ROME.- The exhibition Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum, curated by Shai Baitel, opened on 16 December at MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts. It is the first European retrospective dedicated to the visual art works of one of the most important icons of world contemporary culture.

After being housed at the MAM in Shanghai and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, the exhibition is now in Rome in a version completely redesigned to interact with the dynamic, futuristic spaces of Zaha Hadid's MAXXI.

On display are over 100 works including paintings, watercolours, ink and graphite drawings, metal sculptures and video material, spanning Bob Dylan's 50-plus years of creative activity.

Bob Dylan said, “It’s gratifying to learn that my visual works are going to be exhibited at MAXXI in Rome, a truly great museum in one of the world’s most beautiful and inspirational cities. This exhibition is meant to provide perspectives that examine the human condition and explore the mysteries of life that continue to leave us perplexed. It’s very different from my music, of course, but every bit as purposeful in its intent”.
The works on display highlight the motifs that have always been part of Dylan's imagination as a musician and that also return in his paintings in the form of drawings and colours.

As he himself writes in the exhibition catalogue (curated by Shai Baitel and published by Skira), his visual artworks recount “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”. Huge metropolises, barren, endless landscapes, railroad tracks, open roads, cars, trucks, petrol pumps, motels, shacks, bars, shops, backyards, billboards, neon signs: as in his songs and poems, Dylan makes the depths of the US poetic in his paintings. “I chose images because of the meanings they have for me”, he writes. “These paintings are up to the moment realism—archaic, most static, but quivering in appearance. They are the world that I see or choose to see or be a part of or gain entrance to. However, that’s my doing”.

“This career-spanning exhibition showcases Bob Dylan’s unique approach to visual art and command of painting, drawing, and sculpting. It provides a special opportunity to view Dylan’s creative journey across time and locations, including the steps at Rome’s Piazza di Spagna as captured in the featured work “When I paint my Masterpiece”, added curator Shai Baitel.

For the occasion, MAXXI's national public collection has been enriched by a work by Dylan. This work was created around the famous 1965 song Subterranean Homesick Blues, which features the first (and perhaps most famous) music video in history. In it, Dylan drops to the beat of the music a series of sheets of paper with the song's lyrics, which were written the night before by a group of friends including Allen

Ginsberg, who can be seen in the video. In 2018, Dylan rewrote these lyrics on 64 signs, which he set up to make up a wall beside the screen. The Subterranean Homesick Blues Series thus combines visual arts, words and music.




EXHIBITION ITINERARY

The exhibition itinerary is divided into eight sections that trace Dylan's journey in the visual arts and, at the same time, bring us into contact with his creativity as a musician, poet and artist: Early Works, The Beaten Path, Mondo Scripto, Revisionist, The Drawn Blank, New Orleans, Deep Focus, Ironworks. Early Works includes a series of drawings made in the 1970s in which Dylan took note of the reality around him, of every image at hand, drawing full-page figures and objects. These illustrations anticipate the 2018 works of Mondo Scripto, whereby the artist returned to the dialogue between music and visual art by producing a series in which the handwritten lyrics of his most representative songs are accompanied by original drawings recalling the titles or key moments of the songs themselves.

The Beaten Path is a portrait of the American landscape, a visual journey across the United States to the discovery of beauty, even in the forgotten places that form the backdrop to everyday life. The works show glimpses of motels and diners that are always open, abandoned amusement parks and vintage cars, and large buildings illuminated by streetlamps. In many cases, the road punctuates the scene with long highways that seem to unfold endlessly towards the horizon.

Mondo Scripto features some of Dylan's most famous lyrics, as personally transcribed by the artist and accompanied by his graphite drawings. These combinations of words and images testify to the existence of a deep and direct connection between his visual art and his written compositions. The pencil drawings make visible the dialogue between image and text, between past and present, which has changed the relationship between music and words thanks to the continuous creative flow that fuels Dylan's art. The Subterranean Homesick Blues Series is part of this series, which will enter the MAXXI Collection.

Revisionist is a series in which Dylan reworks the graphic design, words and colour content of famous magazine covers, from 'Rolling Stone' to 'Playboy', and transforms them into new large-scale screen- printed images.

The Drawn Blank is a sort of illustrated diary depicting snapshots of life on the road – portraits, historical places, panoramas and hidden corners. The series originated from a collection of charcoal pencil and pen sketches made between '89 and '92 during tours in America, Europe and Asia. Over the years, Dylan has modified the drawings several times, adding detail, colour and depth.

New Orleans immortalises the bond between Dylan and New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz; the city is located at the southern end of Highway 61, one of America's most famous roads (also known as 'The Blues Highway'), which runs north-south through the central part of the United States and passes through the places of Dylan's childhood. In every corner of New Orleans, the artist's eye identifies infinite cues for his works; for Dylan, the gestures and habits of its citizens are a source of inspiration that translates into scenes of daily life where a close-up look succeeds in creating a certain level of intimacy between the subjects portrayed and the observer.

Deep Focus features paintings with particular framings and image cuts, evocative and often mysterious compositions suspended between life and theatre and inspired by the documentary spirit of photography and cinema. The title of the series refers to a film technique in which the narrative is the result of the combination of foreground, background and backdrop, which are all in focus at the same time for details to be discerned at any depth.

Ironworks. The exhibition itinerary closes with a series of iron sculptures – functional structures composed of objects and tools put to new use that recall Dylan's childhood memories of the mining area of northern Minnesota, as well as the United States' iconic industrial past.