John Lennon’s art hangs at Utah’s Gateway center
City Creek Center may be the new mall downtown, but The Gateway will regain some cultural karma this weekend by hosting The Art of John Lennon, the largest touring exhibition of Lennon’s artwork in North America.
The three-day exhibition has the full co-operation of Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and the John Lennon Estate. It will display more than 120 serigraphs, lithographs and song lyrics (in serigraph form) by Lennon, as well as a rare portfolio of the 14 "Bag One" lithographs hand-signed by the late musician.
The artwork presents "a different side" of Lennon, said Ono in a Tribune interview. "In his artwork, you can see a peaceful person. [There is] a real energy and a joyful feeling."
Art was Lennon’s first love. He was studying at the Liverpool College of Art while leading The Quarrymen, a skiffle group that evolved into the Beatles, said Rich Horowitz, a former record-store owner who is now curator of Pacific Edge Gallery in Laguna Beach, Calif. "Many walk in and say they never knew he was an artist," Horowitz said.
Ono said the first time she saw Lennon’s art was in 1967, a year after she met him.
"I had some prejudice against rockers," she said. "I thought they couldn’t speak more than two syllables."
But when she looked at his black-and-white drawings, she was "amazed," noting how every drawing conveyed Lennon’s peculiar sense of humor.
Lennon continued drawing through his years as a Beatle and in 1969 created a portfolio called "Bag One," a collection of 14 drawings that depicted his and Ono’s wedding and honeymoon. The drawings, which Ono described as "risqué," were released as lithographs but were confiscated by police in several countries because some believed them to be obscene. Although never convicted on obscenity charges, Lennon became so discouraged by the experience that he mostly abandoned his art until the birth of his son Sean in 1975.
Lennon took time off from music to be a full-time father, and that’s when he began drawing again, alongside Sean, who had inherited his parents’ love of visual art. Sean talked with his father about art and created drawings that made his dad proud. "John would hang them in the hall, about 20 of them," Ono said.
"You can tell his deep love for Yoko and Sean," Horowitz said.
When Lennon was killed at age 40 in 1980, Ono had saved several hundred drawings that her husband had created over the years. In 1986, acting for the John Lennon Estate, she worked with the Pacific Edge Gallery to produce lithographs and serigraphs of Lennon’s artwork because she believed that her husband deserved credit as an artist.
Because Ono believed that their life was a collaboration, she added some brushes of color to some of Lennon’s artwork to enhance the meaning of the original drawings, Horowitz said.
Most of the art on display is for sale, ranging from several thousand dollars to as much as $420,000, Horowitz said. But he encourages all who want to learn more about Lennon to browse at the free exhibition, where his songs will be playing.
Source
Interesting comment at the source:
gwarseneau wrote
May 4, 2012
Buyer Beware!
The so-called "Art of John Lennon" exhibit and sale, this weekend at Gateway, is a -Milli & Vanilli- of the artworld. Yoko Ono and her business associates Pacific Edge Gallery are selling, for hundreds to thousands of dollars each, non-disclosed posthumously colorized and altered forgeries with a counterfeit John Lennon chop-mark/signatures in bogus editions as authentic works of visual art ie., lithographs and serigraphs.
The dead don't create art, much less sign and number.
This article perpetuates, with or without intent, the misconception that the original works of visual ie., lithographs and serigraphs that can only created by hand by the artist and excludes any mechanical and photomechanical processes can somehow be copies of other original works of visual art such as John Lennon's drawings.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
John Lennon's b&w drawings reproduced are b&w reproductions versus Yoko Ono's lackeys, such as Al Naclerio, cutting & pasting John Lennon's characters into new composition forgeries then misrepresenting those non-disclosed posthumous forgeries as John Lennon's art, artwork-, lithographs, serigraphs, etchings and woodcuts.
Yoko Ono has no shame and with articles like this, despite best intentions or not from this music critic, the unsuspecting public doesn't stand a chance.
Finally, Pacific Edge Gallery operates out of California. Under California Civil Code 1738 to 1745, if one sells a reproduction for $100 or more, one is required to call it a reproduction. Failure to do so may include, but not limited to: refund, interest, treble damages and $1,000 fine per occurrence.
Rhetorically, aside posthumous colorized and altered forgeries are not reproductions, much less of John Lennon's b&w drawings, does Pacific Edge Gallery disclose them as the -Reproductions of John Lennon- in California and not in exhibition in Utah or does the Pacific Edge Gallery misrepresent them as the -Art of John Lennon- in California and again in exhibitions in Utah?
Yoko Ono and Pacific Edge Gallery have no shame.
In closing, despite a month heads-up [with extensive documentation] on this fraud, Salt Lake Tribune and its' reporter David Burger still promoted these non-disclosed posthumous colorized and altered forgeries as the "art of John Lennon."
The Salt Lake City public, regrettably, is on their own.
Caveat Emptor!
Gary Arseneau
artist & creator of original lithographs
Fernandina Beach, Florida