Bob Dylan
Deep Focus | 2023

Above: A selection of original artworks from Bob Dylan's Deep Focus collection displayed at the MAXXI Museum in Rome as part of his touring retrospective.

Image credit: © Clara Melchiorre

Deep Focus - Seeing the world as only he can

The title of the series refers to a cinematic technique that communicates narrative through the foreground, middle and background, rather than focusing on one visual plane over another. Completed in 2021, the series borrows visual techniques from film and photography, and illustrates how cropping and framing can alter the viewer’s perception of any scene.

“All these images come from films. They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in,” Dylan explains. “Whether it’s James Cagney or Margaret Rutherford, the dreams and schemes are the same – life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.”

Dylan’s cinematic references result in evocative, often mysterious, compositions suspended between life and theatre, while conjuring a distinctly tangible pictorial experience. Although these new works more prominently depict figures and portraits, much of the iconography that was featured in Dylan’s earlier series The Beaten Path is still recognisable – diners, motels, roadsides and city streets.

Bob Dylan's Cultural Legacy

Since releasing his debut studio album, Bob Dylan, in 1962, Dylan's cultural influence has extended beyond music to encompass art and literature. In 2016, he became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Such is his effect on wider culture that Dylan's work has been studied in thousands of university courses. At Harvard University, Dylan's work is taught by its Professor of the Classics, Richard F. Thomas, alongside the Roman poets Ovid and Virgil. T.S. Eliot scholar and author of the Oxford Book of English Verse Christopher Ricks has called Dylan “the greatest living user of the English language.”

Understanding Dylan's art aids in the appreciation of his singular cultural impact. His art – paintings, drawings, sculptures, and metalwork – reflects his creative journey. An observer of the world, Dylan echoes Warhol, Monet and the Impressionists, valuing the experience over the finer details of the finished image. Of his paintings, he writes: “Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied.”