However, it wasn’t just the music. Part of their appeal was the
irreverent humour they projected in their public appearances. While they
all shared this characteristic, Lennon’s humour and comments always
seemed to have more of an edge to them than the others’. This came to a
head with his off-the-cuff comment about how The Beatles were more
popular than Jesus. While this caused the type of backlash you’d expect
in certain quarters – burning of Beatles’ records, condemnation by
fundamentalist Christians (sound familiar?), and warnings of “he better
not show his face around here” – it did nothing to affect the group’s
popularity around the world, proving Lennon right in his assessment.
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Before Lennon was a Beatle he had attended the Liverpool Art School.
Although he was unable to complete his studies as his music career took
off, he continued to sketch and draw for the rest of his life as time
allowed. Glancing through the book the first impression is of relatively
unsophisticated line drawings that appear to range from doodles to
sketches or cartoons. But upon closer examination you realize the
looseness of style was a deliberate choice. One need only look at some
of the detailed backgrounds in the work to realize the time and effort
which were put into each drawing.
In his text for the book Scott Gutterman
not only makes an effort to put the illustrations into a historical
context in terms of Lennon’s life, but also points out how they reflect
the way he looked at the world. While the first of the book’s seven
sections offers paintings and sketches from Lennon’s early years, the
chapters are not in chronological order. Instead, they have been
arranged to give us a sense of who Lennon was as visual artist, and what
he attempted to accomplish with his work.
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The work in this section, and many of the pieces created in the years
following, reflect this new influence. However, we also see why Lennon
would have been attracted to the form. For while there are distinct
stylistic differences: The lines are more definite, and these drawings
don’t contain the same amount of detail as others, it’s still a natural
extension of the line drawings Lennon had been doing previously.
On a
more personal level, the new style of drawing also reflects the changes
he went through during his retirement from 1975 to 1980 when he took
time off to raise his new son. There’s a stillness to them indicative of
the changes he underwent transitioning from rock and roll star to
househusband and father. While Lennon will always be more remembered for his music than his
output as a visual artist, the work contained in this book gives us a
different view of him as a person and an artist.
They may not be the
most sophisticated pieces of art, but each of them reveals something of
his nature, whether his sardonic view of middle class values in the work
“Squares”, or his love for the simplicity of his domestic life through
the depictions of his family in the last years of his life. Most
impressive is how much he’s able to communicate with a few strokes of
his pen. It’s as if he were able to channel his passion or emotions
through this very narrow conduit and have them show up on the page where
we can all appreciate them.
![](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ScrvTdzfgoE/VTegwMq1ixI/AAAAAAAAs84/NdV9PYMNi-Y/s1600/jldraw3.jpg)
John Lennon: The Collected Artwork is a beautifully packaged
and presented book. The reproductions of his art are as good as those
you’d see in any collection of this kind and the accompanying text does a
good job of explaining their history and background. Lennon will always
be best known as a musician, but this collection of his artwork
provides a fascinating look into a different facet of an intelligent,
opinionated and original mind. That alone makes it worth owning.
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