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ohn Lennon drew as he composed,
fast and furiously when the in-
spiration hit. What most people
don't know is that the rock w roll
icon indulged his lesser-known tal-
ent prodigiously in the last decade
of his life.
What most people don't know
is that John Lennon, Beatle ex-
traordinaire, wanted to be an
artist.
It never happened — at least
not in the eyes of the art world
which, for the most part, ignored
Lennon's foray into the visual
realm during his lifetime. Not only
that, but his first gallery show, at a
London venue in 1970, attracted the
dubious attention of Scotland Yard. The
British police confiscated several erotic
drawings that Lennon had created us-
ing his wife, Yoko Ono, as a model. The
works were labeled obscene and removed
from the gallery walls after a day and a
half.
Lennon may have hid his discourage-
ments well at the time, but he rarely
showed his works publicly again. Never-
theless, at the time of his death on Dec. 8,
1980, he had hoped to stage another ex-
hibition.
In a posthumous fulfillment of her late
husband's goal, Ono is doing just that.
'The Artwork of John Lennon" makes its
Ann Arbor premiere next week it's a trav-
eling exhibition that includes 45 serigraphs
taken from Lennon's sketchbooks and a
generous dose of harmless sentimentali-
ty
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Most of the works depict life in the
Lennon-Ono household, an intimate por-
trait of Lennon's relationship with his wife,
son Sean and his ideals. Originally com-
posed with pen, pencil and sumi ink,
Lennon's sketches are "like a diary," notes
Lynne Clifford, quoting an oft-used de-
scription by Ono.
Clifford directs the Manhattan-based
Bag One Arts, the company Ono formed
to exhibit and sell reproductions of her hus-
band's drawings. Bag One itself is a ref-
erence to the series of 14 sketches that
John presented to his wife as a wedding
gift and that document their heavily pub-
licized marriage and honeymoon. (These
were also the works that Lennon exhibit-
ed in 1970.)
Lennon had been drawing since his
childhood and attended the Liverpool Art
Institute from 1957 to 1960; Ono has
sketches he did as a 9-year-old boy, Clif-
ford says, adding that Lennon had always
considered himself an artist 'The guitars,"
he once told an interviewer, "came second."
And artist Ono, a member of the avant-
garde Fluxus movement during the '60s,
"nurtured that quality in him," Clifford
says.
Lennon's works, printed in series of 300,
have been traveling the country for near-
ly two years, and at least 50 percent are
John Lennons
art shines on
in Ann Arbor.
LIZ STEVENS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
already sold out.
"John is an icon. He was a Renaissance
man; he was a philosopher," says Larry
Schwartz, a former Detroiter, who pro-
motes the Lennon exhibits through his
California-based Lasco Productions.
"When you see John's work, you see John."
Which is undoubtedly what draws so
many people to the event. To his fans,
Lennon represented a kind of unquash-
able optimism about the future, a sense of
hope even in the face of tragedy. "It's re-
ally an emotional ride for people,"
Schwartz says. 'They come and they cry."
And, of course, they buy. Taking home
a piece of the Lennon collection costs at