Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum

Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum opens on December 16, and Rome will be the first-ever European city to host the globally-renowned exhibition.

More than 100 works by Bob Dylan, including drawings, paintings, and sculptures, will reveal new facets of one of the world’s most important cultural figures.

“In every picture the viewer doesn’t have to wonder whether it’s an actual object or a delusional one. If the viewer visited where the picture actually existed, he or she would see the same thing. It is what unites us all.” —Bob Dylan

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

After being housed at the MAM in Shanghai and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, the exhibition is now coming to Rome in a version wholly 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 drawings and colours.

As he 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 travelling 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, and 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 I see, choose to see, 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 will be enriched by Dylan’s work bequeathed to the museum. This work was created around the famous 1965 song Subterranean Homesick Blues, which features the first (and perhaps best-known) 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.