{"id":33164,"date":"2021-04-09T00:19:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T16:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londonartsgroup.com\/?p=33164"},"modified":"2023-05-24T01:22:57","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T17:22:57","slug":"come-together-john-lennons-illegal-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londonartsgroup.com\/come-together-john-lennons-illegal-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Come Together: John Lennon’s illegal art"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Confiscated in a Scotland Yard raid, John Lennon\u2019s erotic drawings spent only a single day on display in London. Fifty years on, the explicit lithographs made by the Beatle at his creative and controversial peak are highly desirable collectors\u2019 pieces<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Rob Crossan | 2 March 2020<\/h5>\n

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\"\"Most of the famous couples of history \u2013 Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Pat and Dick Nixon \u2013 have left it to our imaginations to envision them joined in the act of love. But here, for the first time, a pair of famous lovers actually shows us how they express their love for one another.\u2019<\/p>\n

So ran the introduction to a feature in the March 1970 issue of the short-lived Avant-Garde magazine. The magazine was taking quite a risk by publishing the set of lithographs it was describing. Not from a commercial perspective \u2013 there were certainly no shortage of people who were curious to see erotic drawings sketched by John Lennon of himself and his wife Yoko Ono on their honeymoon.<\/p>\n

The peril came from Scotland Yard; these drawings were considered so obscene that not only had they been removed from a London gallery by the Met two months earlier, but they would also go on to be the basis of a court case that eventually drew on the content of the Queen\u2019s art collection.<\/p>\n

By the beginning of 1970 the Beatles were, to the outside world at least, still a functioning band. Paul McCartney\u2019s public announcement of the break-up of the group was still four months away. But, in reality, the former Fab Four were already de facto solo artists.<\/p>\n

While Ringo Starr began shooting movies with Peter Sellers, McCartney took sanctuary on his Scottish farm and George Harrison recorded a mammoth triple album solo project, Lennon was, at this point, by far the highest-profile musician in the country. Fresh from his two-week-long Bed-Ins for Peace in Montreal and Amsterdam, and having just scored a worldwide hit with Give Peace a Chance, Lennon had no intention of entering the 70s quietly.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps I\u2019ll get interested in drawing and painting again,\u201d John said in an interview at the end of 1969. \u201cYou can\u2019t stand still and I think I\u2019ve been standing still for a bit too long.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Anthony
Anthony Fawcett. John and Yoko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was Anthony Fawcett, Lennon and Ono\u2019s assistant at the time, who first suggested that lithography could be a new creative avenue. At first Lennon\u2019s response was ambivalent; the Beatle preferred the spontaneity of drawing cartoons straight onto paper. But Fawcett managed to find a solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI devised a way to shortcut the complicated procedure of working directly onto stone blocks or zinc plates,\u201d he later recalled. \u201cBy using specially treated \u2018litho paper\u2019, which I had sent out to his house along with an array of suitable brushes, litho ink, and crayons, John would be able to draw or paint in his usual manner. The images could later be transferred from the paper onto sensitized zinc plates by means of an advanced technical process, and the lithographs printed in the traditional way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The impressionistic results were created by Lennon in two phases. The first, drawn around the time of his wedding to Ono in Gibraltar and their subsequent holiday in Paris, were fairly simple depictions of the couple together. The second set, drawn during their Bed-Ins were far more skillfully crafted, and a lot more intimate, depicting both of them naked in various love-making positions.<\/p>\n

Three thousand individual prints were made up, each signed by Lennon, and 300 complete sets of the 14 lithographs were packaged in white leather bags emblazoned with the words Bag One in black capitals. The lithographs could be bought for \u00a340 each or a whopping \u00a3550 for the set.<\/p>\n