John Lennon retrospective opens in Paris at Cite de la Musique
Canadian Press
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.html?id=2c3cf58b-fe92-406a-8ddb-bbe5f1d83ec0PARIS (AP) - A solitary white piano at a John Lennon retrospective invites visitors to play the song Imagine.
Curator Emma Lavigne said it was a deliberate effort to make people revisit the song that otherwise "you might hear in a supermarket, doing your shopping." "The message is still there. This song is still relevant," she said. "I wanted the exhibition to be as alive as possible, so we don't say to ourselves 'he (Lennon) is in a museum.' Because I think he would have hated that."
John Lennon, Unfinished Music is at Paris' Cite de la Musique for the next eight months.
The exhibition is divided into two floors, one for Lennon's childhood and the Beatle years and the other - in white-themed rooms - for the latter period when he was with Yoko Ono.
Ono, Lennon's widow, lent around 90 per cent of the hundreds of exhibits that make up the show, leaving her with "holes in her apartment," Lavigne said.
A 1966 pink-yellow-red Andy Warhol of Lennon, which Lavigne said usually hangs over Ono's fireplace at her New York City apartment, is exhibited above a standup Steinway that Lennon played when composing Double Fantasy.
Other gems: Lennon's black 1963 Fender Telecaster with a worn fingerboard and rusty pickups; collages he made for Ringo Starr and George Harrison; a 10-minute film of a silent Central Park gathering by crowds mourning Lennon's death; and a copy of Lennon's original Imagine, three verses written on New York Hilton letterhead.
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