Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series
Kunstammlungen Chemnitz
October 28, 2007 - March 24, 2008
With The Drawn Blank Series, the Kunstammlungen Chemnitz (Chemnitz Art Collections) are presenting the world's first museum exhibition with around 140 watercolors and gouaches by Bob Dylan. The works are based on motifs that the artist sketched, predominantly in pencil and charcoal, during his travels through the USA, Mexico, Europe and Asia between 1989 and 1992. 92 of the black and white drawings created at that time were published in book form in 1994 under the title Drawn Blank, but have never been publicly exhibited.
Bob Dylan presents familiar subjects such as portraits of women and men, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, female nudes, city and beach views, streets, buildings, cars and ships in expressive images. In contrast to the delicate black and white drawings from Drawn Blank, the works in the Drawn Blank Series show several versions of one of the original motifs in a dynamic, expressive painting style that creates completely new images from the first black and white motifs. Bob Dylan gave all of the works in his Drawn Blank Series additional titles that make the locations more real and more vivid for the viewer.
What is particularly fascinating about this exhibition project is that you can almost be an eyewitness to the creation of an artistic work. The result is of impressive authenticity. They are travel or experience reports that describe locations or capture snapshots. The artist appears like a participating but always invisible observer. The viewing angle is often from a bird's eye view, and an imaginary narrator looks from a great height at the events far below him. A perspective that emphasizes the artist's perspective as a superior observer.
It is a phenomenon of our time that multiple talents are viewed with suspicion. Although it has actually been linked to human nature since time immemorial. The exhibition of the Chemnitz Art Collections shows that Bob Dylan, with his extraordinary synesthetic perceptual talent, succeeds like few other artists in conveying complex perceptions and feelings in several artistic areas.
An extensive catalog with 170 color and 85 black-and-white illustrations in German and English is published by Prestel Verlag for the exhibition, edited by Ingrid Mössinger and Kerstin Drechsel, with text contributions by Prof. Dr. Frank Zöllner, Leipzig, Dr. Diana Widmaier-Picasso, Paris and Dr. Jens Rosteck, Nice.
KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN CHEMNITZ
Theaterplatz 1, 09111 Chemnitz
