Hyldest til John Lennon (Homage to John Lennon), Odense

Hyldest til John Lennon (Homage to John Lennon) is a sculpture by Danish artist Susanne Ussing, made in 1981, the year after Lennon was killed. It stands by the Amfiscenen open-air stage at Brandts Klædefabrik in central Odense. There is no likeness of Lennon: a figure of Yoko Ono holds a plate with a hole above an anti-war column.

A tribute without Lennon's face

The figure on top is the upper body of a woman who represents Yoko Ono, with one arm stretched out holding a square plate with a hole in the middle. She wears a beret, a military touch that the Om Odense local encyclopedia reads as a deliberate clash with the message below.

That message is on the stone column: "War is over if you want it", repeated four times, with a peace dove at the base. The plate refers to a 1966 idea of Yoko Ono's, a card with a hole to look at the sky through, and the Danish version of that phrase is part of the work.

Ussing, who lived from 1940 to 1998, trained as an architect as well as working as an artist and ceramicist.

From Strøget to Brandts

The sculpture began in Copenhagen, outside Jørgen Nørgaard's clothing shop on Strøget. Accounts of the next step differ. Om Odense says it was part of Copenhagen's "Kunst i City" art programme and came to Brandts in 1990 for the exhibition "Rockens billeder" (Images of Rock). A Fyens Stiftstidende summary instead links "Rockens billeder" to 1981 and says the work spent several years in front of the Nørgaard shop. Both agree on what came last: in 1992 Nørgaard and Ussing gave it to Odense Municipality, and it has stayed at Brandts Klædefabrik.

The plate that went missing

In autumn 2023 Mads Nørgaard, son of the donor, who died in 2020, noticed that the aluminium plate had vanished from the figure's hand. Without it, the raised arm looked uncomfortably like a Nazi salute. Nobody could say what had happened to the plate.

He contacted Brandts. Rikke From Larsen, the area manager there, tracked down Ussing's husband, Carsten Hoff, who still had the original measurements. That meant a copy in black oxidised aluminium could be made. No report confirms the new plate has been fitted, so if you visit, look at the hand: with the plate, the gesture makes sense again.

Other Lennon tributes in Europe are on the map and in the memorials list.