I'm an art lover.

I have a lot of great and important art in my house. Back in my interior design days, I worked with a gallery owner in Kansas City to acquire art for my corporate and residential clients. It is common in the art world when working with an interior designer to give them a small commission if they sell something. I never took the money. Instead, I gathered my commissions and traded that for great art.

I love everything I ever chose, mostly contemporary, colorful and large. I think that many people buy and hang art that is too small. Pieces get lost on a wall (plus they hang them too high) and make no impact in the design of a room. If you look at the great interior magazines such as Elle Decor, Architectural Digest or Interior Design, almost all artwork is really big and you study it. It doesn’t have to match anything. In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t. Art is very personal. You should buy what speaks to you either as a story or it sparks a memory or it just makes you feel good.

So now that I have put in a plug for large art, I want to tell you about a small piece that I have. It is hanging in my home in a small hallway on the only wall that is large enough to hold it.

Sometime in the 70’s, I was in Chicago, and I passed a gallery that was showing drawings by John Lennon. I think that most of us associate that name with the mega rock star with the Beatles. So I went into the gallery and fell in love with a piece named “Suitors” and bought it. I don’t remember that it was a whole of money but was a stretch for me at the time.

A chop signature is a traditional stamp, or seal, used in China, Japan, and Korea to authenticate documents and artwork in place of a handwritten signature. Typically hand-carved from stone, jade, or metal, these seals are pressed into a, usually red, viscous oil-based ink.

As the story goes, before John Lennon became famous as a musician, he attended the Liverpool College of Art in England for three years. He was known for drawing people with physical afflictions as well as including his offbeat humor.

He met Yoko Ono at a gallery showing of hers in 1966 in London. They were married in 1969. He produced 14 lithographs for the “Bag One” suite (the Lennon Estate). They were packaged in a white leather designer bag which you can now buy from a couple of sources such as Sotheby’s for a mere $7000.00. Each lithograph was printed in editions of 300. The prints celebrated his married life with Yoko Ono from the “Bed-in for Peace” in Amsterdam to his domestic bliss when he stayed home to care for their infant som, Sean. Eight of them were confiscated by the police for being too indecent.

The “Suitors” piece, which I have, is part of the suite. John said that men always wore masks when talking to women, and he believed that women had to see behind the mask to see the true person.

To promote John’s work after his death in 1980, Yoko decided to hand color some of the lithographs for which she was criticized. She didn’t want anyone else to do it after his death. She tried to color them in such a way that the color is not overwhelming, that it wouldn’t destroy the original touch. Obviously, mine is hand colored, which I love.

You can own pieces of art for many years and not really look at them. The other day, I was looking at a shelf of bric-a-brac in my home and noticed a sculpture piece that I have owned for at least 45 years and never really looked at.

It reminded me of the Lennon lithograph in that there are two figures (female) facing each other and engaged in a conversation with a single female figure off to the side facing forward. My interpretation is that this is a take on the cruelty of women who gossip about someone while the lone person is off to the side and not invited into the conversation. I would love to know what the artist intended. While there is not a real relationship between the two pieces of art, the composition and the meanness that is expressed in both. It’s a good reminder to not talk about anyone in a mean way.

Cheers to having fresh laundry,

~LL