Cultural value vs Monetary Value in Art: Focus on Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, neé Robert Allen Zimerman, was born in 1941 in the unassuming city of Duluth, Minnesota, to Abram Zimmerman, the owner of an electrical-appliance shop, and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone. Dylan spent his childhood playing in school bands that were so loud when they performed the principle would pull the plug on the microphone, and listening to rock n’ rollers like Little Richard on the radio. In 1959 he moved to Minneapolis, enrolled at the University of Minnesota and fell in love with American folk music.

Today, Bob Dylan’s list of accolades could probably stretch around the globe, possibly several times. His contribution to the fabric of our cultural landscape is undeniable: he was on stage, having just sung Blowin’ In The Wind, when Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have Dream’ speech during the Civil Rights Movement, he has written over 600 songs, made 38 studio albums, sold over 100 million records, and he has written a novel (Tarantula) and a bestselling autobiography; in 2008 Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power"; in 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and most recently -- and arguably the most prestigious of all of his accolades -- Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".  

His influence has spanned three generations and touched tens of millions of lives -- there is not a magazine, newspaper, television channel that hasn’t referenced or celebrated Dylan’s contributions to our society -- and his influence on culture has certainly been an eclectic one: performing for the Pope is an honour not typically synonymous with being a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (If you need any further persuasion of his cultural importance, look no further than the cover of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.)

The last few decades have seen Dylan expose another facet of his artistic talents: his paintings, sketches, drawings and sculptures – one of the latter owned by former US president Bill Clinton. In 1994 Dylan’s imagery was first published by Random House as a catalogue of black and white (hence the title ‘Drawn Blank’) sketches and drawings of his travels on the road; rendered in crayon, charcoal and pen-and-ink, each accompanied by a short note or poem (since then Dylan has published seven books of paintings and drawings).

The Drawn Blank catalogue planted the seed for what would become the Drawn Blank Series of watercolor and gauche paintings first released in 2007. With encouragement from world-class galleries, over the proceeding decade Dylan produced five series of paintings: the Drawn Blank Series, The Asia Series, The Brazil Series, The New Orleans Series and most recently, The Beaten Path series – with certain series (such as the Brazil Series) being so popular that new images were added; certain images in these five series have also proved so popular that Dylan has recreated them in several different hues (see: Train Tracks, Sunflowers, Two Sisters, Woman in Red Lion Pub).

The styles in which Dylan choses to render his nomadic scenes wanders from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, to Expressionism and Fauvism – combining all four in some cases. The replication of certain paintings in different colours is something made famous by Andy Warhol, but first pioneered by the Fauves. Dylan explains, “Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied.” Each language dictates a different set of emotions from the viewer, and as Dylan says, “I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else.” It makes sense that his paintings would do the same.

With each series, we see the evolution in, and the exploration of, Dylan’s artistic talents – which something we have witnessed in his music: whenever what he was doing became mainstream or grew tired of a particular genre, he tried something else, something different, regardless of whether critics liked it or not (when he first released the album Self Portrait – which features such seminal songs as The Mighty Quinn and Like a Rolling Stone -- Greil Marcus asked in a Rolling Stone review, “What is this shit?” The album cover was also our first insight into Dylan’s artistic talents, featuring a self-portrait.) As with his music, this does not make one series better or more valuable than another, it just makes them all slightly different. As Dylan said, “Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?”

Dylan’s art has its critics, as do his songs. Aside from criticism of his carefree and expressive style, his Asia Series received heavy criticism for the appropriation of several photographs by masters such as Henri Cartier Bresson, and many claiming that he had plagiarised them. Since then the Magnum Photos agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of the photographs, because as the adage (attributed to Picasso) goes: Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

But in neither his art nor his music, does the judgment of critics make a difference to his fans, or ultimately his ‘value’ as an artist; and the market for what he produces in all mediums only seems to expand.

As far as Dylan’s painterly influences go, there’s Raoul Dufy, Matisse, Cezanne, Kandinsky, Picasso and Van Gogh – but as Dylan said, regardless of whether his critics think he can paint or not, “I'm not the kind of cat that's going to cut off an ear if I can't do something.”

Ever since the release of the Drawn Blank Series, the monetary value of Dylans paintings, sketches, sculptures and limited edition prints has been hotly debated and remains relatively difficult to gauge due to the dearth of his original paintings on secondary markets. His prints can be bought for as little as £1,250 when first released – a few of the most popular (Man on Bridge and Woman in Red Lion Pub) now selling in excess of £8,000 on the secondary market; but many prints hover around the £2,000 > £4,000 mark. So the current return on prints, at present, may not be enormous, but they are a safe investment and accrue value over time (how much depends on the popularity of the print). And as recently pointed out in The Guardian, outside of MyArtBroker there are few alternatives from which to purchase Dylan prints from except for eBay.

Some doubt the value of his prints as they are often released in editions of 295 and sometimes a print may have several editions, but each one of these prints is signed by Bob Dylan, and the simple fact is: Dylan’s value as his own entity is imbued in his artwork, and his signature; that’s why a Francis Bacon sells for a Francis Bacon sum, you don’t want something equally good by someone else -- it is its worth because of its creator.

Ultimately this means there comes a point when cultural value and monetary value collide – this is possibly reflected better in Dylan’s original paintings, with smaller works such as Vista From Balcony and Sunburn being resold for between £70,000 > £125,000. At recent exhibitions, larger works have sold in excess of £450,000. This is because Dylan isn’t treated as just any emerging artist; Dylan has been represented and showcased by some of the most high-profile art galleries across the planet: the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany in 2007; the Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 2012; the National Gallery of Denmark in 2011; The National Portrait Gallery in London, in 2013; the Palazzo Reale in Milan also in 2013; and the Halcyon Gallery in London, at the end of 2016 for his most recent exhibition, The Beaten Path. These galleries are all blue-chip galleries, so they can charge blue-chip prices. Therefore the precedent has already been set. With each series we see an increase in prices -- so people are obviously buying the paintings and prints, but only a trickle of the works emerge on the secondary market. So what is everyone waiting for? Why are there so few of his original paintings on the secondary market at the moment? Surely it can’t be seen as a bad thing; and the more cynical of us may pontificate that the collectors currently in possession of his work, yes haven’t re-sold his art yet because they are enjoying it on their walls; but also because Dylan has been knocking on Heaven’s door since 1941, and one day Heaven will have to let him in. How this will reflect on his prices and the volume of work we see in auctions remains to be seen, but “taking what we have gathered from coincidence” in regards to the effect of an artists’ death on the value of their creations – because there will be no more there is typically a marked increase in price, it would be naïve not to entertain this as a major reason we have not seen many works being re-sold or any sharp rises in Dylan’s prices, yet. As the man himself put it best,

“Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon

For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who

That it's namin'

For the loser now

Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'.”

― Bob Dylan