Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan

In Revisionist Art, Bob Dylan offers silkscreened covers of popular magazines from the last half century that somehow escaped history’s notice. As Luc Sante says in his introduction to this collection, they seem to emanate, “from a world just slightly removed from ours--a world a bit more honest about its corruption, its chronic horniness, its sweat, its body odor.” Art critic B. Clavery provides a history of Revisionist Art, from cave drawings, to Gutenberg, to Duchamp, Picasso, and Warhol. The book also features vivid commentaries on the work, (re)acquainting the reader with such colorful historical figures as the Depression-era politician Cameron Chambers, whose mustache became an icon in the gay underworld, and Gemma Burton, a San Francisco trial attorney who used all of her assets in the courtroom. According to these works, history is not quite what we think it is.