delicate and seems like Vermeer, but close listening reve-

als that he doesnt. However, in the version recorded on November ,

, prior to the release of the Blonde on Blonde version, but not issued

until , on New Diection Home: The Soundtack (Bootleg Series, vol.

), he does sing, Like silk she seems like the mirror, a nice analogy bet-

ween a refractive and a reflective surface, presumably forfeited because

the double similes have no referent in Louises appearance to attach

to.

In Blonde on Blonde, women are oddly absent from the songs that

purport to be for or about them, observe Michael Coyle and Debra

Rae Cohen: Blonde on Blonde (), in Kevin J. H. Dettmar (ed.): The

Cambidge Companion to Bob Dylan, Cambridge , p. . To add to

the complication, Johanna is not only a womans name but also Hebrew

for Gods Grace, or Gift from God; not, as Michael Gray bizarrely sug-

gests (Song and Dance Man III. The At of Bob Dylan, London and New

York , p. ), for Armageddon. In any event, this may be a very

extreme example of Dylans underdescribing, but it is not an exceptio-

nal example.

Christopher Ricks: Undermining Keats, The New Yok Review of

Books LVI, , December , , pp. -; quotation at . In this respect, such details are associable with the familiar trope in

early modernist painting, from Ingres to Bonnard, of using peripherally

placed accessories to evoke rather than describe; meaning thus being

displaced from the protagonists into trails of objects.

To the author, April . A similar statement appears in the Inter-

view with Cott, January , , in Cott, , . This is not a casual

comparison: Dylan is reporting of having also said, in the late s,

Ive learned as much from Czanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.

Quoted in Heylin, , .

Bollas, , p. .

Ibid., p. .

Bob Dylan: Chonicles, Volume 1, New York , pp. -.

Williamson, , p. .

Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine , p. , October-November

.

Dylans reply to the question in Sing Out! appears in Interview with

Cohen and Taum, October-November , in Cott, , , in which

he refers to a local painter; commenting on this text in April , he

offered the amended, more vivid statement printed here.

Interview with Cohen and Traum, October-November , in Cott,

, p. . Dylan pre cised the quotation that follows in a comment on

this text in April .

Beautifully described by the painter Bridget Riley in The Colour

Connection, in Robert Kudielka [ed.]: The Eyes Mind: Bidget Riley. Col-

lected Witings 1965-1999,London , pp. -.

Asked, on the subject ofRenaldo and Claa, Do you feel you use

colors in the same way you use notes or chords, Dylan replied: Oh,

yeah. Theres much information you could get on the meaning of colors.

Every color has a certain mood and feeling. For instance, red is a very

vital color. Theres a lot of reds in this movie, and a lot of blues. A lot of

ter Terry Winters observed that Dylans statement m

like an advocate of the specific objects of Minimalist

Cartwright in Ibid., pp. -.

Sarah Steins Notes (), in Jack Flam (ed.): M

keley and Los Angeles , p. .

Dominque Fourcade: Heni Matisse. Ecits et pop

, , n.


Peindre non la chose mais leffet quelle produit.

Cazalis, October , , in Betrand Marchal [ed.]: St

Coespondance complte (1862-1871); Suivie de Lettes su

1898), Paris , p. .


Ibid.

Quoted in Heylin, , p. .

John Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Achitectue (

pp. - (chapter II, section III),quoted and discussed

. For our purposes, it is worth adding that Ruskin op

by observing, Again, it might be thought, and has bee

the whole art of painting is nothing else than an endea

Not so: it is, on the contrary, a statement of certain fact

possible way. Ibid., p. . Raeben was a Ruskinian as we

as Dylan became with his stress on actuality. However,

gorical division between fantasy and imagination, whic

in speaking of Dylans post-Raeben approach, is unsup

etymology or usage. C oleridge contrasts imagination an

traction of fantasy he used to refer to images not sh

gination, but that come ready-made from memory to

, above); while Leigh Hunt wrote of a moment in K

founded, as all beautiful fancies are, on a strong sense

occurs. (Quoted by Ricks, , p. ), which is tantam

that a fancy is the product of the imagination, as Rusk

cobalt blue. Q: Why cobalt blue? A: Its the color of dissent. Inter-

view with Ron Rosenbaum, Playboy, March , in Cott, , p. . Of making the painting, Dylan has said: Staring at the blank canvas

for a while encouraged me to blindfoldedly make a picture that would

paste all the songs together between the sleeves [] It wasnt my pur-

pose to paint my own picture. Quoted in Heylin, , p. . The

metaphor of the blindfold is significant, given what we shall presently

learn of the painting lessons he took in .

I draw here upon my The Language of the Body. Dawings by Piee-

Paul Pudhon, New York , p. .

Adding to the force of these works is the artists creation of dif-

ferently colored variations of the same image; their suggestion, I take

it, is that, on the one hand, he gains greater control of the subject in

the process of replication, and that, on the other, the process of repli-

cation offers competing versions of the same subjec t, not one of which

suffices to capture what is desired. In any event, it is a compelling ap-

proach, recasting without repeating the image-replication of the songs,

which one may reasonably suppose continues to have great potential

for Dylan.

Coyle and Cohen in Dettmar, , pp. -.

Interview with Cott, November , , in Cott, , p. .

Ibid., pp. -.

Ibid., p. ; amended by Dylan, April .

See Chapter of Coleridges Biogaphia Liteaia: volume of

James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (ed.): The Collected Woks of Samuel

Taylo Coleidge,London, .

Bert Cartwright: The Mysterious Norman Raeben, in John Baul-

die [ed.], Wanted Man: In Seach of Bob Dylan, New York , pp. -

is a useful compilation of published information about Raeben and his

influence.

To the author, April . See Interview with Allen Ginsberg, ,

in Bauldie, , . Commenting on this passage of my text, the pain-


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However, fantasy has long been used loosely to mean having no basis

in reality as well as wondrous and strange; and Dylans I had a lot of

fantasy dreams is clearly a twentieth-century, quasi-Freudian usage: a

fantasy as a dream or day-dream based on desires.

Quoted by Cartwright in Bauldie, , p. ; amended by Dylan,

April . Dylan continued: To do that consciously is a trick, and I did

it on Blood On The Tacks for the first time. I knew how to do it because

of the technique I learned I actually had a teacher for it [.].

To the author, commenting on this text in April . (Similar state-

ments are quoted by Cartwright in Bauldie, , p. ; Heylin, , p.

; and appear in the Interview with Cott, November , , in Cott,

, pp. -.

Ibid.

Dylan would seem to have flirted, at some point, with a neo-

Expressionist, beat style of painting, judged by paintings, notably an

undated Queen of Heats, posted on the Bob Dylan Picture Archive

(dylanstubs.com/pictures/); however, he obviously needed to create

more explicitly depicted images in order to achieve the kind of manipu-

lations of descriptivity, narrativity, and temporality that he desired. The

Picture Archive warns us that the title, Queen of Heats, is unconfirmed;

nevertheless, it is tempting to recall a celebrated painting of the early

s with the same title by Willem de Kooning in the collection of the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Wa-

shington, D.C. See Judith Zilczer, Willem de Kooning fom the Hishhon

Museum Collection, New York , pp. -.

T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Practice of Poetry (), in James

Olney, ed., T. S. Eliot. Essays fom the Southen Review, Oxford , p.

.

Interview with Hentoff, March , in Cott, , p. .

To the author, April .


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CATALOG

PAINTINGSAcrylic on canvas

DRAWINGSPencil on paper


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Favela Villa Candido x , cm


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Favela Villa Broncos, x , cm


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Bahia, x , cm


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Wagon Master, x , cm


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The Vineyard, x , cm


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Ranchers, x cm


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Gypsies, x , cm


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Grande rvore Beachfront, x , cm


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Countrymen, x , cm


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The Hunters, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Rider x cm


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Oak Grove, x , cm


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Mango Swamp, x , cm


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Rainforest, x , cm


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Card Player, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Ventriloquist, x , cm


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The Eaters, x , cm


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Songbird, x , cm


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Sideshow, x , cm


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Skull and Bones, x , cm


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Sculptor, x , cm


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Piano Player, x , cm


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Chrysanthemums, x cm


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Boxing Gym, x cm


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Talebearer, x , cm


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The Argument, x , cm


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Renunciation, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Barber Shop, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Cemitrio Na Colina, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Preacher, x , cm


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Poison, x , cm


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Revelations, x , cm


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Religious Couple, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Mafia Family, x , cm


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Politician, x , cm


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Sharp Shooter, x , cm

A

, x , cm


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Trouble Makers, x , cm


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The Incident, x , cm

A

, x , cm. cm


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Courtroom, x , cm


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Bamboo Road, x , cm


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The Bazil Seies comprises close to fifty paintings, of which Bob Dylan has se-

lected forty for the Copenhagen exhibition. All of these paintings were painted

during the period from late to early . As the series title suggests, the

paintings are somehow associated with Brazil; the artist found his subject matter

on journeys to the country. The paintings are wide-ranging in scope, and this fact

alone suggests that inspiration for the individual paintings arose on different occa-

sions over a prolonged period of time. Undoubtedly, the original ideas for several

of the paintings date back further than the autumn of . Dylan has touredBrazil to play concerts on several occasions, most recently in March of . In

and he made week-long sojourns in the country during tours.

The Bazil Seies consists of a series of paintings of varying sizes, depicting

motifs that often differ markedly from each other. Dylan clearly had no desire to

give the paintings a single, cohesive theme or common denominator. Thus, the

designation series should only be regarded as signifying that the paintings be-

long together as a group.

The paintings are often based on drawn studies, often jotted down by

Dylan in front of the subject itself or, indeed, whenever he felt the urge to work

on the motif, which may sometimes spring forth from his own imagination or b e a

processing of a scene he observed on a previous occasion. According to the artist

himself, some of the drawings were executed on pieces of paper that happened

to be at hand at the time, such as paper bags or napkins. In other cases the first

drawings were carried out on drawing paper in spiral-backed notebooks; a fact

which suggests that the artist carried the notebook around on the off chance that

he should come across a suitable motifs. Such drawings are preliminary studies

in the proper sense; works in which the motif and composition of the subse-

quent paintings were determined. This is true of all drawings reproduced in this

book (cat. nos. A, A, A, A, A, A, A & A). Two different formats

of drawings appear, suggesting that he employed two different notepads while

drawing the motifs for the series. Some of the drawings may be studies executed

in front of the motifs, while others definitely appear to be compositional draw-

ings that may have been done far away fro m the scene depicted. The drawings

selected by the artist here show that he would often settle on the entire composi-

tion before embarking on painting. This does not, however, mean that significant

changes might not occur during the execution of individual paintings. In the paint-

ing Poison (Gift) (cat. no. ), for example, he added a significant element to the

painting: the arches in the background were added after the foreground had been

painted. The arches presumably replace a different background.

Kasper Monrad

THEBRAZILSERIES


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In all the paintings Bob Dylan created for The Bazil Seies the motif itself plays the

crucial part. The painter is clearly keenly interested in the narrative function of

the paintings. He does not just use the motifs as an excuse for painting. It would

appear that a strong fascination with the exotic settings he encountered in Brazil

proved a major incentive to him. Here, he found motifs and scenes that would

strike Northern Americans and Northern Europeans as southern. This is to

say that they have an exotic quality that can seem challenging and tantalising,

partly because they are so different from everyday life at home and because theyappeal to the imagination. They often invite you to continue the narrative, embel-

lishing the scene played out in front of you.

Undoubtedly the artist made a deliberate choice in opting for a non-

American range of motifs. Up through the entire th century, certain types of

iconic American motifs have become staples of American painting and film, and

today it can be difficult to work with typically American imagery without resort-

ing to overly familiar motifs that s o easily become clichs o r downright kitsch. Dy-

lan evades these pitfalls by choosing Brazilian motifs; motifs that he could regard

with an entirely fresh outlook.

In a number of paintings it appears that Dylan was primarily interested

Bob Dylan - The Brazil Series

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