The Danish National Gallery's exhibition of Bob Dylan's new paintings The Brazil Series opens this week in Copenhagen - selected from around 50 he painted specially for this gallery over the course of the last year (that's more or less one a week, in addition to his touring and whatever else).The Gallery's website, which is excellent, includes a short video survey of the paintings selected for the exhibition opens this week (with Danish talking heads), and a really interesting article for the uninitiated about how the exhibition was created by the gallery. There's also a brief piece by the curator, skirting around the question of whether the pictures are only of interest because they're by Bob Dylan.
It's interesting that nowhere in either article does anyone make any claim at all as to the quality of the paintings. But on the basis of the brief glimpses afforded in the video, some of them look terrific: in particular, perhaps, the one with the washing hanging on the line. This is not something dashed off carelessly.
(My attention was drawn to all this by today's Desolation Row Information Service e-mail newsletter, run by John Baldwin.)
Could there be a case that Dylan, aware that his musical life is coming to an end - how much longer can what's left of his voice hold out? - is putting more of his creative energies into his artwork.
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