Mondo Scripto features some of Dylan’s most renowned lyrics, handwritten in pen on paper and each accompanied by a corresponding graphite drawing. They demonstrate a direct engagement between his visual art and his songwriting. Dylan’s lyrics can be oblique or straightforward, elevated or conversational. He is a master of the songwriter’s craft. Dylan returns to songs again and again – tweaking and reworking them. In live performance, he often presents a new version of a well-known song. For Mondo Scripto, some songs have had a few lines changed, while others have had verses completely rewritten. The pencil drawings continue this dialogue between past and present, fixed and fluid, conducted by an artist who changed the relationship between music and words forever.
‘He has made himself a prism through which the music, words, images and experiences that he has found meaningful have refracted in endless variation and become wholly his, and wholly ours – the work of an artist for the ages.’
Tom Piazza, Mondo Scripto
