Bob Dylan: The Asia Series

Bob Dylan: The Asia Series

I saw the Bob Dylan show at the Gagosian, by which I mean a show of paintings. It was entitled "The Asia Series," and consisted of 18 acrylic canvases — wait, a few of them also include oils. (I’m looking at the "checklist"). The pictures have titles like "Labelle Cascade" and "Mae Ling" and "Cockfight." They look like paint-by-numbers, or close to that. They were all made within the last two years, mostly based on photographs. They show Asian-looking people, though some could be dark-haired Italians. They seem to be illustrations — one can imagine them being images from songs, especially those enigmatic narratives on Desire. (I found myself thinking about "Black Diamond Bay":

A soldier sits beneath the fan
Doing business with a tiny man who sells him a ring.
Lightning strikes, the lights blow out.
The desk clerk wakes and begins to shout,
"Can you see anything?"
Then the Greek appears on the second floor…)

The two successful paintings are both spiritual. One is called "The Monk," and shows a dramatic Zen monk, eyes closed in darkness. It resembles a cartoon version of a Rembrandt painting, if Rembrandt had visited Japan. "The Idol" is a Buddhist-looking statue behind a wooden fence, probably in a temple. The idol is fierce, but vague. The fence, consisting of perfectly parallel wooden slats, was obsessed over by Dylan, and is mesmerizing.

Bob Dylan began by worshiping the great folk songs of history. He discovered these treasures — songs like "Banks of the Ohio":

I asked my love to take a walk

Just a little ways with me

And as we walked, we would talk

All about our wedding day

and only wished to do them justice, with his humble voice and harmonica. Then one day it hit him, like a fruitful revelation: he could create fake masterpieces. His first efforts were feeble:

Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know

All the things that I’m a-sayin’ an’ a-many times more.

I’m a-singin’ you this song, but I can’t sing enough

’Cause there’s not many men that done the things that you’ve done

but within a short time, he had produced some inadvertent masterpieces:

Well, if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair

Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline,

Remember me to one who lives there —

She once was a true love of mine.

People loved Dylan’s bogus folk songs — partly because they were bogus. Their newness was exhilarating, even when their prosody was worse than that of "Barbara Allen." Besides, by 1963 folk music aficionados had heard every classic. They were suffering from English ballad-overexposure.

Now Dylan is painting. He applies to visual art the same method that made him famous as a songwriter. (That’s one reason he copies classic photographs, which became a minor scandal surrounding this show.) But Americans have a narrower criteria for Great Art than we do for A Great Song. We notice the ineptness of Dylan’s brushwork, while we exalt the awkwardness of his songwriting. We want a picture to immediately "add up," to look perfect, while a song may meander and flow.

Possibly in the 23rd century, art lovers will realize that these Dylan paintings are intuitive gems. Bob may have pulled too far ahead of us this time.