After book, now art: Dylan gallerists offer full refunds for hand-signed prints

London, Nov. 28 (IANS): The U.K. gallery that sold a lion’s share of the prints of Bob Dylan’s paintings has issued a statement offering full refunds for customers who bought “hand-signed” items that have been revealed to have actually been machine-autographed, reports ‘Variety’.

They will get to keep the prints, but will apparently have to send back the certificates of authenticity that came with them to have the refunds processed, getting back a certificate that attests the prints are auto-signed, in return.

A Sunday morning Facebook post from Castle Galleries said that the refunds followed Dylan’s own post of “regret”. In a highly uncharacteristic public statement, the music icon said he began using reproduction signatures on artwork in 2019, at a time when he was being afflicted by vertigo, and continued using the process during the pandemic, due to not being able to have staff to assist him with signings.

Dylan’s statement added that his team was working with galleries as well as his book publisher, Simon & Schuster, to find a way to redress the issue.

Castle Galleries said that only two batches of prints had been subject to the autopen process, both of them released this year: ‘The Retrospectum Collection’ and ‘Sunset, Monument Valley’.

Although the gallery released other collections subsequent to the 2019 date Dylan gave as the start of his using autopen, the gallery has told customers that editions released in 2020 had been signed earlier, when the singer-artist was still hand-signing.

In its Sunday statement, Castle Galleries avowed that it had no prior knowledge of the supposedly hand-signed prints – which typically sell on its site for 5,000 to 15,000 pounds – were anything other than as advertised.