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Bob Dylan's artwork on display 60 years after Judas heckle

Rumeana JahangirNorth West
BBC Black and white image of a young Bob Dylan in 1962. He has a dark quiff of hair and wears a buttoned shirt. A harmonica is strapped around his neck and an acoustic guitar in his hands.BBC
Bob Dylan, seen in a BBC show from 1962, has won praise for his art as well as music

Sixty years after Bob Dylan was infamously heckled as a "Judas" at a Manchester concert, his artwork is being exhibited in the city.

The American musician attracted fame as an acoustic folk performer in the early 1960s, with songs Blowin' In the Wind, Like A Rolling Stone and The Times They Are A-Changin'.

However the addition of electric guitar music to his repertoire dismayed many devotees, prompting a fan at the Manchester concert in 1966 to shout "Judas" over his perceived betrayal.

It proved to be a standout moment in modern music history and to mark the occasion, the city will display the singer's artwork for the first time at Castle Fine Art Manchester this weekend.

A few weeks short of his 25th birthday, Dylan seemed stung by the criticism – and the subsequent applause and cheers in support of the heckle - at the city's Free Trade Hall on 17 May 1966.

He then responded with the words "I don't believe you" and "You're a liar" from the stage, before turning to his band and telling them to "play it [expletive] loud" as they launched into their next track.

Castle Fine Art Dylan's painting shows a railroad crossing signpost with an industral site behdind between bare trees on a cloudy day, with sunlight streaming thorugh on the horizon.Castle Fine Art
Bob Dylan's paintings have been praised for showing a slice of everyday American life

His music continued to be successful but it will be his paintings, drawings and sculptures that will be showcased alongside his lyrics at this weekend's launch of his Retrospectrum exhibition on King Street.

The free display of 30 pieces of artwork has already been on show in China, Italy and the US, and is now in Manchester for the first time.

The Castle Fine Art gallery said it demonstrated "the breadth of Dylan's artistic achievement beyond music".

"Retrospectrum reveals another dimension of Dylan's restless creativity – one that translates his poetic and observational vision into striking visual form," it added.

BDA Feinstein Black and white image of Dylan writing on a notepad in his hands as he sits in a room. Another man sits on a sofa to the left with a table and paper cups in between them.BDA Feinstein
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016

Dylan, who plans to tour the US this summer, previously said: "I don't really associate them with any particular time or place or state of mind, but view them as part of a long arc; a continuing of the way we go forth in the world and the way our perceptions are shaped and altered by life."

He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016 and has been the subject of movies, including A Complete Unknown with Timothée Chalamet and the 2007 film I'm Not There, starring Ben Whishaw and Cate Blanchett.

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