Expecting Rain

The point is that the word "painting" suggest someone used paint and paint brushes. This picture / image / artwork / collage is not a painting by that definition. It's a photograph with additional typeface on canvas. Nobody painted it.

rev, thanks for your post. Sorry if I gave the impression that the Life Magazine picture bothers me in any way. It doesn't. I think it is strange that a representative of Gagosian Gallery would refer to it as a "painting" when I think they should be familiar with the proper terms of what to call this work. But this is a minor point, I'm glad they confirmed this work and I find it intriguing to learn now that there are more similar works. I'm eager to find out more about them and I don't care if Bob did nothing more than chosing the cover picks and thinking up the wording, i.e. if he didn't design this at a PC etc.... and no, I don't think it's plagiarism since his source is obvious, far more so than in the Asia paintings.

A lot of famous artists at this point are little more than celebrities (check out Tracy Emin).

I don't have a clue what this thread is about anymore.

And now, up a couple of mezzanine floors…the Asia Series. I have to say I just cannot make any sense of this. There is nothing 'wrong' or even unusual about painting from photographs. It became a kind of postmodernist routine about living in a world of representations and simulacra, losing our grip on the real, etc etc. But in Dylan’s case the surrounding rhetoric is not about that at all, but instead all about realism, authentic vision, etc etc (What on earth John Elderfield, a reputable historian of modernism, makes of it I can't imagine; his whole pitch in the ‘Brazil Series’ catalogue was about a return to realism, an American tradition stretching back to Thomas Hart Benton and others in the 1930s). Whatever these ‘paintings’ are, they are not works of realism, in the sense of being pictures of reality.

It was obvious at first glance that at least some of them were painted from photographs, but the initial assumption was they were Dylan’s photographs – a source a bit like a quicker version of the original Drawn Blank sketches; which isn’t a problem. It is the nature of the photographs that really generates the tension. Again I wonder, who, who, in either 'institution' be it 'Gagosian' mega-artmarket blue-chip gallery institution or 'the Bob Dylan' institution could have imagined the copying would go unnoticed? Moreover, I simply don't get the point of it. Dylan is the greatest songwriter in the world. If he took the telephone directory he could make it powerful. But he is not a great visual artist. These things are not interesting in themselves, they are only interesting because he is Bob Dylan, and they are starting to be interesting only for the wrong reasons. To repeat myself, they could be very interesting. If Dylan was engaging with some post-colonialist debate about stereotypical Orientalist representations of the Other, blah blah, then you could easily construct a sense for the enterprise. But he clearly isn’t. There is no engagement with the materialism of the source images, either anonymous 19th century, or the very different 20th century Cartier-Bresson, or whatever. There is nothing about why the photographs copied were chosen; not least because the implication was allowed to grow that the resulting paintings did have some rootedness in the recent Asian tours, and Dylan’s observation of reality. The unavoidable question is Why? Back to being puzzled. It can't just be money that drives this. Because in the end the whole product risks being devalued. So what is it? To me, it barely makes sense. I cannot see, from Dylan’s point of view, where the productive, pleasurable work lies. Because he talks so well about art in the accompanying interview. But the terms on which he talks about it are contradicted by the nature of the work itself. It is very strange indeed.
So I am back to the starting point. I could go on, but at present, until more information becomes available, that’s my resting point. Beyond banal censure, the question of what sense we make of this work presently seems unresolvable.

I don't have a clue what this thread is about anymore.

Larry Gagosian is the most powerful art dealer in the world. Rest assured that Bob Dylan did not pull any kind of "fast one" over on Gagosian about whether there would be a lawsuit in regard to the paintings. It seems like it's been very easy for amateurs to source the photographs they reference. If you can do it, what makes you think the staff at Gagosian didn't do this long ago or that Bob hasn't discussed it at length with many people he knows. Bob is way beyond stretching his own canvases. It's likely he employs a number of assistants in his painting studio who are well aware much of his work is "appropriated" from photographs. It's not like he has tried to keep all of this some big secret. Dylan has been friends with some of the most successful artists in Los Angeles for decades. It's not reasonable to think these people have never been in Dylan's studio or ever seen his work. L.A. is a fairly small town, art-wise. It's likely a large number of people have viewed his work long before it was every commercially displayed. Paintings based on photographs, or photographs based on other artists imagery are extremely common in contemporary art. There's nothing weird or underhanded about Dylan painting from photographs. As far as any interviews Dylan has given about his paintings, he can, like other artists, claim any inspiration he wants to about how or why he paints what he paints. He's never been all that forthcoming about his music, has he? Why would anyone expect him to be clinically exact about his paintings?

Why is Gagosian showing Bob's work? Gagosian has always been willing to exhibit people who were just as much celebrities as artists. A lot of famous artists at this point are little more than celebrities (check out Tracy Emin).
Once it became obvious to someone at Gagosian's Gallery there would be a huge amount of publicity for the galleries and possibly a large amount of money to be made by exhibiting Dylan's work, there was no reason not to show it. Look at the huge amount of publicity it has already brought Gagosian, albeit some of it bad. Even bad publicity is useful publicity.

Many artists do not sign their work. It means nothing. There are other ways of establishing provenance of an artwork besides it having a signature. I used to buy photographic prints from galleries in New York by well known photographers. In the same edition, some prints would be signed and some would not. It was often totally random which photographs bore a signature. The fact that there is a receipt from the gallery for the purchase of the work is usually adequate authentication for contemporary art. There are also unique aspects to the work of any artist that make them fairly easy to establish as someone's work. Anyone fretting about buying an unsigned Dylan painting from Gagosian should just find a reputable autograph dealer and purchase a signature. Buying a painting by Dylan just because he signed it is like the art collector Daniel Stern played in "Hannah and Her Sisters" who tells the painter played by Max Von Sydow that he's looking to buy a painting with orange in it to complement his orange sofa.

It's also not at all unusual for galleries to make you ask for a price list if you want to know if a painting is available for sale, and if so, how much it cost. News flash - many of the works by the most prestigious artists showing in the most prestigious galleries in New York, who may be asking half a million dollars for a painting - their work is not for sale to people who visit the gallery. There are waiting lists of collectors who are waiting for the privilege of buying works by particularly successful artists, lists people get on by being early patrons of particular artists, by repeatedly buying their work, or by repeatedly buying a lot of work from the same dealer, or because they have an impressive collection of paintings that an artist would like their work to become a part of. Just because you have half a million dollars and can afford to buy someone's painting doesn't mean the gallery will sell it to you. The art world has some very byzantine rules about who is allowed to own what, where someone is allowed to show their work, what work is allowed to travel to be shown in museums. And don't forget that unlike buying a book or a cd, paintings and other kinds of plastic art are typically one of a kind commodities and as such, represent major investment opportunities and your viewing pleasure in a gallery has next to nothing to do with why a particularly successful artist has a show in that gallery, especially a gallery like Gagosian's. If people think music has become extremely commercialized, they would gag if they knew the truth about the art world. Transactions in galleries like his typically involve breath-taking amounts of money. Bob is probably on the very low end of the price scale in terms of the work sold at Gagosian. His work is likely considered more a novelty than fine art.

Likely that Bob has the show at Gagosian because he's the famous musician Bob Dylan (like this is news to any of you?) and there's no big conspiracy about why a particular piece of work may not be hung in the gallery but only shown to private visitors. This could be because the work has already been sold, because it's not for sale to anyone, because it's only available for sale to certain people, or because the work is especially fragile and cannot withstand being shown in the normal gallery space without the possibility it might incur some damage.

As to the person who mentioned that the painting in question has no brushstrokes: neither do many paintings done using airbrushing.

A US District judge has ruled in favour of photographer Patrick Cariou in his copyright lawsuit against artist Richard Prince.

Cariou originally filed suit for copyright infringement against Prince, Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery, and Rizzoli books in December 2008 after a number of his photographs were reappropriated without consent in Prince’s “Canal Zone” series. The photographs first appeared in Cariou’s 2000 publication, Yes, Rasta, a photographic book produced after spending six years documenting Jamaican Rastafarians.

Prince “admits to using at least 41 photos from Yes, Rasta”, according to the judge’s decision, but had claimed “fair-use” for transforming the original works, as opposed to creating derivative images

On the left: a photo of Patrice Lumumba from the late 1950s/early 1960s. On the right Luc Tuymans' painting "Lumumba" (2000). Luc Tuymans is one of the best, most respected and most expensive living painters. He works from photographs. He does not credit his sources. SO WHAT. His paintings are great. Just like Dylan's paintings.

An article on today's Expecting rain just reminded me of a glaring rip off of Bob Dylan's work by college professors and other so called learned people. They have the nerve to write books and give college courses on the meaning of Bob's writings and songs, body of work and LIFE!!! Did any of these people check with him about this? Did they ask his permission? Are they sharing the proceeds with him. I don't think so.
It is one thing for these people to analyse the work of someone who wrote literature a long time ago and is no longer around to consult. but to pretend to be an expert just because they saw a movie a dozen times,or read a poem or lyrics of a song over and over again. or go on line and become extremely long winded on the subject of the deeper meaning and portents of his so called melancholy writings, is to me a hell of a lot of nerve and the height of plagiaerisim.
The act of taking some old photographs and turning them into something much more interesting is something he is being vilified about when every day he gets ripped of. we all experience happiness and sadness in our lives. some of us do it under the glaring spotlight. Some of us do it in seclusion and quiet. Some of us are much more gifted at expressing that experience. Can we just appreciate that gift and treasure it and not try to analyse it so much?

Love you Bob
Angel