Maximum Exposure

Right now, the public is our only criterion: You can aim for a small public, a medium public, but for meself, I like a large public. And I made my decision in art school, if I'm going to be an artist of whatever description; I want the maximum exposure, not just paint-your-little-pictures-in-the-attic-and-don't-show-them-to-anybody.

When I arrived in art school, there were lots of artsy-fartsy guys and girls, mainly guys, going round with paint on their jeans and looking just like artists. And they all had lots to talk about and knew all about every damn paintbrush, and they talked about aesthetics, but they all ended up being art teachers or Sunday painters. I got nothing from art school except for a lot of women, a lot of drink and the freedom to be at college and have fun. I enjoyed it like hell, but for art, I never learned a damn thing.

You've always had a unique, playful drawing style – just think of your book "In His Own Write" or the album cover and inner sleeve of Walls and Bridges or your immediately identifiable "Lennonesque" cartoons.
I did the Walls and Bridges drawings when I was 10 or 11. But I found at art school that they tried to knock it out of me. They tried to stop me from drawing how I draw naturally, which I wouldn't let them do. But I never developed it further than cartoons. Somebody once said that cartoonists are people with a good creative gift who are scared of failure as painters, so they make it comedic, My cartoons, to me, are like Japanese brush paintings – if you can't get it in one line, rip it up. Yoko got me into that notion a little when we met, and when she saw that I drew, she'd say, "That's how they do it in Japan, you don't have to make changes.… This is it!"

Yoko and I come from different kinds of backgrounds, but basically, we both need this communication. I'm not interested in small, elite groups following or kowtowing to me. I'm interested in communicating whatever it is I want to say or produce in the maximum possible way, and rock & roll is it, as far as I'm concerned. It's like that image of watching a giraffe going by the window. People are always just seeing little bits of it, but I try and see the whole, not just in my own life, but the whole universe, the whole game. That's what it's all about, isn't it? So whether I'm working with Paul or Yoko, it's all toward the same end, whatever that is – self-expression, communication or just being like a tree, flowering and withering and flowering and withering.

John Lennon from Rolling Stone Interview