Bob Dylan: Point Blank. Halcyon Gallery, London. 9 May–6 July 2025.
Reviewed by Angus Gibson
Point Blank is an exhibition of 97 new paintings by Bob Dylan at the Halcyon Gallery on London’s New Bond St from May 9th to July 6th, 2025. The gallery is located in the heart of Mayfair, one of the city’s wealthiest districts. King Charles III has his suits made around the corner at Anderson & Sheppard on Old Burlington Street, and the Halcyon itself is flanked by high-fashion boutiques Gucci and Balenciaga. Dylan has regularly presented his artwork at the Halcyon since 2008’s Drawn Blank. On each visit the Dylan fans – imitating our man’s scruffy Greenwich Village style – stand in contrast to the sharply-dressed locals.
On one level, Dylan’s now extensive collection of artwork is a commercial enterprise, no different to the luxury handbags and jewelry in the windows of New Bond St’s other shops. Signed prints start at £1,950 ($2,645). An original costs tens of thousands. But the gallery’s plush location also has a rich and authentic artistic history. Handel lived a stone’s throw away at 25 Brook St, in an apartment later rented by Jimi Hendrix. The Beatles’ Apple Records was headquartered at 3 Saville Row, and if you stood outside the Halycon Gallery on January 30th, 1969, you would have heard the Fab Four’s final concert booming out from a nearby rooftop. Notably, Robert Fraser’s Indica art gallery was once in the neighborhood at 6 Mason’s Yard. Here, John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, and Paul McCartney bought the Matisse painting that inspired the band’s apple logo.
Art and commerce have long been interwoven in Mayfair, and this duality is also present in Dylan’s artwork. Though Dylan has painted since at least the mid-60s, he held his first exhibition in 2008, titled Drawn Blank and composed of watercolors based on sketches made in the late 80s and early 90s.[1] After this first exhibition, new collections – from oil paintings to metalworks – followed routinely: the Brazil Series (2010), the Asia Series (2011), Revisionist Art (2012), Face Value (2013), Mood Swings (2013), the New Orleans Series (2013), The Beaten Path (2016), Mondo Scripto (2018), and Deep Focus (2021). Thousands of signed prints from each series are distributed by Castle Fine Art, who also sell works by other celebrity painters such as Billy Connolly and Ron Wood. Dylan has grossed millions of dollars from this business model.
It would be wholly unfair, however, to dismiss Dylan’s efforts purely as a cash grab. One of the joys of regularly visiting Dylan’s shows at the Halcyon is witnessing his progress as a painter. What started with Drawn Blank – as relatively simple pencil lines and watercolors – has advanced in ambition both technically and compositionally, culminating in the epic landscapes of The Beaten Path and Hopper-esque oil paintings of Deep Focus. Slowly, Dylan has won over the art establishment. Critic and Turner Prize judge Jonathan Jones wrote of The Beaten Path: “[Dylan’s] drawings are intricate, sincere, charged with curiosity … He has a surprising amount in common with [David] Hockney. His art looks more serious with every exhibition.”[2]
We can look at Point Blank, therefore, as Dylan showing off his development as a painter in comparison to his first show, Drawn Blank, as the similar titles suggest.[3] Like that earlier collection, the works in Point Blank started as pencil sketches on thick drawing paper that the artist later painted over in acrylic, using broad brush strokes and bold color. But unlike Drawn Blank, which dazzled in bright primary colors, Point Blank’s use of color is more sophisticated, preferring earthy tones, dark blues and lipstick red. The subject matter is also more varied and complex: portraits of musicians, boxers, cowboys; still life studies of eggboxes, Scotch tape, binoculars; landscapes of rural America. Dylan’s brushwork is also now more skilled; he uses thick blotches of paint to add texture in places, and he frames his subjects with big rectangles of color that have an almost Rothko-like quality. As such, Point Blank evidences Dylan’s considerable progression as a painter.
As you enter the Halycon Gallery, you are greeted with a quote from Dylan printed in large black letters on the wall making this connection, while considering his work in poetic but vague terms:
The Point Blank series is an extension of the Drawn Blank series that was done some years ago. It can be looked at as an update, or a continual refinement of a certain process … The idea was not only to observe the human condition but to throw myself into it with great urgency … to create living breathing entities that have emotional resonance, colours used as weapons and mood setters.
This is evocative writing, but it doesn’t tell us much about Dylan’s real process. It’s naive to expect much insight from the ever-vague artist – especially in a sales blurb – but if Dylan is a serious painter now, it would be fascinating to know how he actually paints. Where does he work – on the road or at home? What brushes does he use? Dylan has previously described his technique in itemized detail, writing in a 2016 Vanity Fair article (“Why Bob Dylan Paints”) of his system for composing The Beaten Path landscapes: “I went to the camera-obscura method … I put a 58-mm 0.43x wide-angle conversion lens onto a used Nikon D3300 Af-p on quite a few paintings.”[4] The promotional literature accompanying Point Blank is less elucidatory. While a line such as “the idea was not only to observe the human condition but to throw myself into it with great urgency” might describe Dylan’s artistry as a whole, it doesn’t shed much light on Dylan the painter. Still, the evidence of his work – whatever the process – is proudly displayed across Halycon’s two floors.
The first paintings on ground level are a dozen or so portraits. These are reminiscent of Dylan’s earlier Face Value collection and display a great leap forward in ability from Self Portrait’s album cover. Unlike that LP sleeve, painted in an underdeveloped style over fifty years ago, the faces here are well-defined and carry emotive human expressions. Dylan tempts the viewer to imagine each subject’s back story. The viewer is led to ask: why is one woman wearing 1920s flying goggles? Is the man with the clean-cut hair and 1940s-style shirt from decades past, or a character from the present day wearing vintage clothes? Some portraits have odd proportions. There is a bearded man with an unusually thin head; another man with an unnaturally bulky chin holds his hand to his eye as if peering through a telescope. Ten years ago, critics might have attributed these strange proportions to Dylan’s poor draftmanship. But there’s now enough evidence to suggest he’s a skilled drawer, making deliberate and effective choices. The strangely-shaped faces make the viewer feel like Mr. Jones in “Ballad of a Thin Man,” staring back at a rogues gallery of sword-swallowers, lepers, and crooks. And the titles of these portraits in the accompanying catalogue add to this sense of carnival. Dylan has evidently enjoyed creating exotic names for each subject: “Dennis Manga (Man with a Crooked Smile),” “Peeping Tom,” “Vag Siska (Stunt Flyer),” and “Mr. Soup Can,” to cite a few.[5]
Among the most interesting entries in the catalogue is the portrait of “Vera Silverlake,” a Black woman with striking features. Like a number of works in the catalogue, this portrait is paired with short prose. However, unlike others, the text beside “Vera Silverlake” is written in first person and uses Dylan’s distinctive voice:
I dreamed about her the other night, we were in the bar at the Adolphus Hotel and she was talking about my Nobel Prize, and said that “The only people pissed off about you winning that, were white people. You deserve that Nobel prize honey, you really do. At your best, you’re wonderful.” I asked her if I could see her later. She wrote down her address and gave me instructions on how to get there. Then I woke up. It was one of my better dreams.[6]
It’s unclear if Dylan wrote this himself. The catalogue’s title page notes “Text by Eddie Gorodetsky, Lucy Sante, and Jackie Hamilton,” though the individual entries aren’t credited. And while Gorodetsky and Sante regularly collaborate with Dylan, at the time of writing it’s not obviously clear who Jackie Hamilton is.[7] This mystery aside, the catalogue is a worthwhile purchase at £45 ($61), with a hardcover, thick high-quality paperstock, and 193 pages of Dylan’s original pencil sketches shown before he added paint.
The rear half of the ground floor contains still life studies and a series of paintings of musicians. The still life paintings detail a variety of eccentric objects. A box of eggs recalls the scene in Hearts of Fire (1987), where Dylan’s character opens a fridge filled only with eggboxes.[8] A painting of a Scotch tape holder is particularly intriguing. While Dylan’s compositions have historically tended towards cliché – open highways, fifties diners, retro Cadillacs – this painting looks genuinely original. Another study is of a wooden crate of grapes, emblazoned with a cartoon logo of a woman holding a bowl of fruit under the words “MIXED GRAPES.” The woman’s face is visibly contorted as if to emphasize that she is part of a logo branded on the box, not a real person. This brings to mind the Ekphrasis – where art depicts other art – discussed in relation to Dylan by Raphael Falco previously in this journal, as well as Warhol’s Brillo box pop art.[9]
On the opposite wall from the still life, the series of musicians is presented as a set of four paintings: two pianists, a guitarist, and a saxophonist. Placed together, they look like a band, with each dressed in a 50s-style suit like some well-regarded jazz combo. It’s hard to view the piano players and not think of Dylan’s current live shows, where he’s usually seen behind a baby grand. These aren’t self portraits, but they are evidence of a musician studying the poses of other musicians. The viewer is naturally inclined to wonder what, if anything, these paintings can tell us about Dylan’s own impression of himself as a pianist.
A disappointing aspect of this set of paintings, and indeed of others in Point Blank, is Dylan’s inability to competently draw fingers. In the painting “Young Man with a Horn,” the saxophone player’s digits are long and bulky, like lifeless sausages indelicately sprawled over the instrument. Unlike the misshapen heads in other portraits, this rendering does not have any positive effect, nor does it suggest controlled distortion. Rather it looks amateurish. Dylan’s artistic skill has advanced greatly, but he can still improve if he is to finally paint his masterpiece.
Downstairs, the basement is furnished with a similar number of paintings as upstairs and a short film that plays on a loop. The film is a dull hagiography that merely lists Dylan’s various awards, as if to convince deep-pocketed but uncultured clientele of his worth. It’s an unnecessary addition, as the quality of the paintings here is enough to speak for Dylan’s talent alone.
As with the quartet of musicians on the level above, the basement walls display several sets of paintings arranged around coherent themes. There is a set of characters in evening wear. One sports a mask and cocktail dress, like the woman on the rear cover of Shadows in the Night. In the next picture, a man in a tuxedo lies on a table. It is unclear whether he is dead or alive. Another set of paintings depicts landscapes, while a further set collects nudes.
Of particular interest is a group of four paintings showing couples. Upon first look, they each appear heteronormative, but this assumption gives way on further inspection. One painting is of a pair in a passionate embrace. But up close, the male subject has feminine features accentuated with makeup. A second picture, called “Outlaws,” shows two people in a window. One is wearing a polka-dot dress and hat, the other is in a shirt and tie. Both have feminine features and also seem to be wearing makeup. Someone else’s hand is reaching across them towards the window, as if trying to halt their escape. Awareness of the discipline of gender studies is growing among Dylan scholars, following the “Bob Dylan: Questions on Masculinity” conference at the University of Southern Denmark in 2024.[10] An examination of these paintings from such a perspective may prove worthwhile.
The most moving set of paintings in Point Blank is a collection of eight pictures illustrating a 1940s house. It looks very much like the sort you might find in northern Minnesota. One shows a fireplace, another a staircase, one more a kitchen. But a painting of a crib below a small bedroom window caught my eye. I visited Dylan’s family home in Hibbing, Minnesota recently; the room in this painting, with the upstairs window and neat period furniture, looks strikingly like Dylan’s childhood bedroom. Many people remember the view from an early bedroom window, and carry it with them forever. It’s touching to think that Dylan might have done the same, remembering it one day as he sat down to paint. This picture, titled “Crib” in the catalogue, gets to the heart of Point Blank. Most of these images are about memory. They depict scenes from the past: people in archaic clothes, 50s cars, old-timey gamblers and boxers. Just as Dylan’s music in the two decades since “Love & Theft” has increasingly taken influence from the music of his childhood (Frank Sinatra, Bob Wills, Hank Williams), so too has his visual art focused on subjects from the pre-Bob Dylan era (cowboys, jazz musicians, men in hats and ties). The viewer is left to consider whether these paintings, like “Crib,” are from Dylan’s own memory, or are merely a nostalgic invention of his imagination.
I asked myself this question as I left the gallery and walked past the diamond rings and shiny watches in neighboring windows. Ultimately, for those who buy paintings from the Halcyon Gallery, Dylan’s artwork may be nothing more than another of Mayfair’s superficial luxury gifts – and for Dylan another large check. But there’s more to Point Blank than naked commerce. Dylan is adroitly displaying the progress he’s made as an artist since 2008’s Drawn Blank, and in doing so is furthering his exploration of pre-1960s American culture. That it’s on display in Mayfair, where London’s old-school financiers have long cut loose with artsy bohemians, is perfectly fitting.
Angus Gibson is managing editor of the Dylan Review.
[1] Notable early paintings include covers for Sing Out! magazine and The Band’s Music from Big Pink, and illustrations for the book Writings & Drawings (1973).
[2] Jonathan Jones. “Bob Dylan: a Hockney-like painter of America’s strange essence” The Guardian, 8 Nov. 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/nov/08/bob-dylan-paintings-halcyon-gallery-london-beaten-path
[3] The title may also reference the 1967 spy film Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin, as suggested by Expecting Rain user Mirte (https://expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?t=108402). Indeed, Scott Warmuth has noted (https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDdS7nu9uQ/?img_index=1) that a number of Dylan’s paintings from the recent series Deep Focus are based on stills from Hollywood movies of the late sixties and early seventies. The film Point Blank is of this era, but none of Dylan’s compositions in the Point Blank appear to be based on film stills.
[4] Bob Dylan. “In His Own Words: Why Bob Dylan Paints.” Vanity Fair, 2 Nov. 2016. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/11/why-bob-dylan-paints
[5] Bob Dylan. Point Blank (Quick Studies). Castle Fine Art, 2025.
[6] Dylan, Point Blank, p.126.
[7] Eddie Gorodesky is credited as writer and producer of Theme Time Radio Hour and received thanks as Dylan’s “fishing buddy” in The Philosophy of Modern Song. Lucy Sante wrote the sermons for the film Trouble No More, included in Bootleg Series Vol. 13.
[8] Hearts of Fire. Directed by Richard Marquand, performances by Bob Dylan, Fiona, and Rupert Everett, Lorimar Motion Pictures, 1987.
[9] Raphael Falco, “‘Unheard Melodies’: Ekphrasis and Possible Gaze in Dylan’s Lyrics,” Dylan Review, 5.1 Spring/Summer, 2023.
[10] Bob Dylan: Questions on Masculinity.” Conference, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, 23–24 May 2024. event.sdu.dk/dylan/conference.
