Comment of the Week: You Ain’t No Picasso

Reader Larry (inside Dylan joke: “remember Durango, Larry?”) in reply to the story Phoenix Slay Bob Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands“, schools us on the art of the cover:

“Okay, I’m happy that young people are discovering the genius of Dylan. At the same time, Dylan wrote and performed the song, and these folks are reprising it in a way that honors but doesn’t approach the intensity of the original. Any third year painting student can paint a Picasso like painting; but that doesn’t make them Picasso. it just means that if the painter has a tattoo and all the right “look” etc. that someone might be inclined to have a look at Picasso. Dylan changed the last half of the twentieth century; you have to go to the source; you have to get over the narcissism built into pop culture to appreciate it. Dylan made it new, made it over; these guys make it palatable to people who would like to overlook Dylan, to a subculture dedicated to it, even.”