THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 4, 1996 TAG: 9606040023
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 148 lines
ALL YOKO'S SAYING, is give John Lennon's art a chance.
``Each drawing is shiny like a jewel, you know? You feel the presence of John as a human being. His spirit is coming through it - playful and warm,'' said Yoko Ono, widow of the Beatle slain in 1980 by a deranged fan.
Ono was speaking from the home she once shared with Lennon, in the plush Dakota apartments in Manhattan. That day she was scheduled to fly off with son Sean for a European tour; Ono has been singing with Sean's band IMA, with whom she performs on their fall 1995 release, ``Rising.''
But she took time out to promote a showing of Lennon's artwork at Norfolk's Marriott Hotel. The exhibit is Friday through Sunday, during Harborfest.
The show and sale includes only one original artwork - a drawing Lennon made during the 1969 ``bed-in for peace'' the couple staged in Amsterdam following their 1969 marriage. The work is priced at $25,000, said Larry Schwartz of LASCO Productions, a California firm that creates and tours fine art exhibits.
The rest of the show consists of several dozen fine art prints that replicate his original drawings, sometimes with a color background chosen by Ono. Priced from $500 into the thousands, the print methods include serigraphy, lithography and copper etching.
Ono, who will be in Europe during the Norfolk show, said that she created the print editions to make the art more affordable for her late husband's admirers.
The images include prints from the 1969 ``Bag One'' portfolio of 14 lithographs, editions created under Lennon's supervision from drawings he made chronicling his honeymoon with Ono. These include scenes of the couple by the Eiffel Tower and at the bed-in.
Lennon had his first major gallery show in 1970, when he exhibited the ``Bag One'' series in London; within hours, erotic images from the portfolio were removed by police on grounds of obscenity. Several of the erotic works will be exhibited in Norfolk, Schwartz said.
In other works, Lennon depicted the couple tucked into an apple pie, illustrating Lennon's comfort in a union that was both personal and corporate. (The Beatles' record label was Apple.) He also drew the couple as Adam and Eve, and as two nude virgins eating bananas.
He drew Sean as a big-eyed baby and later as a curious, happy boy.
Other drawings presented Lennon at the piano, walking on water, or in a questioning posture with the phrase ``Why me?'' jotted beneath.
One of his last drawings, made in 1979, shows him seated in a chair, on a cloud, staring ahead. Lennon penciled in the phrase: ``he tried to face reality.''
Ono began exhibiting Lennon's artwork in earnest in 1986, the year she set up an organization called Bag One Arts to focus on building Lennon's reputation as a visual artist.
``I'm just doing it because, one, I have the memory of John wanting to have exhibitions of his work. And, it was not easy during his lifetime. The galleries did not take him seriously - although he was an art student before he became a rocker,'' she said.
His interest in art began in childhood, when his uncle George taught him to draw and make watercolors. The character of his line drawings - whimsical, darkly humorous - would remain the same through his life.
From 1957 to 1960, while studying at the Liverpool College of Art in England, Lennon was a prankster in class and an after-school shoplifter, according to a 1988 Lennon biography by Albert Goldman.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison, later to become fellow Beatles, were enrolled at the adjacent Liverpool Institute; during lunch breaks, the three guitarists would jam, Goldman wrote.
After his first year, Lennon was not invited to join the painting department, as per usual. A college girlfriend, Helen Anderson, told Goldman that Lennon's paintings were ``violent, noisy and semifigurative,'' and often portrayed Brigitte Bardot seated in a dim saloon.
Instead, he was placed in a lettering class, where he met his first wife, Cynthia Powell, with whom he had a son, Julian.
Meanwhile, his mother, Julia, was hit by a car and killed; Lennon became unhinged and began to drink heavily. He became obsessed with the many cripples of Liverpool; Lennon would tease them to their face, and draw mocking pictures of deformed figures in his sketchbooks, Goldman wrote. Later, he understood the compulsion as a way of exorcising his secret terror of being a freak on the inside.
Art experts have seen in Lennon's drawings the influence of Henri Matisse, James Thurber and Pablo Picasso.
Now, his ``Bag One'' series is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. And a year ago, the Bremen Museum in Germany, which specializes in drawings, held a retrospective of Lennon's work, Ono said.
``So now his work is not only giving joy and fun to people, but also it's kind of respected and accepted, too,'' she said.
Ono observed Lennon making many of the drawings on view, and she said he was especially active from the mid-1970s while he was home raising Sean. But her memory is hazy on the circumstances surrounding most of them.
A ``Bag One'' drawing of the couple intertwined in a circle spurred a particular recollection.
``That's the yin-yang kind of logo thing, isn't it? The one with simple brushstrokes depicting both of us? Well, I remember he did that and said, `Oh, that's not good enough.' He was going to throw it away in the waste basket.
``His idea was, because he was famous, he was aware that if he doesn't like a drawing, if it's not esthetically a good drawing, if he doesn't crumple it and throw it in the waste basket right away, it might get around somewhere,'' Ono said.
She thought it was beautiful, and kept him from tossing it out. ``So, I feel like I saved that one.''
Even casual followers of The Beatles are familiar with the ballad of John and Yoko.
On Nov. 9, 1966, the two met when Lennon walked into Indica Gallery in London for a preview showing by Ono, whose reputation as an avant garde conceptual artist was on the rise.
One of the pieces involved climbing a ladder, then peering through a magnifying glass at the ceiling and the tiny word ``yes.''
``So it was positive,'' Lennon later told Rolling Stone magazine. ``I felt relieved. I was very impressed.''
Biographer Jerry Hopkins wrote that Ono pretended not to recognize Lennon when she was introduced, when in fact she was actively conniving to obtain backing from the millionaire Beatle. After nearly two years of subtle and then aggressive pursuit, Hopkins wrote, Ono not only had his financial support - she had Lennon's lifelong affection.
Once they merged, Lennon became fascinated with the Fluxus art scene in which Ono was a key member. In recent catalogs, Lennon is listed as a co-creator with Ono of Fluxus art.
Fluxus was a 1960s art movement that presented the most eccentric multi-media and conceptual art and music. The anti-high art stance of Fluxus also had its impact on The Plastic Ono Band, co-founded by the duo.
In typical Fluxus style, Ono performed her ``instruction pieces.'' For her ``Cut Piece,'' she stood on stage holding scissors, and asked patrons to snip away bits of her clothing, until she stood nude.
``We had a very different style in art,'' said Ono. ``But there was a kind of mutual admiration society between us. I really liked what John did'' with his drawings.
``There's a certain thing called art history,'' she said. ``So, when somebody goes to a museum and sees like one line or something, unless you know art history, you don't know how important it is.'' Certainly, Ono's work fit in that category.
With Lennon's drawings, ``if you see the work, it hits you. It has the kind of sense of humor that primitive art would have.
``It's people's art, you know? I really think that it's beautiful in that way.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
LASCO PRODUCTIONS
Graphic
WANT TO GO?
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
Drawing
LASCO PRODUCTIONS
John Lennon's ``Borrowed Time. . . '' (1977) pictures the artist at
the piano. by CNB