By Margaret Regan JOHN LENNON MAY have been one of the most successful rock-and-rollers of all time but, says Yoko Ono, the snooty art world never embraced his visual work. "He was too famous as a musician," Ono said by telephone recently from her apartment in the venerable old Dakota in New York City. "People were prejudiced about people doing work in different media. It was initially very difficult to convince people. The art world has its prejudices." Ono speaks in a quiet voice. She thinks the art world's dismissal of Lennon's pen-and-ink sketches is changing. After all, the Museum of Modern Art, that arbiter of what's hot and what's not, bought up a lithographic edition of Lennon's "Bag One" drawings made to commemorate the couple's wedding, honeymoon and famous "bed-in" for peace in Amsterdam. And, she says, the museum of the City of Bremen, Germany, whose repository of works on paper includes such artists as Matisse and Picasso, gave Lennon's work a one-man show last summer. But a more important part of Ono's strategy to beef up Lennon's minor art reputation is the traveling show of reproductions of his sketches that has been circulating regularly around the country for about 10 years. A Tribute to the Art of John Lennon runs at the Tucson Mall January 18 through 21. The mall? Well, as John might say, power to the people. The mall, says Ono, bypasses the gallery system and introduces Lennon's art to people who might otherwise never see it. "John is still considered a black sheep in the art world," Ono says. "He was always an outsider. And that's beautiful. He was never influenced by art critics, so there's a pure, untouched quality to his drawings." Part of the problem with this show, though, which an art critic feels duty-bound to point out, is that much of what's on display is essentially very expensive posters of Lennon's drawings, with added-on colors selected by his widow. Visitors to the mall show will see only five original drawings, each one commanding a price of $40,000. Buyers should beware that the rest of the pictures, many of them whimsical, even charming, images of John with his wife and son, are reproductions, produced after his death in lithograph and serigraph (silkscreen) by hired artisans. They just don't count as his artwork. They are "limited edition prints," hand-pulled in quantities of 300 and signed by Ono. (Prices for these are $200 to $6,000.) Lennon commissioned lithographs of the "Bag One" portfolio during his lifetime and signed them himself. (Their price tag is $3,000 to $12,000.) Lennon himself made only one lithograph in his life that she knows of, Ono says. "It's hanging in my apartment. It's a portrait of me that was a birthday present. He was commuting to the (art) studio every night. The morning of my birthday he brought it out. It was beautiful, in color." Ono defends her decision to make reproductions of her late husband's work. "It's beautiful, great work," she says. "It shouldn't be stuck in my closet." And the colors she authorized, she says, reflect "a relaxed attitude about art. It's the kind of thing I learned from John. He'd say, 'Let's color it, wink, wink.' " Art brought the couple together, Yoko says, recalling the now-famous story of how Lennon came to her installation show at a gallery in London. "When I met him, it was more like an artist/artist kind of thing. Our conversations were about Magritte and Picasso. He was doing artwork before he was doing rock and roll. Even before he went to the Liverpool Art Institute, he was drawing. For him it was just like a security blanket. He would sit and play the guitar or sit and draw...He would show me his drawings and say, 'What do you think?' " Lennon, who especially loved Magritte and Van Gogh, destroyed a lot of his own drawings as he went along, Ono says, knowing that fans would prize even the worst of his work. "He was so famous, he didn't want anything lying around that wasn't high-quality." He showed in galleries just a bit during his lifetime, Ono says, but most of the time gallery owners responded to him as a Beatle. "They would say, 'Well, we're promoting this other young artist, but maybe John can come to the opening and play the guitar and we'll put a few of his works in a side room.' He was proud enough to say no." Nowadays, Lennon's warm images of his family life post-Beatles in the Dakota have something to say to a troubled world, Ono believes. "The family system and its values were very important to him. Nowadays the family is falling apart. In schools the majority of children have divorced parents. They're just a reminder about peace and love and the family. People have a nostalgia for that...And there's still a sense of humor about the art: It makes people feel happy." Ono says she thought long and hard before agreeing to the release of the new Beatles song, "Free as a Bird," recorded by the three remaining Beatles over a track laid down by Lennon. But her thinking about the posthumous collaboration was similar to her thoughts about reprinting Lennon's artwork. "He might not have been comfortable with it (the song) if he was here. He might have wanted to sing it over. We cannot assume what he would have done. But it's all we can do now. I had to go through a soul search, knowing what the Beatles meant in the world. It's a strange age. People are depressed. There's street violence. For the Beatles to come back and sing, and make things a bit happier, why not?" Working class heroes with not much change in their pockets, take note: A copy of a song is a heckuva lot cheaper than a limited edition print. Almost as free as a bird, you might say. A Tribute to the Art of John Lennon runs January 18 through 21 at the Tucson Mall, 4500 N. Oracle Road. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. For more information call 293-7330.

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