Bob Dylan on one of his biggest regrets
Bob Dylan isn’t a name many of us would associate with the word regret. The timeless troubadour has sculpted a legacy unlike any of his peers with his widely accepted title as the best songwriter of all time. His vast body of work has been credited as a distinguished offering of literary mastery. In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
This marked the first musician to have been awarded the coveted literary prize, and it served to illustrate what sets Dylan apart as an artist. For such an artist to have been recognised in his time by generations of devoted fans, Dylan will have very few regrets about his own art, but in 1985, he showed considerable remorse concerning the fine art of Andy Warhol.
In the early 1960s, Dylan moved from Minnesota to New York City in search of a career in folk music. As he rubbed shoulders with the artsy bohemian community of the city, it was only a matter of time before he became acquainted with Andy Warhol. The legendary pop artist was famed for his striking prints, but he had a passion for art in most media. His interest in music famously brought him into the orbit of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s as he looked to add an avant-garde rock band to his art troupe, The Factory.
While Dylan wasn’t known for any significant artistic collaborations with Warhol, the pair were, at least on the face of it, friendly with one another. The latter once gifted the folk rocker an original print from his famed Elvis Presley range. Clearly undervaluing Warhol’s status at the time – or just in need of a good sit down – Dylan traded the painting for a new sofa.
In an interview with Spin in 1985, Dylan lamented, “I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing [I’d] done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I’d never do it again.”
The painting was one of Warhol’s original Double Elvis (Ferus Type) pieces, a silver silkscreen image of The King depicted as a cowboy, with a double overlapping print. One such piece sold for a staggering $37,042,500 at Sotheby’s contemporary art sale in 2012. At the time, it was the first Double Elvis to appear on the market since 1995.
While Dylan surely won’t be hard up for a few dollars, art pieces have a strange way of becoming more appealing when they’re worth a small fortune. See Andy Warhol’s famous Elvis print in the short documentary below.
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