Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

From Shelf: Nobel Prize for Literature winners 1971-2023

An intriguing collection of por traits of British 'types' by the internationally acclaimed icon of American music, Character Sketches accompanies a display of Bob Dylan's previously unseen and unpublished pastels produced for the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Bob Dylan is one of America's most influential and important cultural figures. W ith over 500 songs, 46 albums and an astonishing 110 million record sales to his name , Dylan, now in his early seventies , is turning increasingly to a nother mode of artistic expression ; one that has occupied him throughout his life, but for which he is much less well known . Although Dylan has sketched and drawn since childhood and painted since the late 1960 s , only relatively recently has he begun to exhibit his artworks . The twelve works collected in this beautifully produced volume represent his latest foray into portraiture : an exploration of British 'types'. In an illuminat ing essay, curator and art historian John Elderfield explains the story behind these works and Dylan's approach to his art. Previously, Elderfield has acknowledged that while it may be unsettling when an artist does not adhere to the thing for which we have come to admire him most, Dylan has often asked his audience to get over the discomfort of his changing: ' And don't speak too soon / For the wheel's still in spin ... ' For Elderfield, Dylan's paintings, like his songs, are 'product s of the same extraordinary, inventive imagination, the same mind and eye, by the same story - telling artist, for whom showing and telling - the temporal and the spatial, the verbal and the visual - are not easily separated.'

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