"Come Together," the traveling exhibit of John Lennon's artwork coming to the Rhode Island Convention Center next weekend, puts originals and reproductions of a wide range of the late Beatle's visual art in one place: the Bag One drawings of the late '60s, sketches of life at the Dakota with his young son Sean, even Beatle and solo lyrics in manuscript form.
Lennon's artwork was last seen in Rhode Island in 1997, and this show has a pair of elements not seen in previous Lennon shows in these parts.
One is a suite titled "Real Love" -- a batch of drawings that Lennon did for, and in some cases with, Sean in the last year of Lennon's life.
The other is color -- in some of Lennon's older drawings and in the "Real Love" section.
Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, says that the addition of color wasn't her idea but a marketing decision.
"The thing is, the people who were making the program, they came up with a colored drawing," Ono says from her home in New York, "and I said, 'Why did you do that?' I thought it was sacrilegious.
"But they said, 'If we don't do that, they won't put it in a shop window.' So I said, 'Okay, let me color it.' "
She hired a children's-book colorist for the "Real Love" drawings: "I thought that was much better."
While Lennon and Ono were partners in life, she says they didn't feed off each other artistically. "Both of us were fiercely independent people, as artists.
"Of course we were living together, so in some ways we were inspired and stimulated [by each other], but we didn't change styles or anything. He changed his style when he went to Japan, and adopted some Oriental brush strokes. That was an experiment that he did, and did beautifully, but it had nothing to do with me."
Some of the works Lennon made in Japan will be part of the Providence show.
Lukewarm critics
In 1997, Journal art critic Bill Van Siclen said of Lennon's works, "They're pleasant enough, but I would have advised him to stick to his day job, writing great rock 'n' roll songs."
Today, after looking at the new drawings, Van Siclen was mildly impressed with them, agreeing that they're children's book-worthy. But his opinion remains essentially unchanged: "I love John Lennon, but I can't say that's great art."
Lennon's fame as a Beatle probably helped and hindered his career as an artist. His art certainly got a look from more people, but in the eyes of many in the art world, he was a dilettante who never fit in.
In the press materials for this exhibit, Ono says, "In hindsight, that was fortunate, in the sense that it allowed his works to maintain their purity, free from comments and 'suggestions' by critics and dealers. He maintained his unique style, untouched by the trends."
Critics have had a better opinion of Lennon's visual art in the past few years. Ono says, though, that she doesn't know, or for that matter much care, whether it's due to a new generation of critics or an aesthetic reappraisal: "I don't know whether it's from the same critics or not. We just never cared.
"His artwork is critically acclaimed in a sense that a collection of John's work is now in the Museum of Modern Art, if that's any kind of success. . . . An artist should not take critics' words seriously."
Ono's re-emergence
Earlier this year, Ono reemerged as a singer, with a record of various dance remixes of "Walking on Thin Ice," the song Lennon and Ono were working on the night Lennon was shot in 1980. The remix became a club hit for the 70-year-old Ono, which was as much a surprise to her as to anyone else.
"I didn't do it [myself]. Some people wanted to do it, and I said okay. But I did a new voice on it, because the old one was lost or something."
The Lennon show is in the lobby of the Rhode Island Convention Center, at 1 Sabin St. in downtown Providence. The works will be for sale, and a $2 donation will be asked at the door. Money raised will benefit Adopt-a-Classroom, which provides resources and materials for teachers and students.
Hours are Friday 5-9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m. and next Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Call 458-6000 for more information.
