Artworks by Music Legend Bob Dylan Featured This Summer at the Fenimore
COOPERSTOWN—A new exhibition at Fenimore Art Museum celebrates another impressive aspect of music legend Bob Dylan’s creativity: his talents in visual art. “Bob Dylan Remastered: Drawings from the Road” features 92 unique, original signed works. The exhibition is on view through September 15.
A dedicated performer, Dylan started what is known as his “Never Ending Tour” in 1988; between 1989 and 1992, as he traveled through North America, Europe, and Asia, he began sketching glimpses of his life on the road. The resultant pencil and charcoal drawings were a way to “refocus a restless mind,” as Dylan claimed, providing him a new outlet to celebrate the comings and goings of everyday life.
“This exhibition allows everyone, including Dylan’s fans, to experience another aspect of the range of talents possessed by this music legend,” said Chris Rossi, director of exhibitions at [the museum]. “We all recognize him as an accomplished singer/songwriter and visitors will be equally amazed when discovering his work as a visual artist.”
Dylan made three different collections out of the original drawings by “remastering” these works, adding vivid watercolor and gouache to digital enlargements of the drawings to create a new, special edition set titled The Drawn Blank Series, which is the focus of Fenimore’s exhibition.
All three series were first seen in public during an exhibition at the prestigious Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz Museum in Germany in 2007. After one additional show in Helsinki, the works returned to Dylan. Today, The Drawn Blank Series is owned by a private collector while the other two sets were sold to a private gallery.
Dylan’s work has been compared to modern masters such as Henri Matisse and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. His skills as a draughtsman, in keeping with his talents as a songwriter, lie with his ability to tell an engrossing tale through the simplest and most evocative means.
The exhibition is sponsored in part by The Clark Foundation and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas O. Putnam.
This exhibition was provided by PAN Art Connections.
Visit FenimoreArt.org for more information.