In this collection international abstract artist Alex Echo embodies the themes and power of shape-shifting, demonstrating his continuously evolving techniques.
| 2019 |
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BOB DYLAN FOREWORD
In 1974 I played the first of many shows with The Band – maybe in eight years. We were in a hockey arena in Chicago. There were maybe 18,000 people there. The Band and I hadn’t played publicly together since 1966 where our shows caused a lot of disruption and turmoil – a lot of anger. Now we were in Chicago starting up again. There was no way to predict what was going to happen. At the end of the concert we had played over 25 or 30 songs and we were standing on the stage looking out. The audience was in semi-darkness. All of a sudden, somebody lit a match. And then somebody else lit another match. In short time, there were areas of the arena that were engulfed in matches. Within seconds after that, it looked like the whole arena was in flames and that all the people in the arena had struck matches and were going to burn the place down. The Band and I looked for the nearest stage exit as none of us wanted to go down in flames. It seemed like nothing had changed. If we thought the response was extreme on the earlier tours we played, this was positively apocalyptic. Every one of us on the stage thought that we’d really done it this time – that the fans were going to burn the arena down. Obviously we were wrong. We misinterpreted and misunderstood the reaction of the crowd. What we believed to be disapproval was actually a grand appreciative gesture. Appearances can be deceiving. ABOUT THE ORIGINAL BEATEN PATH COLLECTION For this series of paintings the idea was to create pictures that would not be misinterpreted or misunderstood by me or anybody else. When the Halcyon Gallery brought the idea of me doing American landscapes for an exhibition, all they had to do was say it once. And after a bit of clarification, I took it to heart and ran with it. The common theme of these works having something to do with the American landscape – how you see it while crisscrossing the land and seeing it for what it’s worth. Staying out of the mainstream and traveling the back roads, free born style. I believe that the key to the future is in the remnants of the past. That you have to master the idioms of your own time before you can have any identity in the present tense. Your past begins the day you were born and to disregard it is cheating yourself of who you really are. My idea was to keep things simple, only deal with what is externally visible. These paintings are up to the moment realism – archaic, most static, but quivering in appearance. They contradict the modern world. However, that’s my doing. The San Francisco Chinatown street stands merely two blocks away from corporate, windowless buildings. But these cold giant structures have no meaning for me in the
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world that I see or choose to see or be a part of or gain entrance to. If you look half a block away from the Coney Island hotdog stand, the sky is littered with high rises. I choose not to see them either. Down the road, across the highway from the Cabin in the Woods is a manicured golf course. But it has little meaning compared to the seemingly worthless shack which speaks to me. The Alabama Side Show is surrounded by woods in all directions. The side show happens to be in a clearing and you go there by dirt road. I chose to paint the side show instead of the endless woods. There are countless other works where this is also true. All the iconography is used in a semi-conscious way. I chose images because of the meanings they have for me and patterns can be seen in the repeating images – roads, shacks, piers, automobiles, streets, bayous, railroad tracks, bridges, motels, truck stops, power lines, farmyards, theater marquees, churches, signs and symbols, etc. – all establishing a certain type of compositional value. I would say the purpose is plain, non-experimental or exploratory. Some of these works have much complexity of detail. Some are less demanding… in some cases my hand couldn’t do what my eye was perceiving. So I went to the camera obscura method. The camera obscura was a primitive camera invented in the 1600s which projected an image upside down so the painter could work from it. This was a real camera but the image was not printable. It could only be seen and filled in. Caravaggio used this in about all of his paintings and so did Van Eyck and Vermeer. These days you don’t have to go to all that trouble. You can use a real camera. I put a 58 mm 0.43x wide-angle conversion lens onto a used Nikon D3300 Af-p on quite a few paintings, Downtown Bank, Katz’s, Nathans, Russ & Daughters, Roy’s, Blue Line among others and was able to get the desired effect. If that didn’t work, I used a convex Plexiglass RCA 24 x 20 television screen that can be found in old junk shops and looked at the world through that. On Curry Road in Arizona, I used an old movie frame and I did that on a couple of different paintings, too. In just as many others I drew it straight on. Topanga Ranch, Ice Cream Factory, Truck Stops, Flat Top Mt. Diner and Del Rio Cantina. The method with the particular altered lens was used for fullness of effect. In a lot of the other cases, all I needed was a straight edge, compass and a T-Square going on a case by case basis without abandoning tradition or adhering to any conventions or aesthetic doctrines. The watercolors and acrylics done here purposely show little or no emotion, yet I would say they are not necessarily emotionally stringent. The attempt was made to represent reality and images as they are without idealizing them. My idea is to compose works that create stability, working with generalized, universal and easily identifiable objects. Throughout there is the attempt to depict scenes of life and inanimate life for their own sake (Ice Cream Shack, Arcade, Threatening Skies). Da Vinci paints a blurred picture – you see no lines but clouds that fade into one another with different color schemes. An opposing view would be Mondrian and Van Gogh with strict lines that define the volumes of space. In the middle somewhere would be Kandinsky and Rouault. And these paintings would probably fall into that category. An attempt was made to depersonalize the works – strip them of illusion. All the work is exclusively placed in non-exotic settings within a rationally defined space. The focus points are important and sometimes
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unusually placed. Background and foreground not easily defined. In Amusement Park Alleyway, the focus point is the Ferris wheel in the background. The orange Chevy truck might be centered in the foreground but it’s not the focal point. In Morning in Pittsburgh, the focal point would be the bridge in the background instead of the larger warehouse in the foreground. Just like in the Flat Top Mt. Diner, the focal point might actually be the green trees. I tried to create the two dimensional image using a mathematical system. At times, the background and foreground converge. Natural scenery is always the main feature. These are not crowded compositions. They are using basic structures to express feelings and ideas. Perfect proportion and logic instead of emotion. The nature of beauty, the lines, forms, shape and texture that emphasize the recognizable create harmony where natural scenery is the main feature. I restricted myself to traditional subject matter viewing nothing as shallow or gaudy. A simple hotdog stand can have classical features and I view it as such (Donut Shop, High Wire). Whiplash curves, flying buttresses, pointed steeples, arches and waves. They are all there, reflecting any time period, purposely trying to stay away from dramatic or theatrical lighting effects, bringing naturalism to the forefront. In some paintings, the brightness of reflected light was brought forth in evident brushstrokes. Sometimes sunlight hitting certain places would contrast deeply with areas of shadow (Sunset on the Prairie, Threatening Skies). I tried to avoid skewed perspectives or manmade light, yet sometimes it couldn’t be avoided. An expert painter is a master in color theory, which means he can turn white into black using a complex value system of colors and hues like a Mark Rothko. The Beaten Path however, reflects explorations in color, sometimes using colors that become less pronounced and outlines that become less precise. Other times tipping towards the monochromatic (Oil Rigger’s Shack, Twilight After Dusk). Flowing or curved lines form another visual vehicle, suggesting a far distance in a landscape painting. Architecture itself is always a vital source of ideas and inspiration, but always The Beaten Path tries to return to the traditional methods of perceptions – things that are perceived in the visible world – taking the three dimensional into a two dimensional format using contrast, location, isolation and convergence. If there is a soundtrack to this compilation of paintings, I would say it could be recordings by Peetie Wheatstraw in some places, Charlie Parker in others, Clifford Brown or Blind Lemon, maybe Guitar Slim – artists that make us a lot bigger when listening to them. It would have to be that way. Absolutely. There was a conscious attempt to dismiss consumer culture or popular culture, including mass media, commercial art, celebrities, consumer or product packaging, billboard signs, comic strips, magazine advertising. The Beaten Path works represent a different subject matter from the everyday imagery of consumer culture. There is nothing to suggest these paintings were inspired by the writings of Sigmund Freud or that they were based on any mental images that occur in dreams, no fantasy worlds, religious mysticism or ambiguous subject matter. In every picture the viewer doesn’t have to wonder whether it’s an actual object or a delusional one. If the viewer visited where the picture actually existed, he or she would see the same thing. It is what unites us all.
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BOB DYLAN
Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most influential and groundbreaking artists. He has sold more than 125 million records around the world and amassed a singular body of work that includes some of the greatest and most popular songs the world has ever known. His first success came in the early 1960s as a live performer in the coffee houses and folk clubs of New York’s Greenwich Village. He continues to traverse the globe each year, performing more than 100 concerts annually in front of crowds who embrace his new material with the same fervour as his classic output. In recent years, his work as an author and visual artist has further burnished his popularity and acclaim: a worldwide best-selling memoir, Chronicles: Volume One , spent 19 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers List in 2004, and since 2007 major exhibitions of his paintings have been shown at some of the world’s most prestigious museums and galleries. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, on 24 May 1941, Dylan spent most of his childhood in the iron-mining town of Hibbing. He taught himself piano and guitar and played in several bands, both in his hometown and in Duluth. In 1961, heavily influenced by Woody Guthrie and other American folk artists, Dylan moved to New York and began to play in the burgeoning folk music scene of Greenwich Village. He was signed to Columbia Records by renowned Artists and Repertoire Executive John Hammond in 1961, and his self- titled debut album was released in 1962. Many of Dylan’s early songs were made famous by other artists such as Joan Baez and Peter, Paul & Mary, whose versions of his classic compositions ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ helped bring the young artist to a larger audience. From his earliest performances in Greenwich Village coffee shops, folk festivals and rallies in the early 1960s to his stadium rock concerts of the 1970s and subsequent annual international tours, Dylan established an enduring reputation as one of the world’s great live performers. He has released over 50 albums and written more than 600 songs, including ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, ‘All Along The Watchtower’, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ and ‘Make You Feel My Love’. His songs have been covered more than 6,000 times by artists as diverse as Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N’ Roses, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Adele and U2.
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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 Andrew’s, 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. President Obama subsequently granted him America’s 2009 National Medal of Arts and, in 2012, the highest civilian honour in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2013, he received France’s prestigious appointment of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. Dylan’s song ‘Things Have Changed’ from the film Wonder Boys (2000) garnered a 2001 Academy Award. In 2007 he received Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and in 2008 a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize ‘for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power’. In addition to winning 11 Grammy Awards, Dylan has achieved six entries in the Grammy Hall of Fame, which honours recordings of ‘qualitative or historical significance’ at least 25 years old. His 37th studio album, Fallen Angels , was released to critical acclaim in May 2016, entering the charts in the top 10 in 12 countries. Dylan dates the origins of his work as a visual artist to the early 1960s. 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.’ A few drawings reached the public’s gaze through various means, including the cover of The Band’s 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink . A book of 92 drawings titled Drawn Blank followed in 1994, and exhibitions of reworked versions of these images were mounted at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany in 2007 and the following year at Halcyon Gallery in London. The original Drawn Blank sketches date from 1989 to 1992. Dylan explains that he drew them as a way of relaxing and refocusing his mind while touring America, Europe and Asia. When approached by the Kunstsammlungen wanting to exhibit them, he returned to the images and reworked them. A single picture would emerge as a set, coloured sometimes delicately, sometimes brilliantly, with different elements emphasised. ‘He riffs with color across the same simple black-and-white sketches the way he plays songs in concert, sometimes making subtle changes, other times brutally overhauling them’, commented Marisha Pessl in The New York Times [‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’, 1 June 2008]. ‘His brushstrokes are like his voice: straightforward, rough, occasionally fragile, but always intent on illustrating the treads of human experience.’ Two important exhibitions of The Drawn Blank Series took place in 2010 at the Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti in Turin, Italy, and at the Asahi Exhibition Centre in Roppongi, Tokyo. At Halcyon Gallery, the
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works were exhibited both as limited edition graphics and, in Bob Dylan on Canvas , as the artist’s first-ever paintings in acrylics. As this fresh medium opened up to Dylan during an intensive burst of artistic activity, he completed a significant new group of some 50 paintings, The Brazil Series . In the subsequent exhibition at Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst from September 2010 to April 2011, visitors saw how Dylan had developed preliminary studies into richly coloured depictions of countryside, cityscape and, above all, characters such as musicians, card players and troublemakers. A further artistic landmark was Dylan’s first New York show in autumn 2011 at the Gagosian Gallery, where The Asia Series was exhibited. These 18 works reflect on his time spent in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea but also quote from art history, including works by Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin and Henri Cartier- Bresson. In November 2012, the artist’s controversial Revisionist Art Series opened in New York with large silkscreen works that satirised lofty public figures and celebrities within the format of famous magazine covers, re-contextualizing the familiar graphics and iconography with vivacity and a maverick sense of the absurd. In February 2013 the Palazzo Reale in Milan exhibited Dylan’s New Orleans Series, a group of 23 oil on canvas works paying homage to the birthplace of blues and jazz in atmospheric 1940s scenes and portrayals of decadent, virtually monochrome nudes. ‘Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you’, says Dylan in Chronicles . ‘There’s something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands.… The city is one very long poem.’ Dylan’s first museum show in London, Face Value , opened at the National Portrait Gallery in August 2013. An exhibition of 12 pastel portraits depicting enigmatic characters conflated from memory, imagination and real life, with such names as Nina Felix and Red Flanagan, it represented a break in tradition for this august institution, which generally admits only portraiture of well-known figures in British public life. Three months later, Dylan’s fascination with metalwork came into the public arena at Halcyon Gallery’s exhibition Mood Swings , presenting his first collection of iron sculptures. Works of threshold and transition, they bar the path but simultaneously allow people to see through to the scenery beyond. During 2014, Dylan exhibited again with Halcyon Gallery, showing Revisionist Art and Side Tracks , a running series of over 300 prints, each uniquely hand-embellished by the artist, revisiting the evocative Train Tracks image from The Drawn Blank Series . The Face Value exhibition toured, first to Copenhagen’s Museum of National History in 2014, then to the Butler Museum in Youngstown, Ohio, in 2015, followed by Kent State University Museum, Ohio, and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in 2016. The New Orleans Series travelled to the city that originally inspired this suite of paintings for a two-part show.
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GRAPHICS STANDARD FORMAT
Available as 8 Individual Graphics or Deluxe Boxed Set of 8 All hand-signed by the artist in graphite pencil
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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Standard Format Blue Swallow Motel, Rte. 66 Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 16½” (60.8cm x 41.6cm)
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Standard Format Under the Bridge Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 16½” (60.8cm x 41.6cm)
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Standard Format Little Factory For Ice Cream Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 16” (60.8cm x 40.9cm)
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Standard Format Threatening Skies Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 13½” (60.8cm x 34.2cm)
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Standard Format Manhattan Bridge, Downtown New York Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 15¾” (60.8cm x 40.3cm)
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Standard Format Joshua Tree, Sunrise Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 23” x 16½” (58.2cm x 41.6cm)
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Standard Format Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 16½” (60.8cm x 41.6cm)
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Standard Format Early Morning, Golden Gate Bridge Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 30” x 23” (76cm x 58cm) • Image Size 24” x 16½” (60.8cm x 41.6cm)
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GRAPHICS MEDIUM FORMAT
Available as 4 Individual Graphics in Presentation Wallet or Portfolio Set of 4 All hand-signed by the artist in graphite pencil
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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Medium Format Wilton Iowa Farmyard Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 40” x 30” (101cm x 76.3cm) • Image Size 33¾” x 20¾” (85.7cm x 52.5cm)
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Medium Format Brooklyn Heights Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 40” x 30” (101cm x 76.3cm) • Image Size 33¾” x 23½” (85.7cm x 59.6cm)
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Medium Format Little Italy, Lower Manhattan Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 40” x 30” (101cm x 76.3cm) • Image Size 32” x 23” (81.5cm x 58.7cm)
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Medium Format New England Depot Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 40” x 30” (101cm x 76.3cm) • Image Size 33¾” x 23½” (85.7cm x 59.6cm)
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BOXED SET STANDARD FORMAT
Available as Deluxe Boxed Set of 8 All hand-signed by the artist in graphite pencil
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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PORTFOLIO MEDIUM FORMAT
Available as Portfolio Set of 4 All hand-signed by the artist in graphite pencil
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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STANDARD FORMAT BOXED SET
MEDIUM FORMAT PORTFOLIO
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BOB DYLAN BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS
Standard Format Picture Title Limited Edition Graphic of 295 • Paper Size 271/2” x 22” (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2” x 153/4” (54.5 cm x 40 cm) tandard Format Picture Title imited Edition Graphic of 295 • Pap r Size 271/ " x 22" (70 cm x 56 cm) • Image Size 211/2" x 153/4" (54.5 cm x 40 cm)
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Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota on 24th May 1941. He grew up in the mining town of Hibbing and played in a number of rock and roll bands as a high school student. In 1959 he enrolled at the University of Minneapolis but left after his freshman year. The Sixties 1961 In January, Dylan moved to New York City where he visited his idol Woody Guthrie in hospital and performed in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village. Following a performance at New York’s Gerde’s Folk City in September, Dylan received public recognition through a review by critic Robert Shelton in The New York Times. Dylan’s talents were brought to the attention of A&R producer John Hammond and in October he signed a contract with Columbia Records. 1963 Dylan’s second album, ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’, including songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ helped establish him as a singer and songwriter. He soon became an important figure in the national folk movement. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ was released by Peter, Paul and Mary and reached number two in the American music charts in July. In the same month, Dylan performed at the Newport Folk Festival. It was also during 1963 that Dylan became prominent in the civil rights movement, singing at protest rallies with Joan Baez. On 28th August he sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the civil rights rally at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. 1964 Dylan felt increasingly constrained by the folk and protest movement and his fourth album, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’, released in August 1964, showed a move away from protest songs to 1962 In March, Dylan released his first album, ‘Bob Dylan’.
ones of a more personal and poetic nature.
1965 Dylan released ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, which included the use of electric instruments and signified his departure from folk music towards rock and roll. In April, Dylan began a tour of Britain and the hysteria surrounding him was captured in the film documentary, ‘Don’t Look Back’ (1965), directed by the filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker. Dylan’s single ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was released on 20th July and became his first major hit. Five days later he performed at the Newport Folk Festival, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, where he showcased his new electric sound and received a mixed response from the audience. In September, Dylan began touring backed by the Hawks – who later became known as The Band. 1966 In April, Dylan began a tour of Australia and Europe, which culminated in a raucous and notorious confrontation between the singer and fans during a concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in Britain. On 29th July near Woodstock, New York, Dylan crashed his motorcycle. Although the extent of his injuries was not known, he disappeared from public view for many months. He would not tour again for eight years. 1967 In spring, The Band moved to Woodstock to be closer to Dylan and he recorded with them in the basement of their house. The tracks produced were widely bootlegged and only legitimately released in 1975 as ‘The Basement Tapes’. 1968 On 20th January, Dylan made his first live appearance, following the accident, with The Band at a memorial concert for Woody Guthrie in New York City.
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Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. Footage of the tour was used in the four-hour film, ‘Renaldo and Clara’, directed by Dylan. Released in 1978, the film met with a mixed response from audience and critics. 1976 In November, Dylan appeared in The Band’s ‘farewell’ concert, which was filmed by Martin Scorsese and released as the film ‘The Last Waltz’ in 1978.
1969 In May, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash’s new television show, singing several songs as duets with Cash. Dylan rejected requests to perform at the ‘Woodstock Festival’ and instead topped the bill at the ‘Isle of Wight Rock Festival’ on 31st August. The Seventies 1970 Dylan left Woodstock and moved to MacDougal Street in New York City. In June he received an honorary doctorate of music from Princeton University, New Jersey. Dylan’s collection of experimental writings from 1966, ‘Tarantula’, was finally published in November. 1971 George Harrison persuaded Dylan to appear at a benefit concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in New York City in August 1971. 1972 In November, Dylan contributed to the soundtrack of the film ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ (1973) directed by Sam Peckinpah. The soundtrack included ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ which has subsequently been covered by over one hundred recording artists. Dylan also made his acting début in the film as a minor member of Billy’s gang. 1974 In January, Dylan and The Band embarked on their first tour in eight years, playing thirty-nine shows in twenty-one cities coast-to-coast in America. A live album documenting this tour, ‘Before the Flood’, was released. 1975 From autumn 1975 until spring 1976, Dylan toured North America with the ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’, which included a changing entourage of artists such as the poet Allen Ginsberg, and singers 1973 A collection of Dylan’s lyrics and poetry, ‘Writings and Drawings’, was published.
1978 Dylan embarked on an extensive tour of New Zealand, Australia, Europe, America and Japan.
1979 In the late 1970s, Dylan became deeply interested in developing more spiritually inspired music based on his evolving studies of the Bible. Two albums rooted in Gospel Music – ‘Slow Train Coming’ and ‘Saved’ – were released in 1979 and 1980. The Eighties 1982 Dylan was inducted into the ‘Songwriters Hall of Fame’ in March 1982. 1985 In July, Dylan contributed vocals for the all-star single, ‘We Are The World’, in aid of African famine relief. On 13th July he appeared, backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, at the Live Aid concert at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. His third book, ‘Lyrics: 1962-1985’, was published and ‘Biograph’, a five-disc retrospective collection, was also released. 1986-1987 During these years, Dylan toured backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 1987 he toured with backing from the Grateful Dead, which led to the album ‘Dylan & the Dead’ (1989). Dylan also starred in the movie ‘Hearts of Fire’ (1987) directed by Richard Marquand.
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on 26th September 2005. Concentrating on the years between Dylan’s arrival in New York City in 1961 and his motorcycle crash in 1966, the film was an international success both with critics and fans. 2006 Dylan’s forty-fourth album, ‘Modern Times’, released in 2006, gave him his first American number one album in thirty years and won a Grammy Award in 2007 for best contemporary folk album. In spring, Dylan began his DJ career hosting the weekly ‘Theme Time Radio Hour’ show for XM Satellite Radio in America and BBC Radio 2 in Britain. 2007 Released in August, the award-winning film, ‘I’m Not There’, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was inspired by the life and music of Dylan. An exhibition entitled ‘The Drawn Blank Series’, which contained re-worked versions of Dylan’s sketches and drawings, opened in the autumn at the Kunstsammlungen Museum, in Chemnitz, Germany. 2008 In April, Dylan received a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize ‘for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power’. A major exhibition of selected works from ‘The Drawn Blank Series’, together with new re-worked versions, premiered at Halcyon Gallery in London in the summer, receiving huge critical acclaim. A selection of limited edition graphics from the exhibition were released in a select number of UK galleries with many editions selling out immediately upon release. 2009 On 15th April, Dylan aired his 100th episode in the US of his ‘Theme Time Radio Hour’. On 28th April Dylan released his 45th album ‘Together Through Life’ which débuted at number one in the UK album charts, 38 years and five months after his last chart-topper ‘New Morning’ in 1970. This broke the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK. The album also went to number one in the US, as well as several other countries worldwide. On 12th October Dylan launched his first ever Christmas album – Christmas In The Heart – with all royalties being donated to The World Food Programme and Crisis UK; helping to fight hunger worldwide by providing meals to the needy over the holiday season. On 17th December Newsweek announced their list of ‘Best Albums of the Decade’ with Bob Dylan’s ‘Love And Theft’ coming in at Number 2. 2010 On 13th February, Halcyon Gallery, London launched Dylan’s first ever exhibition of paintings on canvas. In September of 2010, Dylan’s acrylic works on canvas were displayed in a one-man exhibition at Denmark’s National Gallery, the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. The ‘Brazil Series’ was specifically created by Dylan for the exhibition. On 18th October 2010, Columbia Records released Volume 9 of his ‘Bootleg Series, The Witmark Demos.’ This comprised 47 demo recordings of songs taped between 1962 and 1964 for Dylan’s earliest music publishers, and received universal acclaim. In the same week, Sony Legacy released ‘Bob Dylan: The Original Mono
1988 In January, Dylan was inducted into the ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’, with an induction speech by Bruce Springsteen. In spring, Dylan joined Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and George Harrison to form the light-hearted group The Traveling Wilburys. They released two well-received albums in 1988 and 1990. Late spring also saw the start of what came to be called the ‘Never Ending Tour’ with a small and evolving band. The Nineties 1990 In January, Dylan received the ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’, the highest cultural award given by the French Government. He was also included in ‘Life’ magazine’s list of the hundred most influential Americans. 1991 In February, Dylan received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. 1992 Columbia records marked the 30th anniversary of Dylan’s first album with an all-star concert at Madison Square Garden, New York City, on 16th October 1992. The concert featured more than thirty artists including George Harrison, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton and Dylan himself. 1994 After failing to perform at the ‘Woodstock Festival’ in 1969, Dylan made a triumphant appearance at ‘Woodstock ‘94’. ‘Drawn Blank’, a collection of ninety-two sketches and drawings created by Dylan while on a tour of America, Europe and Asia between 1989 and 1992, was published. 1997 Dylan played a concert before Pope John Paul II at the ‘World Eucharistic Conference’ in Bologna, Italy. In December, President Bill Clinton presented him with a ‘Kennedy Center Honor’ at the White House in Washington D.C. 1998 Dylan picked up three Grammy Awards for his ‘Time Out of Mind’ (1997) album, including ‘Album of the Year’; heralding a return to form as a songwriter and performer. The New Millennium 2000 In May, Dylan was awarded the prestigious ‘Polar Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’. He also wrote and performed the song ‘Things Have Changed’ for the film ‘Wonder Boys’ (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson, which won him a Golden Globe award and an Academy Award the following year. 2003 With producer/director Larry Charles, Dylan co-wrote and starred in the film ‘Masked and Anonymous’, which was released in 2003. 2004 Dylan received an honorary doctorate of music from St Andrews University, Scotland on 23rd June 2004. October saw the publication of the first volume of his three part autobiography, ‘Chronicles: Volume One’, which spent nineteen weeks on ‘The New York Times’ best-seller list. 2005 The film documentary, ‘No Direction Home’, directed by Martin Scorsese, was shown on BBC 2 in Britain and PBS in America
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Recordings’, a box set which for the first time presented Dylan’s eight earliest albums. In November 2010, a major exhibition of selected limited edition and original graphics from ‘The Drawn Blank Series’ premiered in Tokyo. 2011 On 24th May, Dylan turned 70. The event was marked with numerous symposiums around the world. Dylan, ignoring the hoopla, stuck to the basics and continued touring, playing for the first time in Taiwan, China and Vietnam as well as a sold out European tour. 2012 Besides his usual touring schedule, Dylan completed work on his 36th studio album, ‘Tempest’, released on September 11th, 2012. On 29th May 2012, Bob Dylan received The Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. 2013 As well as embarking on his worldwide summer tour, ‘Americanarama’, Bob Dylan exhibited new works from his ‘New Orleans Series’ at the prestigious Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Royal Palace that once held the city’s government, but now hosts major exhibitions including artists Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. In November 2013, Bob Dylan’s iron works collection ‘Mood Swings’ launched in a major solo exhibition at Halcyon Gallery. 2014 During 2014, Dylan again exhibited with Halcyon Gallery, showing Revisionist Art and Side Tracks, a running series of over 300 prints, each uniquely hand-embellished by the artist. Here he revisits the evocative Train Tracks image from The Drawn Blank Series, re-colouring, re-configuring and re-imagining it, revealing a flicker of his continuing journey, at once repetitive and ever-changing. In October of that year, Simon and Schuster published the massive 960 page edition of Dylan’s LYRICS: SINCE 1962, edited by literary giant Christopher Ricks. The book was an instant success, selling out of its initial run in preorder. Later that year, Columbia Records released the eleventh chapter of The Bootleg Series, the highly anticipated, BASEMENT TAPES COMPLETE.
ballads, many popularized by Frank Sinatra. The album was a critical and popular success around the world entering the charts in the top ten in over nineteen countries. As Andy Gill, in the Independent wrote, the recordings “have a lingering, languid charm, which… help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.” A few days later, Bob Dylan was honoured as the 25th MusiCares Person of the Year at a fundraiser in Los Angeles. The event was the most successful fundraiser in MusiCares history. 2016 From January until March, Face Value, a selection of twelve large portraits, was exhibited at Kent State University Museum, Kent, Ohio, USA. In April, Bob Dylan: The New Orleans Series opened at New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Face Value later made its debut in Germany for the first time in May, at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, in Chemnitz, Germany. 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’. The following month, Dylan’s major exhibition ‘The Beaten Path’ opened at Halcyon Gallery. In these new drawings, watercolours and acrylic works on canvas the artist depicts many facets of the American heartlands. 2018 ‘Mondo Scripto’ opened at Halcyon Gallery in October 2018. The exhibition presented a selection of Bob Dylan’s most iconic songs, handwritten in pen on paper and accompanied with a corresponding drawing in graphite, also on paper. As Tom Piazza, a celebrated novelist and writer on American music, wrote for the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, ‘Dylan’s restlessly creative mind is never wholly satisfied, and those familiar with these songs will find surprise at many a new turn of phrase. The unexpected couplings of these works and images offer a surprisingly intimate door into each song, adding dimension, delight and insight into the artist’s relation to his own work’.
2015 On February 3, Dylan released his thirty-sixth studio album, SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT, a collection of American standard
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