Bob Dylan, one of the reigning, and enduring, stars in my musical firmament, a true culture hero, is considered not only by me to be the ‘”he most celebrated singer-songwriter of our time.”

Dylan was nasal and whiny and off-key as a singer but no one cared. (He mellowed with time).   He shot up from the Village and SFBay coffeehouses to nightclubs to Vegas to Radio City no doubt. He played and sang the songs of love and the revolution, which was imminent and which we all planned to join.

And over nearly 50 years of songwriting Dylan has written the iconic songs of our generations- and a few succeeding generations as well. It takes no effort to think back to the road trips of my youth and to hear “Lay Lady, Lay” or “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” blaring out of the radio all day long.

Even Dylan‘s hair was the visible expression of revolutionary cool. As a critic commented, you could watch Bob’s hair grow album by album cover.

Face it, he was a god! Or at the very least, a living legend.

When I heard that Dylan had mounted an exhibition of paintings from his travels in Asia, I was very excited. Dylan was a Renaissance man. Why should he not branch out into painting as well?

Others were excited as well. I overheard a very well-heeled customer ask with intense childlike excitement if there had been an opening and if so, if Dylan had come. “Did he come? Did he come?” The receptionist replied coolly that Dylan was a very private person. “But did he come?” “No” she said crisply. “He did not.”

Unfortunately, it takes about ten seconds into this Asia Series show to say—maybe there was a reason for that. And maybe he should have stuck to what he does supremely well. Write wonderful songs. Sing. Not paint.

To be fair, it’s not all negative—it’s an uneven show. There are some gems. But to me the bulk of his work resembles the venerable school of Paint By Numbers, right down to the format of using thick black paint to outline the subject and flat bright colors to fill it in.

However. There are a handful of paintings at the Gagosian which are interesting and evocative and which do catch the eye. And one, which is a total knockout.

Two images used to publicize the show, for good reason, are technically interesting and make use of some clichés of “the mysterious East.” One, entitled “Opium,” is of a woman in a vivid pink dress with a blank face and heavy lidded eyes lying languidly on the floor near what seems to be a hookah. (Yes, you have to put it together – the inference being that she uses it to smoke opium. Which is odd- I thought one used a wood and brass long pipe? Oh well, it’s not a time or place to be too literal).

The other is of a Buddhist monk in bluish green robe seemingly looking inward, holding his prayer beads and praying. I was struck by this image. It rang true. Dylan sometimes did just hit it right—this face does give the impression of meditation, contemplation. Perhaps even holiness. And these slender bony hands holding beads—yes, this seems to be someone telling each prayer with a bead.

A few others which for me were sometimes genuinely evocative.

A business man and his wife in a tiny cluttered kitchen. Her head is bowed; he stares out at the watcher, chin jutting out, eyes wide apart, straightening his dark tie, against a brilliant white shirt. It looks as if he were close to strangling himself with that tie. His expression is haughty, arrogant, and not happy. One might guess he is not eager to go to work.

Two guys who look like gangsters, huge heavy faces leering out at the watcher. One guy is lighting the other guy’s cigarette. Dissolute, faces but sardonic, full of life. Clearly the guy lighting the cigarette is junior to the older guy and has a subordinate role, but there is a bond. They are somehow very cool. One thinks of very late nights; nightclubs and prizefights.

And the Dylan painting which for me almost redeems all the rest: A cockfight. Might be Thailand, might be the Philippines. Two large vivid cocks in the center rearing up against each other, bleeding, at least one with razors on its claws to slash the other badly wounded but high in the sky. And about to come down on the other combatant. The faces of the watchers have a may perhaps have been taken from a photo- they look more real than real– more skinny gangster guys, intent on their bets and on the cocks, raising their fists with the bets and presumably their cash, calling out to the birds. It is amazing. You get completely caught up in it. Stunning! I loved this.

How Dylan could pull these off and then do a completely mechanical looking piece of floating markets probably in Hong Kong that looks uncannily like the opener of every Kung Fu movie made—or another of stiff wooden lushly robed characters which makes it likely that somebody dragged him to the Peking Opera—well, I don’t know.

And I heard more than one customer say — if you saw these pieces on a thrift shop would you dive for them exclaiming that these must be the work of Bob Dylan? And forking over big bucks?

Well, yes, maybe I would. For that cockfight, I would!

Bob Dylan, The Asia Series
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
September 20 – October 22, 2011