The word ‘apocalypse’ originally indicated an ‘unveiling’, and the speaker in the Book of Revelation is a ‘seer’. This is perhaps one of the reasons that this ancient text (and others like it) have generated such a ferment of creative responses in the visual arts – as well as those other non-visual strands of the arts which have their own way of engaging our mind’s eye.
The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.
This conference seeks to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
Bob Dylan grew up with the apocalyptic imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures and the cold war experience of hiding under school desks in the era of nuclear threat. When he began composing and performing, he combined this apocalyptic angst with the hobo lifestyle of his hero Woody Guthrie. His songs embody the idea and experience of journeying in the face of the coming apocalypse. In the best of Dylan’s songs we encounter a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. Dylan's manifesto is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'. In this song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, seeing ahead a gathering apocalyptic storm, and resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees. From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Yet, for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.
The rich variety of types of artistic unveiling (visual, musical, dramatic, literary) makes an engagement with the creative arts a deeply valuable way of understanding and appreciating the idea of apocalypse, alongside more traditionally academic modes of enquiry.
This conference seeks to explore our relationship to art, its practice, its study and what the arts unveil to us. As artists or as audiences of art we can be profoundly transformed by our encounters with artistic creativity; indeed, we can find ourselves using the language of revelation to describe such encounters, regardless of our individual faith, religion or beliefs. Mark Rothko is quoted as saying, “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
Bob Dylan grew up with the apocalyptic imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures and the cold war experience of hiding under school desks in the era of nuclear threat. When he began composing and performing, he combined this apocalyptic angst with the hobo lifestyle of his hero Woody Guthrie. His songs embody the idea and experience of journeying in the face of the coming apocalypse. In the best of Dylan’s songs we encounter a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. Dylan's manifesto is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'. In this song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, seeing ahead a gathering apocalyptic storm, and resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees. From ‘Slow Train Coming’ onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ (also known as the Second Coming). The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is coming around the bend and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Yet, for much of his career, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, Dylan did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational conflict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.
For both these talks I will be drawing on my co-authored book 'The Secret Chord'.
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Bob Dylan - Blood In My Eyes.
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