Photograph: John Shearer
week, Sony Legacy released ‘Bob Dylan: The Original Mono 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
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
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 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
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-
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