Does Dylan dig Dylan?
Dylan grew extremely tired of his old songs as he recorded them after his brief tour of England in May 1965 (chronicled in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back), he said, “I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you, if you yourself didn’t dig you.”
Please see this Video Art as a visual display of my essay, “Dylan the Spokesman Penman.”
References: See David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan for an illuminating analysis of Dylan’s synthetic personality.
Plays for 24 minutes
Includes 26 songs, 7 albums
Personalities
(from left to right, top to bottom)
The Direct, In-Your-Face Dylan
Dylan’s Denunciation of …
The Devoted Dylan
Dylan’s Declaration (or Denial) of Self
Preparation
A collage of songs. A pop-video-art by and for Dylan. A montage of lyrics from Dylan’s songs that denote/connote a sense of self. A counter-statement of Warhol’s Screen Tests. A pastiche of Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych.
If Dylan were to revert the gaze of Warhol’s camera and dictate his own image in art, how could he rework Warhol’s medium and style to his benefit? Or, if Warhol were to create a piece that caters to Dylan’s preferences, what would it look like?
Does Dylan dig Dylan deconstructs the mass gaze with song fragments, intense colors, and an overall disorienting effect.
The work has remained enraptured with the medium’s power to observe Dylan’s (verbal) expressions with the same overwhelming attention practiced by Warhol.
“Folk songs were the way I explored the universe. They were pictures and the pictures were worth more than anything I could say.” — Dylan