Norman Raeben and Bob Dylan: A Lecture by Fabio Fantuzzi

Bob Dylan once said that Norman Raeben “put my mind and my hand and my eye together, in a way that allowed me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt… [He] didn’t teach you so much how to draw … he looked into you and told you what you were.” From late March to August 1974, Dylan made the daily journey uptown to Raeben’s eleventh-floor studio above Carnegie Hall, developing a visual approach to writing that shaped seminal albums like Blood on the Tracks, Desire, and Street Legal. Reflecting on that creative period in a 1991 interview, Dylan added: “That was my painting period… that’s like taking a brush and painting those songs onto a canvas.”

Fabio Fantuzzi explores the work and influence of Norman Raeben (1901–1978), a remarkable yet long-overlooked figure in 20th-century art. The youngest son of Sholem Aleichem—whose short stories Tevye’s Daughters were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof—Raeben was a mentor to hundreds of artists, including Stella Adler and Bob Dylan, and left a quiet but enduring mark on American visual culture, music, and theater.

After fleeing the Russian pogroms, he settled in Paris and New York, immersing himself in two key artistic environments. Drawing on influences from the School of Paris—Soutine, Chagall, Bissière, Matisse—and from the artistic circles of the Ashcan School and the Art Students League, Raeben developed an original style and a singular teaching method that fused painting with storytelling, memory, and identity.

Based on the findings of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project POYESIS, this presentation retraces Raeben’s artistic journey, introduces the newly created Raeben Archive, and reflects on his influence on Dylan’s mid-1970s work, including the film Renaldo and Clara. The lecture will also feature a wide selection of unpublished materials—from recovered paintings and archival photographs to lesson notes and correspondence—many presented publicly for the first time.

Finally, it offers a glimpse into Norman Raeben: The Wandering Painting, the first major retrospective of his work, held at the Jewish Museum in Venice  (24 November 2024 – 9 March 2025).

This talk is co-presented by The Village Trip and the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. The Foundation preserves and interprets the historic home, studio, and art collections of 20th-century sculptor Chaim Gross and his wife Renee.

This lecture is sponsored by David Kadish and Michael Norton in memory of David’s uncle, Robert Shelton, the New York Times critic who wrote the celebrated September 1961 review credited with launching Bob Dylan’s career. His biography, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, was acclaimed by Mojo as 'A landmark account of Dylan's genesis and ascension.'

This lecture is based on the results of the project POYESIS, funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101068800. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

• Fabio Fantuzzi