Drawn by John: Lennon’s whimsical art on display in Las Vegas

Thursday, May 10, 2001 | 9:17 a.m.

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John Lennon's first best friend was not a musician, at least not an accomplished or even interested one.

Stuart Sutcliffe was a gifted artist Lennon met at Liverpool Art College. As the legend goes, Sutcliffe was coerced into using money he won in an art contest to buy a bass guitar he couldn't play to fill out the band that would become the Beatles.

But Sutcliffe was as adept with the paintbrush as he was clumsy with the Hofner he clutched onstage. And Lennon loved him.

Lennon's last best friend and the love of his life was also not a musician, at least not in the traditional sense. But avant-garde art pioneer Yoko Ono, who Lennon met at a London art show in 1966, would soon become his primary collaborator on musical, artistic and humanitarian efforts.

Though Ono has recorded a large body of music, much of it with Lennon between 1968 and his death in 1980, it has been said she is as big in the world of art as he was in rock 'n' roll.

It is the art of Lennon, sketches instantly recognizable to anyone who has studied his biography, that Ono brings to Las Vegas in "Real Love," a vast collection of Lennon's inherently revealing artwork.

The exhibit of more than 100 pieces, all chosen by Ono, will be on display and on sale Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Borders Books & Music on North Rainbow Boulevard. A $2 fee at the door is being requested by event organizers to help support Operation Smile, a nonprofit group that helps provide reconstructive surgery and health care to children and young adults in impoverished countries, as well as in the United States.

Lennon's pieces are fittingly childlike in composition, yet frequently address adult themes. "Embrace" shows Lennon and Ono, their nudity somewhat obscured, in an embrace. "Two Virgins" is a sketch similar to the couple's infamous naked album cover from 1969. The influence of young Sean Lennon is apparent in many of the pieces on display this weekend, including the portrait "Beautiful Boy" and the collection titled simply "The Drawings for Sean," filled with sketches of monkeys, horses, fish and frogs.

In an interview recorded for KKLZ 96.3-FM with the city's foremost Lennon (and Beatles) scholar, Dennis Mitchell, who hosts the long-running "Breakfast With the Beatles" morning program each Sunday, Ono spoke both analytically and nostalgically of Lennon's work.

"You can see the minimalism is the best aspect of it," the 68-year-old Ono said. "Most people think it's very simplistic, but it's not that easy to express things as simply as he does. He's a very professional artist, put it that way, in addition to being kind of unique as well."

Though acclaimed for her experimental and conceptual visual art, Ono said she never served as a tutor for Lennon, who had already unveiled an artistic capacity in his mid-60s books "In His Own Write," and "A Spaniard In The Works."

"I think he had his own kind of agenda and direction in art," she said. "And I really respect that, because when I came into the picture, already he was doing beautiful, beautiful drawings that you see in the early books that he published. He was a very accomplished artist, actually, but we didn't clash because we were coming from very different directions. We kind of just admired each other's work.

"People do ask, 'Did you influence him?' But I didn't influence him on anything. He did it all on his own."

Anyone inclined to buy a Lennon original should be willing to pay at least $4,000 and up to $18,000 for the pieces on sale this weekend. Reproductions start at $100.

Of particular interest to Lennon fans is that much of the work is from Lennon's reclusive period of 1975-1980, when he retreated from the public eye to tend to young Sean. Lennon released no music during that period and expressed himself artistically almost solely through drawings.

It is that intimacy Ono wishes to share in "Real Love."

" 'Real Love' was a ballad between John and Sean, father and son, a beautiful thing that was going on. John would never have thought of creating those images, probably, unless Sean was around," Ono said. "And John was very proud about the fact that Sean was around, that he could communicate with his son in a very special way."

Fatherhood tempered the oft-terse Lennon, which is evident in his artwork.

"I think John was in a kind of bliss, of having Sean because we were trying to have a child for a long time and we were failing on that end (Ono's first pregnancy with Lennon ended in miscarriage) and finally we had this baby," Ono said. "John was totally happy about that. I think that is the thing that is reflected. In the '60s, his mood was kind of depressed ... more like black humor."

Bob Tracy, the associate dean of the College of Fine Arts at UNLV and a 20th-century art historian, says the attention paid to Lennon's art is compounded because of his musical lineage. But the pieces still have merit.

"I think him being a member of the Beatles and having influenced pop culture worldwide helps," Tracy said. "He was a major voice in history, and a voice like his is not just relegated to one area. Leonardo and Michaelangelo were both multidimensional and I think (Lennon's) work portends well for the 21st century."

Tracy says Lennon's artistic freedom was enhanced by his chosen method of expression.

"Drawing is a much less-formal exercise than painting or sculpture," he said. "It's more free and open. And there is so much emphasis on relationships, sexual concepts and the reality of the sexual revolution.

"He was a major voice in the cry for freedom."

If there is a similarity in Lennon's art and his music, it would be that his lyrics were sometimes mental doodles. Often, seemingly nonsensical phrases such as, "Yellow matter custard/dripping from a dead dog's eye" crept into Lennon-penned classics. His drawings appear equally free-form, but as a serious artist Lennon struggled to shed his rock 'n' roll image. It didn't help that some of Lennon's early work on display in London was seized by police because of its erotic content.

"He was going around, thinking about showing his drawings, but it was being confiscated at the time," Ono said. "We did a show in New York and and he was being asked, 'Why don't you play your guitar at our opening?' or something silly like that. It was humiliating, really."

But as with all of his efforts, Lennon hoped his drawings would someday reach the masses.

"He was wanting to show his drawings," Ono said. "That's for sure."