Lennon and Picasso compared at Trial

Allegedly obscene drawings by John Lennon were compared in court yesterday with a Picasso print. The print was found by police in a drawer at an art gallery where the Lennon lithographs were on display and for sale.

It was produced at Marlborough of 1 Street Magistrates’ Court ‘where Mr Eugene Schuster, the art gallery director, pled not guilty to exhibiting eight indecent prints “to the. annoyance of passengers,” under a 130-year-old law.

Detective-Inspector Frederick Luff, who led the raid on the art gallery, said that “within the meaning of the Obscene Publications Act,” he did not regard the Picasso as obscene. He had not seized it.

The officer was asked to look at Picasso pictures in an exhibition catalogue.

David Napley, defending, asked him which of these was in any, sense different from Lennon’s pictures ‘ln terms of current forms of decency?’
The magistrate waived prosecution ‘objections to the question

Mr Napley added that, “not to put too fine a point on it, the Picassos depicted oral intercourse.”

Detective-Inspector Luff agreed that that he objected to one of Lennon’s pictures because it showed the self same thing.

The case was adjourned until April 27.

 

Glasgow Herald,  2 April 1970

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