Robert Morgan himself, an 82 -year -old American painter based in Venice for half a century, already says that he is not famous and takes off importance, but he has crossed with others that were. For example, his friend Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Prize in 1987, who dedicated his beautiful and famous book about Venice, Water brand (Siruela). He also related to Peggy Guggenheim, when he arrived in the city in 1973. But his less known story, and perhaps the most curious, is that of his fleeting contact with John Lennon, of which he was neighbor for two years in New York, and what happened on the day he was killed at the entrance of his home, on December 8, 1980. Because it is the story of a renunciation, of the responsibility of the liability of the liability of the liability and a photo historical, but never did. Morgan preferred not to do it: he looked at the window when he heard the shots and saw the whole scene, then he took his camera, but was unable to press the button. “I saw John, still alive, moving on the floor, but I realized that I couldn’t take that photo to a person who is dying, it didn’t seem fair to me,” he recalls. So he didn’t. He left the camera and decided that, instead of taking a picture, he would make a picture.
“I have never regretted,” he says. And that did not sell the painting either. There is, in his study in Venice, in the Dorsoduro neighborhood. 20 years ago he offered to show him to Yoko Ono, but he was not interested. Morgan, who has given his testimony in the last documentary dedicated to the musician, Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decadereleased in April in the United Kingdom, is aware that in today’s world, where everything is recorded, photography and registered, it is an even more unusual decision, but it says that whenever this story has told everyone, everyone believes that it did the right thing. “It was the most decent, they tell me,” although he admits that others then add that he would have earned a lot of money. “I’m not rich or famous, but it’s fine,” he concludes.
Looking back, Morgan evokes the lost normality of famous personalities. He lived with his first wife at Majestic, 115 Central Park West, 12g Apartment. Their windows gave 72nd street and had Central Park and the southern facade of the Dakota building, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived. The property was famous for being the scene of the film The devil seedfrom Polanski, and they lived in it more famous. For example, it was normal to cross with Leonard Bernstein, Lauren Bacall, Mia Farrow and Zero Mostel, who, as Morgan, lived in Majestic. “John was kind and cordial with the people who approached to greet him when he walked through the neighborhood,” he recalls. The murderer himself, Mark David Chapman, was sometimes at the door of the building with other fans. “That day everything changed,” Morgan recalls. After the murder spread the fear, the celebrities began to go with bodyguards, the fans could not approach.
On the night of the attack, Morgan and his wife sat to watch the news of TV at eleven o’clock at night. In New York there is a lot of noise, but they still clearly listened to a series of strong detonations. “I am a hunter, and I realized that they were shots,” he says. As he appears to the window of his study, he saw a black limousine stopped in front of the Dakota building, and a man lying on the floor next to the open door. “I recognized John, with his round glasses, he wore cowboy boots.” The car door closed, the vehicle turned back and went to Columbus Avenue, where there was always a police patrol, which reached five minutes. Morgan says that agents with the guns were lowered in his hand. He had already taken the camera he had at the study table, a Nikkormat the telephoto with which he used to take photos from the window. “I could see with her John’s face, it was that of a dying.
His work was to paint, and got to work at the time. He started drawing, setting the image of what he was seeing through the window. Meanwhile, an ambulance did not arrive and five agents carefully lifted Lennon and took him to the police car. Morgan remembers that they placed it in the back seat, closed the doors and went at full speed to the Roosevelt hospital. It is the scene that he painted at that time, maintaining the distance, to record a historical moment, as if it were the painter of a previous century that represented a battle or a coronation, before the invention of photography. Morgan tells that the murderer, Mark David Chapman, had delivered in the goal of the building, but until they found him the police were looking for him glued to the walls of the portal with the guns in his hand, and meanwhile they could not help Lennon. They did it later.
This painting is a rarity in Morgan’s work, which is above all landscape and also author of dead portraits and natures. For half a century it has painted corners of Venice and says that it does not get tired, it always finds a new angle that surprises you. “I like light, which changes continuously, light in Venice falls into very beautiful things,” he says. His favorite area is where he has lived more years, in Zattere, the Giudecca channel, where he wandered with Brodsky. “I don’t get tired of anything, I’m always happy to see the sun, life for me is a delight, every moment.” Keep going to the study every day to paint what you see and what you are. “Just look through the window,” he says. Like that sad day of 1980.