from Johannes Goransson's substack
"[Bob Dylan] reportedly stole an Elvis print from Warhol. This could be viewed like just an opportune theft, but curiously it seems to engage in some form of exchange: You stole my image so I had to take Elvis’s image. Or: you stole my image so I must be Elvis. It could be seen as an art exchange, an economic exchange. But also an act of mimesis."
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I’ve been reading/writing/thinking about Latin American “neo-avant-gardism” but this has also led me to fall down into a “Warhol/rabbit hole”, thinking a lot about Andy Warhol’s influence and the dynamics of the zone which he seems to have created in the 1960s (tho arguably it lasted at least until the 19870s, when Basquiat and Haring worked their way into it). This zone - anchored at first in “the factory” with its aluminum wrapped walls and constant party of “superstars” and art-making - seems primarily defined by a kind of iconophilia. The thing about photograph is that this artform really makes us realize that everything is potentially art - our faces, the face of someone on TV, a political protest etc. Everything is art. This is connected to the famously transgressive gender dynamics and sexual politics of The Factory. And you can also see it in Warhol himself who is most famous for wearing a blonde wig. It’s interesting to me that this Warhol Zone seems to have been irresistable to all kinds of people who ended up there - and often being turned into art via “screen tests” and other art forms. But there’s also a lot of anxiety about Warhol’s iconophilia. In retrospective interviews, the Factory participants tend to accuse Warhol of having manipulated them, poisoned them (accusing him of literally having encouraged drug abuse) and general betrayals. In a way, these accusations echo anxieties about art and mimicry: that it’s an act of betrayal of the original, that mimesis might drain the original of its power/soul. Bob Dylan certainly seems to have had that attitude. When he went in and got screen-tested, he seems to have been less than pleased. He also reportedly stole an Elvis print from Warhol. This could be viewed like just an opportune theft, but curiously it seems to engage in some form of exchange: You stole my image so I had to take Elvis’s image. Or: you stole my image so I must be Elvis. It could be seen as an art exchange, an economic exchange. But also an act of mimesis.  Dylan references Warhol in several songs, most explicitly in “Desolation Row,” which depicts an ambivalent attitude toward the Warhol Zone and the act scene of the 1960s NYC:
It’s noteworthy that this stanza mentions the “superhuman crew” of Warhol “superstars” and their abode in “the factory,” but it does not mention Warhol, usually such an icon. Instead what the song portrays is the NYC art scene of the 1960s: everyone is disguised and dressing up, everyone’s putting on performances, painting passports brown in some kind of pop art way. Dylan seems ambivalent about this art scene: he’s fascinated but uncomfortable, he goes on for some 10 minutes but he’s castigating in tone. I know people often interpret “Dr Filth” as representing Freud, but again this seems more like the artworld to me:
This could be some transgressive art scene. Of course the most famous “pennywhistle” I can think of is the one Dylan uses on the same record (on “Highway 61”). For me the nazi imagery invokes Kenneth Anger’s use of nazi imagery in “Scorpio Rising”:  Like Scorsese’s memories in this clip, Dylan’s “Desolation Row” depicts a carnivalesque world where high/low art blends. Anger’s film uses pop music as soundtrack and shows at porn theaters. Warhol hosts the Velvet Underground at his dance parties (elsewhere in “Desolation Row” Dylan refers to someone playing “electric violin” which makes me think of John Cale of VU). Also like Scorsese’s memories, Dylan’s song doesn’t really feel much like “desolation” (though this might be a reference to Kerouac, which would make sense as an influence on the scene) but it’s opposite: a teeming space of art and people. A crowded scene. The penny whistle reference is interesting to me because it foreshadows the ending: the speaker of the poem (or Dylan) is singign from Desolation Row: Not only does he sing from this space, he’s actually the one who re-arranges their faces, turning them into something they are not. In essence, he assumes the charges so commonly levied against Warhol - that he’s betraying people by manipulating them, turning them into someone they are not for the sake of Art. And like Warhol he wears Raybans, turning his own face into a mask. * Last year I wrote a report about Dylan and J.Hoberman’s brilliant book Everything is Now. The main argument about that book is that it presents a vision of art as thoroughly mimetic - ie that people are constantly not just trying to represent life (however defined) but imitating other artists:
Our culture is obsessed with finding “the true artist” and dispelling all others as counterfeits, but often the best artist is the biggest imitator, the biggest counterfeit. This is arguably true about the two most influential artists of the 1960s - Dylan and Warhol. They are both famous for taking words, sounds and images from other people and then delivering their “versions” to great effect. But they were also both artists who launched a million other artists - ie that were influential in their turn. So the “true artist” - the most influential artist - is also the biggest counterfeit. And while it’s often seen as a mark of a “true artist” that they reveal the truth, in the case of Dylan and Warhol, they “rearrange faces”, ie they are as interested in disguises, masks, imitation. You're currently a free subscriber to Deformation Zone. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
© 2026 Johannes Göransson
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