Bob Dylan is preparing to return, but this time he does it with pencil and charcoal, not with the guitar. On November 18, “Point Blank (Quick Studies)” will be released in the United States, an art volume that collects almost one hundred unpublished designs made between 2021 and 2022. Published by Simon & Schuster, the book offers a surprising cross -section of the visual universe of the Nobel Prize for literature, revealing a side of the artist still little known to the general public.
The illustrations, all in black and white, are born as preparatory sketches for wider pictorial works belonging to the “Point Blank” series. Yet, even taken individually, these drawings make up a complete world: intense portraits, urban scenes, daily objects and suspended moments that tell Dylan's visual sensitivity with the same poetic and sharp gaze that has always characterized its texts.
Among the most curious images stand out a couple who skate, a singer intent on a karaoke performance, a channel in Paris, a medieval armor and even a roll of adhesive tape. Every illustration echo short evocative texts signed by Eddie Gorodetsky, Jackie Hamilton and Lucy Sante, who add narrative depths and move in the same area of shadow and ambiguity that has made Dylan's style legendary.
According to Sean Manning, editorial director of Simon & Schuster, “Point Blank” is able to condense “opposite emotions in a single image: innocence and disenchantment, joy and melancholy, humor and sensuality, mystery and familiarity”.
The visual vein of Dylan, moreover, is not an absolute novelty. His designs have appeared since the 70s, in particular on album covers such as “Self Portrait” and “Planet Waves”. However, it is only in 2007, with the “Drawn Blank” series, that the artist officially debuts in the galleries circuit, obtaining growing recognition also in the figurative field. His works, exhibited in museums from all over the world, have been appreciated for their symbolic strength and poetic charge, in continuity with his musical production.
On the occasion of the release of the book, Simon & Schuster will also launch the first audiobook version complete with “Chronicles: Volume One”, the Memoir Published in 2004, read here by the deep voice of the actor Sean Penn. “Point Blank (Quick Studies)” is already available in pre -order on Amazon, at the price of 45 dollars.
Speaking of Dylan and books, “the day that Bob Dylan took the electric guitar”, the essay by Elijah Wald that Vallardi brings to the bookstore following the arrival at the cinema of “A Complete Unknown”, the biopic dedicated to the transformation period of the Duluth icon, was released.
Bob Dylan, Newport, 25 July 1965: three elements that, put together, have changed the history of music forever. On that summer evening, the former minstrel folk challenged a Fender Stratocaster and, with a short but fulminating set, split the audience of the Newport Folk Festival in two and marked the beginning of a new era. That moment, now legend, is the beating heart of the volume of Wald, guitarist folk blues and among the most authoritative signatures of American musical journalism. A dense and documented portrait of Dylan's “betrayal”, collecting testimonies, recordings, interviews and reconstructions of the time. The book is not limited to retracing Newport evening, but pushes itself deeply into the America of the sixties, between social ferments, political tensions and cultural transformations, restoring the image of an era pointed between the past and the future. From the fury of Pete Seeger, who is said to have threatened to cut the cables of the amplification, to the timid applause of those who glimpsed the change, the essay tells an evening that shook the world of folk, but also the parable of an artist who, challenging expectations, reinvented himself and rock music.
It is not only the story of a discussed concert, but the story of a feverish decade, in which Dylan passed from being the spokesperson for a generation of protesters to escape every label. Wald analyzes the historical and musical context with lucidity, reconstructing the transition from “The Freewheelin 'Bob Dylan” to “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited”, and demonstrating how its “electric turning point” was inevitable. Between the soul of the blues and the courage to break with the past, Dylan in Newport made more than a simple concert: he wrote a page of history. And the day that Bob Dylan took the electric guitar is the perfect book for those who want to understand why.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
