Bob Dylan: Face Value

by Bob Dylan (Illustrator), John Elderfield

An intriguing collection of portraits by the internationally acclaimed icon of American music, Face Value accompanies a display of Bob Dylan’s previously unseen and unpublished pastels produced for the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Bob Dylan is one of America’s most influential and important cultural figures. With over 500 songs, 46 albums and an astonishing 110 million record sales to his name, Dylan, now in his early seventies, is turning increasingly to another mode of artistic expression; one that has occupied him throughout his life, but for which he is much less well known.

Although Dylan has sketched and drawn since childhood and painted since the late 1960s, only relatively recently has he begun to exhibit his artworks. The twelve works collected in this beautifully produced volume represent his latest foray into portraiture. In an illuminating essay and a rare interview with Bob Dylan, curator and art historian John Elderfield explores the story behind these works and Dylan’s approach to his art. Previously, Elderfield has acknowledged that while it may be unsettling when an artist does not adhere to the thing for which we have come to admire him most, Dylan has often asked his audience to get over the discomfort of his changing: ‘And don't speak too soon / For the wheel's still in spin …’ For Elderfield, Dylan’s paintings, like his songs, are ‘products of the same extraordinary, inventive imagination, the same mind and eye, by the same story-telling artist, for whom showing and telling – the temporal and the spatial, the verbal and the visual – are not easily separated.’

64 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2013

About the author

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, poet, and, of late, disc jockey who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. His most recent studio album, Modern Times, released on August 29, 2006, entered the U.S. album charts at #1, making him, at age sixty five, the oldest living person to top those charts.

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature (2016).

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some good pictures (e.g. Red Flanagan, Sylvia Renard - not to mention most of the details from paintings from other series and the photos of Bob); some not so good (e.g. Nina Felix, Scott Wagner and the main subject of the '80s Bob and his dog). A typically parrying interview. I'm always happy to help Bob provide for his beloved family.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing portraits which seem to me to come from an imagined Film Noir. Good introduction by Jon Elderfield as well as a typically elusive but nevertheless intriguing and worthwhile interview with Dylan.