American, b.1941
Photograph: William Claxton Tempest, and was awarded America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Barack Obama. In 2013, he received France’s prestigious appointment of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. In October 2016 an official announcement by Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, revealed that Dylan was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. Dylan dates the origins of his work as a visual artist to the early 1960s. The public first saw his artwork on the cover of the album, Music From Big Pink by The Band in 1968 and on his now iconic Self Portrait album cover of 1970. In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles, he writes: ‘What would I draw? Well, I guess I would start with whatever was at hand. I sat at the table, took out a pencil and paper and drew the typewriter, a crucifix, a rose, pencils, knives and pins, empty cigarette boxes. I’d lose track of time completely.... Not that I thought I was any great drawer, but I did feel like I was putting an orderliness to the chaos around.’
Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most influential and groundbreaking artists. In the decades since he first burst into the public’s consciousness from New York City’s Greenwich Village folk music scene in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan has sold more than 125 million records and amassed a singular body of work that includes some of the greatest and most popular songs the world has ever known. Dylan’s contributions to worldwide culture have been recognised and honoured with many awards. He received an honorary doctorate of music from Princeton University, New Jersey, in 1970 and another from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 2004. President Clinton presented him with a Kennedy Center Honor at the White House in 1997, recognising the excellence of his contribution to American culture. Dylan’s song ‘Things Have Changed’ from the film Wonder Boys (2000) won him an Academy Award in 2001. In addition to winning eleven Grammy Awards, he has achieved six entries in the Grammy Hall of Fame, which honours recordings of ‘qualitative or historical significance’ at least 25 years old. During 2012, Dylan released his thirty-sixth studio album,
Photograph: William Claxton
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