We know Paul McCartney as a Beatle, a member of Wings, and a solo artist. But do you know him as a painter? In 1999, many fans learned about McCartney’s hobby for the first time. A selection of his paintings was put on display at the Kunstforum Lyz gallery in Germany.
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This occurred just a month after John Lennon’s prints were displayed as a permanent collection at the Mathew Street Gallery in Liverpool. Lennon’s art background was well known; he started out in art school before forming the Beatles. However, until around May 1999, McCartney’s painting remained a relatively unknown endeavor. That’s mostly because he didn’t start painting until 1982.
“Someone said life begins at forty, and I wanted to begin, but nothing began,” McCartney said at the time, per a report from Rolling Stone. “I had this problem … that ‘I don’t paint.’”
According to the report, Paul McCartney was contacted by Wolfgang Suttner, a manager of German arts and cultural events. Suttner wrote to McCartney and asked to see his paintings.
“Many [people] did in fact approach me and said they were willing to put on an exhibition, but they hadn’t seen the paintings,” McCartney said. “Wolfgang was the first one who came up and said, ‘I’d like to look at the pictures and examine them.’”
Paul McCartney’s “Hobby” Paintings Are Put On Display in a German Gallery
The exhibition featured 16 of Paul McCartney’s more than 600 paintings. He had been painting steadily since 1982 and had built up quite a collection. One painting in particular was titled “Bowie Spewing.” It was indeed an abstract portrait of David Bowie throwing up, painted in 1990.
However, according to critical reviews of the piece, it was not particularly highly regarded by the art community. In 2002, art critic Matthew Collings reported on rock star art for Q magazine. He picked “Bowie Spewing” out of a lineup.
“The energetic mark making is a good thing, but everything else about it is bad,” Collings wrote. “The horrible colors, the drawing, the banal arrangement, the half-arsed surreal eye in the middle with a load of messy blobs coming off it… all empty attitude.”
David Bowie, however, took the painting with humor. As he told Belgian magazine Humo, “Paul sent me a picture of the painting, together with the question if I would mind the title of it. I answered ‘Of course not, but what a coincidence, I am currently working on a song that’s called ‘McCartney S–ts.’”
Featured Image by Achim Scheidemann/picture alliance via Getty Images
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