For some reason this story has kept me LOL-ing over the past couple of days. I fucking love Bob Dylan, always will, but he done fucked up here. What’re you thinkin’, buddy?

Bob Dylan’s first-ever New York art exhibition opened early last week at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. The exhibit is titled “The Asia Series,” and consists of various paintings Dylan worked on during his trips to China, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea in the late ’90s.

The press release boasts that Dylan’s pictures depict “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture, and landscape,” along with “conversely [more] cryptic paintings, often of personalities and situations.”

The problem is, though, that four of Dylan’s paintings bear a — I don’t even want to say “striking,” I want to say “identical” — resemblance to a few artists’ photographs, including a couple Henri Cartier-Bresson took that were published in Life magazine in 1948.

The painting in the foreground of the picture above, which Dylan titled “Trade,” looks exactly like this untitled photograph by Cartier-Bresson. Similarly, a painting Dylan titled “Opium” is essentially a painting-from-photograph of a photo taken by Leon Busy titled “Woman Smoking Opium.”

Michael Gray, a Dylan enthusiast and the creator of the blog “Bob Dylan Encyclopedia,” addressed the issue in a blog post dated September 23rd:

“The most striking thing is that Dylan has not merely used a photograph to inspire a painting: he has taken the photographer’s shot composition and copied it exactly. He hasn’t painted the group from any kind of different angle, or changed what he puts along the top edge, or either side edge, or the bottom edge of the picture. He’s replicated everything as closely as possible. That may be a (very self-enriching) game he’s playing with his followers, but it’s not a very imaginative approach to painting. It may not be plagiarism but it’s surely copying rather a lot.”

Go to Gray’s website or this ArtsBeat article in the New York Times to decide for yourself whether or not Dylan plagiarized or simply “borrowed” inspiration from these photographers.

Good artists borrow, great artists steal, and blah blah blah, all that stuff. God bless Bob Dylan and his Bob Dylan-y soul, but… can he do this?  -Christina Drill

This is oddly fascinating — artist Katie Alves managed to recreate familiar scenes from Disney movies as eyeshadow panorama art. The Nightmare Before Christmas look is also pretty good. Also, I would like to give these eyelid models props, because I can only imagine that sitting there while some make-up artist twiddles over your eyelids for this long must feel a lot like Saw torture. I wonder what happens if you blink?  -Christina Drill

I did a bit of research and discovered that this was part of the  lovely artist Alban Low‘s exhibit, in which he pairs “Classic Tweets” (in other words, random tweets from people around the world)  with photos of birds (or, in my case, shoes) and tapes them up into the windows of Newsagents around London. It’s sort of like street-art meets those Barnes & Noble “poem-a-days” on the subway meets digital art.  These “Classic Tweets” remain in the shop for one week each, or “until the guy in the shop remembers to take it down.” Low posts pictures of both the postcard and the Newsagent in which the tweet is on display on his blog about once a week.

Born in 1971, Alban Low received a visual arts degree from De Montfort University and then an MA in Applied Fine Art from Kingston University. He is a full-time artist and this is one of the projects he is currently working on.

Follow @albanart on Twitter, and the next Classic Tweet exhibition might be yours! -Christina Drill (@stidrill)

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Ever have the dream of writing a letter to one of your favorite musicians and having them write back to you? How about writing them a letter, asking them if they’d like for you to make them posters? And then step it up a notch — ever dream of them getting back in touch and offering you a full time job? Probably not, because it sounds awfully far fetched. And certainly not if you’re talking about a band as big as Pearl Jam. But in 1999, a young Brad Klausen — fresh out of school for graphic design — offered his services as an artist, and they offered him a job.

Since then, Brad Klausen has solidified his reputation as one of the most consistently creative poster designers in the music world. His work (and the thoughts behind it) is chronicled in his new book, From a Basement in Seattle: The Poster Art of Brad Klausen. Klausen was kind enough to take some time to talk about his dream coming true, his evolution as an artist, and what you do after you quit working for one of the biggest bands in the world.

It sounds like an interesting path you took to becoming an artist –did you really have the intention of it becoming a full time job? Or was that more of a hope?
Looking back on it, I don’t think I’d ever intended to be able to make a living doing what I’m doing now. It’s actually surprising to me that I’m able to do that. I’ve always liked art and I’ve always liked to draw. Originally, though, I thought wholeheartedly I’d be a pro hockey player…pretty delusional. Through my teenage years I just figured I’d do this, and then I got a wake-up call that I’d never do this. When I went to school, I studied graphic design because I’d always loved art. I had no intention of a career in it or making money with it. Even when I started working for Pearl Jam, I didn’t make posters for the first five years. When I started making the posters I realized this was a way to make money, and it was more interesting.

So what did you do for the first five years?
I was the in-house designer for [Pearl Jam]. Anything that they needed artwork for, I did: t-shirts, newsletters, mailers, single artwork, album artwork — it grew over time. It started kind of slow, and then they realized that they had this guy in the warehouse they were paying to create art. I was doing all this and then I was making people’s birthday invitations. Jeff Ament’s brother Barry started a company called the Ames Brothers, [and] they were doing all the design work prior to me. They started to make a name for themselves and started charging what a regular design firm would charge for jobs. The band and organization decided they didn’t want to pay that much, so they’d just get someone right out of college. When I first got the job, I was really excited and figured I’d be pretty free to do freelance stuff, but they kept me busy.

Tell me about your new book.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while. And it’s missing about 30 pictures — I intended it to be a collection of everything I’ve done, but the publisher said that would be too expensive.

I had talked to a fellow poster artist, Jay Ryan, and asked him how to get a book made. He said you just cold call publishers. I sent out a letter to two publishers, but unbeknownst to me, after I talked to Jay about that, he called his publisher and told them about me. The next day, his publisher got in touch and said, “We wanna do that.” Without Jay’s recommendation, without him being so kind, it wouldn’t have happened.

You reminisce a lot in the short vignettes [that accompany] your art in your new book — does every piece of art you create have a story of its own?
Yeah. When it came time — when I was thinking of putting this book together — I knew that if I looked at every single poster I’ve made, I would remember what I was thinking about. Sometimes the story is not that interesting; I wanted to draw a bird, and that’s the story. Then, most of the time — at least for me — half of the fun of doing this stuff is coming up with the concepts. How is it going to relate to the band, and how am I going to figure this out? Sometimes it’s obvious; you hear a band, and you know this exactly what you’re going to do. And sometimes it’s like, “I don’t know what I’m doing or if this is any good.” [Regarding] each [piece of art] you remember the story totally. Even though it’s five or six years ago, I can see it and remember exactly. It’s like looking at a photo from your past. It’s cool to remember where you were in your head and in your personal life; it’s sort of like a scrapbook.

How long do you spend on each piece?
It varies for each one. Sometimes it’ll take a week, sometimes three weeks. If the concept is strong and I know what I want to do, that’ll cut down time. The other part is just the time consuming part — once you can see an image in your head and it is locked in, can you technically draw it? If you have an image in your head, can you recreate it? That can take some time; you screw up and it doesn’t look right, and you cant get what’s in your head on the paper. Sometimes it’s a struggle and sometimes it’s a breeze. It is dependent on me and where I’m at — if I’m confident in my abilities or stressing out about what I do. On average, [it takes] between a week to three weeks. Three weeks is a long time, though.

If someone asks me to do a job, I’ll say, “Give me at least 10 days.” That’ll give me a good amount of time to get the concept, get it on paper, get it on the computer. In the book, I wanted to have a symbol or asterisk on each piece which was finished at the last minute, but [I] quickly realized that was almost every piece. I’ll be working on a piece for at least a week. It is based on what’s going on in your life at that point.

Judging by what everyone wrote in the book, it’s difficult to tell what your relationship with Pearl Jam is like. [The book hints of] friends who have kind of gotten tired of each other, yet still love each other — is that the case?
Between myself and the band, we still have a very good working relationship. I would say — and I can’t speak for the guys in the band — I think they were surprised when I decided I wanted to quit and leave. I think they’d have been content with me to stay, [but] I was ready to move on and go do other stuff. I was ready to go; I had been wanting to quit for a few years. I quit in the summer of 2008 — it was when the financial stuff was all bubbling to the surface, and I’m quitting a job that most people would die to have. I knew I had to quit and it was time to go, but it was certainly scary. I’m sure my family was thinking, Why are you quitting? You’ve got a good job and health insurance.

Did you consider trying to publish the book with Pearl Jam as backers?
The Ames Brothers put out a book of all their posters. They contacted Pearl Jam and [asked the band] to help them out. Pearl Jam said they would do that, but they didn’t want it to just be Ames Brothers — but who has worked with Pearl Jam? That’s a short list. So they [agreed], and a couple of my posters are in that book as well. When it came time for me to put out my own book, I didn’t want to keep being attached to them — I wanted to do this on my own, and not be beholden to somebody. It would just make the waters a bit more murky — people in there who might be controlling or make decisions. I wanted to have control of the reins. I think they might have gone for it, but I don’t know.

I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for working for Pearl Jam. I’m beyond grateful for that opportunity — the fact that they have a poster collecting cult has helped me tremendously. I’ve always been super honored and grateful; at some point it felt like riding someone else’s coattails, though. At what point am I going to step out on my own without them, knowing full well that the only reason I can step out on my own is because of them? It’s an interesting situation, to work for a band like that that’s had that sort of history and that much success over the globe.

Who have you always wanted to work with?
In this day and age of email it’s unbelievably easy to contact people. [You can] contact the band’s manager or [the band directly] from their webpage. That’s how I got the jobs with Pearl Jam and Queens of the Stone Age. As far as bands I want to work with but haven’t, [there are] two I’d kill to work for — but they both seem to have different approaches to their art: one is Radiohead, and the other is Tool. Thom Yorke has an artist friend from college that they use; anytime you see a Radiohead poster, though, it is done by the promoter, not the band. I’d love to do something for Tool, but their guitar player, Adam Jones, does all theirs, and he just recently got into designing block posters. Those are the two bands that I’m hoping to work for. I’ve kind of stopped holding my breath, though.

Do you have any advice for artists who’d like to do their art full time?
That’s a tough question. I would say…it’s so hard because music is auditory, right? And visual art is visual. If you listen to music, you listen to it, but what does music look like? Everyone sees something different in their head when they hear music. It’d be like crossing any of the senses. If you were to feel something with your hand and have that tactile sensation, well, describe what that tastes like. You just have to really be open-minded, and just sit down and try to figure out what sort of emotion comes into your mind when you hear this stuff, and how you would translate it. How do you draw something to represent sound? That’s a really difficult task. The more you expose yourself to new art and music, the better you get at it. It’s tricky.

As far as getting started in this field, I would say that you have to be unique and have your own style — be somewhat different. I think some of the best artwork for music — and art in general — is strange. It’s something different and something you haven’t seen before. If everyone is going to paint a bowl of fruit in art class, how is yours going to be different than everyone else’s? You are going to have to put yourself in it and make yours stand out.

Also, it’s like the old saying, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.” You’ve just got to keep getting better.

Dark Horse Comics, 112 pages, hardcover, $22.99

When did I first hear of Brian? 2001? I think so — Myspace was the leading social media outlet and I remember seeing his amazing posters. He had done a Toys That Kill show flyer, and that led me to browse through the rest of his art. We did a trade. He humored me by exchanging some art for our [GC Records] art anthology in 2002, and has since exploded all over print and online media: Wahoo’s cups? Check. Album cover for Metallica? Check. DC Comics cover art? Check. Years and Years of Warped Tour branding? Holy shit, check. And that’s just the tip of the ice berg. He’s also been commissioned by Guitar Hero II, Budweiser, Samsung, Kia Motors, Marvel Comics, and so much more. I mean, through this entire resume I’ve listed I didn’t even mention his library of concert posters with bands that dominate your MP3 player.

So, talent: he’s got it. Clients: they love him. But what’s so special about this book? Well, for one, the art goes all the way back to the initial designs I saw way back when that made me fall in love with his art. And secondly, the book comes chock full of background information on each and every piece. It’s kind of like having DVD commentaries in written form. You get to not only hold the collection in your hands, but you learn what made the clients and/or Brian tick while the piece was being created. Fabulous book, amazing artist, super smart publisher. A+, five stars, and all that good stuff.

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Skinny Gaviar is a talented graphic artist. That much is clear. But first and foremost, Skinny considers killing to be his art, and to that end he has murdered hordes of homeless, often using their dismembered bodies as models for his twisted Photoshop creations. This adds a real sense of urgency to his growing body of work, as with each completed piece, the viewer desperately hopes that Skinny’s homicidal urges will be discovered and tamed before he is forced to kill again.

Or so he would have you believe.

In truth, Skinny has lent his uniquely Russian perspective to various pieces of fiction, articles, posters, album covers, and features as a freelancer and a frequent contributor to Verbicide. Cheerfully dark, his sensibilities have always found a way to tickle my funny bone. It’s a nearly impossible feat. And for that alone he deserves attention.

You’ve contributed to Verbicide for a long while. How and why did you first decide to get involved?
I guess it was about three years ago when I decided to try my luck as a freelance illustrator. I came across your website, read some articles and liked the whole thing. I sent you an email and, boom, you responded and asked me to illustrate a story by Hunter S. Thompson. That’s how it started.

I know you have a particular passion for creating art that references music. Do you tend to listen to music when you create? What type of music do you prefer?
I love music. I listen to it all the time whether I’m drawing or not. It helps a lot. I love silence too, but it makes me feel paranoid. As a matter of fact, I have certain favorites to accompany the creative process. They include Frank Zappa, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, Rush, Faith No More and Meshuggah. It might sound odd, but a fair amount of my artwork was created while listening to Richard Pryor.

Deciding to be an artist isn’t easy since it’s not a very practical way to make a living. How did you get started as an artist? Who started you on the artistic path and what drives you to keep going?
I was bored. I had an office job that was staring at a monitor for eight hours a day pretending you’re doing something. Instead of pretending I began doing artwork. The very first pieces looked horrible, but eventually it all got better. Then I quit the office job (which only taught me how to use a fax machine) and became a full-time artist (if it makes any sense).

I have two main art influences — Andy Ewen, who is an amazing ink artist and a good friend of mine, and (a cliche) Salvador Dali. I also like Ian Stevenson and Bob London a lot. Oh, and Richard Kern. He’s a photographer but his approach is very artistic. There were three early 90s computer quest games that taught me a lot, especially about the use of colors — Sam and Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle and Simon The Sorcerer. Those were great. But then the filthy 3D technology eclipsed the charm of pixels.

Nothing drives me to keep going. It’s not that I do it for the sake of something. I have an itch and I scratch, metaphorically speaking.

Tell me about your artistic process. How do you create most of your work? Why do you seem to gravitate toward such dark themes?
Most of the works are based on photos. Photoshop gets a bad name these days. People think of it as a tool for making hilarious pet pictures with witty comments and stuff like that. Each time I say “Photoshop” to somebody, I can feel some sort of disapproval floating in the air. But Photoshop is almighty and mysterious. I’m still unaware of most of its powers. I print my stuff on canvas and paper too.

Anyway when I first started doing my art, it looked like some sort of extreme retouching. It still does now but with much more hand drawing involved. And initially the colors were the primary, but now it’s about shapes as well.

I never know what the result is going to be like and that’s my favorite part. Stream of consciousness or whatever they call it. And that’s why I prefer doing my own stuff as opposed to magazine illustrations that have contextual boundaries.

Dark themes are bold. They come out naturally. Cut-off limbs, blood, ugly faces — they look beautiful with the right colors. Especially blood. You can improve any image by adding blood. It just works. Try it.

But it’s not all creepy. I have nice ones too.

Have you ever considered creating something more narrative, like a comic or an illustrated book?
You know, each image is a story itself. To be honest, I never understood the appeal of comic books. They’re neither books that make you use imagination and create images of your own nor animated films that are easily absorbed yet visually and sonically expressive. For instance, I really like your Abstract Fantasy cartoons. They’re sick but in a very attractive way. I think they’d work perfectly as standalone images. But it’s just me. Plus, I’m from Russia. Comic books were never big here.

Every piece of mine has its beginning and its end if you know what I mean. So I can’t possibly think of series of frames following one plot. Yet, I fancy the idea of making a book. Plot and theme free. Just a bunch of unrelated images. A compilation of visual stories, if you will.

You are somewhat ambitious with your projects. What is an artistic goal that you’d like to accomplish? What projects do you have coming up?
I don’t think there’s anything ambitious. I mean, just like any other artist I want to do art and make a living by that for as long as necessary. I’m not sure if I have any goals at all. I just let it come out of me.

Project-wise, the book is actually a good idea. Maybe even a collaboration with a writer or a bunch of them. That’d be cool. I don’t like obvious concepts. It’s like when you look at something and realize it is so ballless and soulless that most people will dig it. Like Lost, or Banksy, or iPad. I just do what I do and I hope it’s not that obvious.

This is a cute 6” x 7” book presenting all 44 presidents as if they were archiving Facebook profile pictures and status updates. It’s very clever as well as informative.  Did you know that John Adams (our second president) was the first president never to have owned slaves in his lifetime? Or that Thomas Jefferson was the first atheist president? Or that Martin Van Buren was the first to have learned English as a second language?

Indeed, this book is chock full of cover to cover interesting facts about these 44 gentleman. But it’s the presentation and wit that win out. Take this line, for example: “James Monroe…is the fourth president to own slaves while in office. Cry him a river.” Hilarious. Or how about: “James Buchanan is the first gay president. As such, Morrissey’s lyrics lamenting the lack of presidential gayness do not make sense to him.” Every entry slobbers on your cheek with its hypothetical tongue, and it’s quite enjoyable. While it looks like a comic book for kids, the text is rather rated R, but if you even remotely enjoy this kind of political cartoon mayhem, your collection cannot go without this book. Five stars and all that good stuff.

Before I leave off, here’s one more favorite line from inside these fantastic pages: “Franklin Pierce is the first alcoholic president. It’s not his fault his wife and his country do not love him.” Pure gold.

Does a skilled rendering of a chimp on a bicycle, turtles raising a flag (a la Iwo Jima), or a sasquatch pushing a tricked-out lawnmower appeal to you? How about a bear wearing tube socks while running with a pair of scissors? This is the imagery you can expect from Jay Ryan’s collection of poster art advertising bands like the Smoking Popes, My Morning Jacket, and Mudhoney. In addition to his work for lionized rockers, his prints advertising art festivals, an online “Swap Meat,” and, my favorite, a delicate “tree full of undifferentiated mammals” that was to be displayed in every room of a Chicago area hotel all have a unique cartoon whimsy and an irrepressible inventiveness that extends well beyond their more practical purposes.

At first glance, a colorful composition with animals ranging from a howling monkey to a more austere ostrich (promoting consecutive Hum shows on New Years’s Eve ’08 and New Year’s Day ‘09) appear ready for hanging in a lucky kid’s bedroom. On further inspection, the animals are unquestionably severe and on the attack; three hammerhead sharks flank a charging buffalo while on the opposite poster a beady-eyed ram and a focused rhino set their sights on in-motion greyhounds and a big-tusked walrus swimming hard.

Conversely, Ryan’s art can come off, well, cutesy. There’s one print featuring a yellow bear holding in his arms a tail-wagging green pup (both of which have similar toothy expressions) that would be a welcomed and classy addition to any progressive kindergarten. The same goes for the self-explanatory “Dog in Socks” outlined in thick dark strokes against patchwork washes of orange, white and brown. If not for the overall visual language and bold talent of their creator, these works would be too sugary sweet and one-dimensional for me. Thankfully, Ryan doesn’t fall prey to the opposite extreme and make honeyed subjects slaying each other with carving knives or some such tired nonsense. If you’re interested in this visual routine, it is readily available at the Hot Topic nearest you.

Fortunately, Ryan finds a comfortable middle ground where his subjects are appealing on the surface, yet deep enough in the display to warrant admiration and closer inspection. Of course, any decent ad for any worthwhile show should do this, but the majority fall short. You’ve seen them all, but few have lodged themselves in your mind’s eye. Where there is immediate aesthetic flash, there is generally no substance (and vice versa). Great art, even in advertising, satisfies the eye and the brain, pleasing while informing or deepening the wonder of the viewer. Ryan does exactly this and does it well. It is amazing to see in one nicely crafted book the sheer volume of work this guy has put out in three year’s time; the color choices, excess scratches, and high-impact outlines of what the book title conveys is nothing short of astounding.

This is the second pressing of this anthology, and what you get crammed inside is Avow zine’s issues 11 through 16 and selections from the first 10 issues. I’m not sure why they chose to include only a few pages from the first 10 issues; I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of cool shit. Also, the book seems to have been edited by the same dude who edited Pulp Fiction — the chronological order of the issues is completely askew, but it works well.

While some of the issues contain pieces drawn or written by friends and partners-in-crime, my all time favorite selections are from issue 13, “The Alphabet Issue,” in which Keith goes from A to Z talking about issues ranging from superheroes to pickup lines, history to tagging on the streets, to demo tapes and the lack thereof. I also greatly enjoy the excerpts from issue 15, “Here’s One For the Art Nerds,” a collection of his art dating back to 1996, in which Rosson gives insight through commentary for each and every piece presented.

For those of you unfamiliar with Avow, or Keith Rosson’s work for HeartAttack and Razorcake or the throngs of bands who have been honored to feature his artwork on their record albums, do yourself a favor and pick up this book.