EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Dylan’s Sources

Now comes the story of Bob Dylan’s paintings, currently on view at Gagosian New York. I have only seen photos but, given the buzz, I’ll be there next week. I didn’t know but Dylan, like many artists, has long been known for using other people’s work as source material in his music, sometimes too closely for comfort. That’s what the New York Times says anyway. 

Today, sadly, Dylan’s facing the same charges as a painter. His current show, titled The Asia Series, is said to be “a visual reflection on his travels in Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea….” and is displayed like truly significant contemporary art, each image backed by acres of white wall. Yet Dylan fans have discovered that several of these paintings are exact copies of photographs. The image at left, above, is by the singer; the photograph at right taken by Léon Busy in Vietnam in 1915. Another mirrors a Cartier-Bresson photograph so closely that one wonders how he thought that he could get away with it. The gallery does admit that one painting known as Le Belle Cascade “looks like a riff on Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe but which is, in fact, a scenographic tourist photo-opportunity in a Tokyo amusement arcade.” That sounds fair game. I’ll let you know once I see it.