Those who think they are familiar with Bob Dylan's work but know nothing about his achievements in the visual arts should make up for it as soon as possible.

There is an opportunity. At Rome's Museum of 21st Century Art (known as MAXXI), until the end of April you can see 'Retrospectrum' - a summary of the phenomena addressed by the Nobel Prize winner not only in words, but also in drawing, painting and sculpture.

The origins of this activity can be traced back to the 1960s, but the intensification of Dylan's artistic creativity has occurred around 2010. Arguably, this is related to the age of the artist, who will celebrate his 82nd birthday in May. His stage career is over, he has made a fortune, which he spends on buying mansions and cars. He can afford to do what makes him happy.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Perhaps it's for the best - his amateurish paring down of his art in no way threatens his musical legend. And the very signature "Bob Dylan", clearly visible in the lower right-hand corner of the canvases, guarantees their high market position.

On the Road

The subject of most of the more than 100 objects on display is America. The one of today and the one of decades ago (the oldest drawings date back to 1973). We see snapshots of the artist's travels: imposing metropolises, endless highways, empty and deserted areas, petrol stations, motels, neon signs, shabby backyards, dingy bars, trucks as big as dragons... All this seen through Dylan's eyes on tour, during his private travels, as well as in photographs, films or on the canvases of other artists, with Edward Hopper at the forefront.

The famous musician-poet has no problem with whether he is original in his artistic creations; whether he fits into any contemporary trend; or whether his art is anachronistic. He doesn't care if the viewer feels embarrassed at the sight of, ahem... hardly revealing compositions, seemingly out of step with Dylan's revolutionary musical and literary works. In this field, the artist is unashamedly conservative. They are astounding in their literalness, especially in the context of texts, sometimes full of breakneck metaphors and subtexts.

I admit - some of the canvases gave me a toothache with their kitsch aesthetics or colouristic jazz. Fortunately, they are balanced by excellent drawings and works painted spontaneously, close to expressionists of all kinds. (For example, several compositions recall the paintings of Józef Czapski, although I don't think this author was known to Dylan. However, he might have known the Fauvists and referred to them.)

The greatest value of the Nobel laureate's visual explorations is authenticity. As in the musical pieces, he reacts with empathy to the distortions of the American system, sees the 'ordinary' people of the provinces or those living on the margins of big-city glamour. And he doesn't hide, commenting on these views: "I know, these images are unfashionably realistic, even archaic, static yet jarring at the same time. But that's how I see and choose to let others see; I'm part of such a world and I want to penetrate it. Anyway, this is my work."

Curator of a different type

The premiere of the retrospective took place in Shanghai, followed by Miami, while the tour of the Old Continent began two months ago in Rome, where the Nobel Prize winner's paintings will remain until the end of April.

Why these works were seen first by the Chinese is easily explained: Shai Baitel, curator of the exhibition in question, became director of the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2020. Here a word about him, as his career differs from the usual curatorial fate.

Born in Israel (1975), he studied international trade and commercial law at Fordham University in New York before graduating with honours and earning a degree from Tel Aviv University, majoring in... law and Middle Eastern history. He started his directorship in Shanghai with a summary of Bob Dylan's artistic output.

Dylan has enthusiastically welcomed the staging of 'Retrospectrum' in Rome - he considers the city to be one of the most beautiful and inspiring in the world. He is particularly excited about the exhibition's placement in MAXXI, the Eternal City's newest and most modern museum.

Rome open to modernity

MAXXI is a bipartite establishment, focused on recent art and architecture. It was more than a decade in the making before it opened to the public in 2010. It was designed by the world's most famous designer, Zaha Hadid, who won an international competition launched by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage in 1998, competing against 273 candidates. According to experts, the Roman museum is the jewel in the crown of her oeuvre. The MAXXI project brought Hadid another in her collection of laurels: the prestigious Stirling Prize. And the realisation cost - a bagatelle! - 150 million euros.

True, the deconstructivist building is extremely visitor-friendly: already the courtyard (described by Hadid as a space for co-creation by artists and spectators) appears as an open huge stage for the large-scale installations that are replaced time and again.

As soon as the visitor steps through the MAXXI's front door, he or she is drawn into an almost cosmic atmosphere - thanks to a multi-storey internal construction that lacks right angles. Here, everything is based on harmony and the illusionary movement of flowing lines. One has the impression that the floors (levels?) intermingle, the mezzanines undulate, the ceilings transition into gently rising and falling, arched tracery. It is dynamic, yet at the same time not bizarre, even elegant: white and black dominate, dynamised by red accents.

Although... I have noticed that over the last decade the MAXXI building has moved from the category of futuristic and visionary to a group of 'monuments of modernity' that you visit for the architecture alone. This one fortunately defends itself with its functionality. And also its "polite" fit with the neighbourhood.

The museum complex was erected in the street of Guido Reni, an early Baroque Italian painter - this obliges. And the area on which it was built was formerly occupied by military barracks. In fact, across the street there are still extensive garrison buildings. All around are ordinary residential houses, mostly from the 19th century. This context forced the designer to create an atypical classical façade form. From the courtyard, however, the building seems to stand on its head, and inside, everything flows.

In addition to temporary presentations, MAXXI boasts a substantial (over 400 objects) collection of contemporary masters of avant-garde art. Dylan's 'Retrospectrum' will also leave a lasting mark on the collection.

Namely, the set will reportedly be enhanced by the world's first music video for the 1965 song 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. It is a cinematic record of an event, played out on the street, starring Bob Dylan. As he sang, the singer threw small boards in front of and beside him, a bundle of which he held in his hands. On them were painted fragments of the song's lyrics. The writing of the words was done by the singer's friends, which took them the night before the performance. Among the artist's helpers was the poet and also hippie ideological leader Allen Ginsberg (visible in some shots on the video recording). An innovative form of performance for the time, at the same time an anti-establishment protest song. And a reminder of the years when the youth revolution, of which our protagonist was one of the leaders, was maturing.

In the beginning there was the underground

Of course, the aforementioned 'vintage' video is not the only one in this retrospective. It could not be without snapshots of concerts from the later years, when Bob Dylan was becoming a star of the first order.

For starters, we have a cinematic collage composed of recordings of Dylan's musical journeys confronted with his paintings. Yes, it all adds up: highways criss-crossing all the United States up and down the length and breadth of the artist's journey over half a century. And then recreated on canvases. In the next room - another cinematic compilation, this time of performances (selected from thousands, but the most significant ones) on various stages around the world, at various times, without any chronology.

Like anyone aspiring to a musical career, Dylan started out in small club scenes. At the same time, he was building a position in the exclusive, intellectually demanding, yet poor New York underground. It was also where fashion trends were born. This is not the place to list the careers blossoming at New York's Chelsea Hotel (a hotel for artists, now declared a cultural monument), but it is worth mentioning Patti Smith, a friend of Bob's who spoke on his behalf at his Nobel Prize ceremony.

Bob quickly became a role model, able to assert his individuality with his clothes, although he never owed his recognisability to his costumes, such as David Bowie. He was, however, in the vanguard when it came to the way he wore himself in everyday life and on stage - something that may not show up much on film, but anyone familiar with the history of fashion will have noticed his stylistic transformations. Though for most, this is a minor aspect of Dylan's social functioning.

In the off-screen commentary, which can be heard against the backdrop of Bob's concert mosaic, his major contributions to culture are enumerated: more than 600 songs, at least a hundred of which have entered the all-time canon. A list of awards and honours bestowed on him by various prestigious bodies also flies by. Grammys (13 times), Oscars, Golden Globes, Pulitzers and the crowning achievement of all - the Nobel Prize for Literature (2016). Incidentally, I learned that Robert Allen Zimmerman (the artist's real name) was also awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honour (2013), which he reportedly received... in a lift.

After these compact reminiscences, the curator of the exhibition no longer evokes the musical biography of the protagonist. We move on to explorations in the field of visual art.

On the hinterland of modernity

Dylan knows how to look. To notice. The genre scenes he draws in pencil on small sheets of paper (what a retrograde thing to do!) could have been immortalised a hundred years ago: a fat man behind a table, gobbling up mountains of food, served by an African-American woman (dread to write: a black one). Although this is idiotic political correctness - the Nobel Prize winner often speaks and paints about the racism that still exists in the USA.

In my opinion, the best series presented in the exhibition, from an artistic point of view, is entitled 'New Orleans' (2012) and it really is black. That is, painted in black paint with a small addition of other colours. The focus of the artist - the non-white inhabitants of this state. Their customs, their music (from which he drew inspiration more than once). Let's not kid ourselves - New Orleans is not the navel of modernity. In Louisiana, the descendants of slaves still live, preserve the old customs and cultivate the old religiosity. Here, singing lessons are taken in a church choir, and clergy people enjoy a unique authority. Bob Dylan brilliantly captures the mood of the church performances of the lone singers. He sees their inspired faces, the mindfulness in their singing and the happiness in that communal chanting; you can almost hear the gospel songs. They have this music in their blood - and Dylan knew how to process it for his own use.

I also enjoyed the undisguised fascination with the paintings of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). It was as if the artist, born 61 years later, was showing us: look, nothing has changed. Big-city traffic, crowds, thousands of entertainments do not cure loneliness. Indeed, they even intensify it. Like Hopper, Dylan notes scenes of pub loneliness. The big counters behind which the bartender officiates, serving single customers, silently making thehemselfes 'incommunicado'. A repeat of Hopper's 'Nighthawks' of 1942. As lonely as they are, there seems to be a girl smoking a cigarette somewhere in a basement (this is the title of Dylan's 2020 painting), hiding from human gaze, alone with her thoughts, perhaps aware of the poor prospects for the future. That, at least, can be inferred from the setting in which the maiden finds herself. Just like the depressive lethargy of the women in Hopper's canvases.

Illustrations for the self

I admit to Dylan: he draws well. Meaning, although there is no lightness or maestry in his sketches, he brings out in these small compositions an atmosphere akin to that which characterises his poetry. His figures are clumsy, even coarse, but, after all, these people have neither the time nor the reason to practice elegance. At times, these drawings seemed to me to be too literal, not-quite-diplomatically lacking in finesse. Simply put - illustrations, as if translating metaphors into simple situations.

But perhaps the author had such visions somewhere in the back of his mind, deep in his imagination, when he wrote 'Knocking on Heaven's Door': a guy banging his fists on a locked gate. Anyway, this piece is the most lavishly illustrated by the author - with as many as sixteen drawings (2018). Exposed in a single block, they constitute something of a comic strip for the famous piece.

Not only for this. Drawings 'dictated' by songs abound. Shown next to the handwritten lyrics, à propos of which they were created, they seem to come from the distant past. However, this is not the case at all. The sketches are only a few years old, while the texts are several decades behind. In the retrospective, the old lyricism meets illustration. I wonder - is this an evocation of an era when people considered the skill of calligraphy a separate art, not so distant from other manual skills? Bob Dylan, born in 1941, certainly remembers those times.

Standing in front of the door

Finally, about the gates. The exhibition begins with them and ends with them. It is not difficult to understand this procedure in the context of Dylan's biography. But what are these doors? Constructed from metal parts of vehicles and other machinery found in car junkyards. The "vintage" raw materials have been welded together, varnished and painted in places. They now form openwork constructions of considerable visual interest. However, for us, brought up in a country where so-called metalwork once flourished, they are associated with poverty and substitute, second-hand materials. I remember these awful works of worn metal, pretending to be something between an ornamental object and a utilitarian one.

The Nobel laureate assembles 'The Double Door' from similar rupees. In his case - an entry into a world he has only recently begun to explore. And he already has success at the start.

– Monika Małkowska
-Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

The "Retrospectrum" exhibition at the Museum of XXI Century Art (MAXXI) in Rome can be seen until 30 April 2023