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Adrian Henri
The Entry of Christ into Liverpool
About the Artist
Who’s Who
The figures, from left to right: William Burroughs; Mark Rushton (a friend and student of Adrian Henri’s at Manchester Art College); Stanley Dobbin (a printmaker from Manchester) and his wife Drena; a skeleton (no one in particular); Heather Holden (the love of Adrian Henri’s life in the early 1960s), Phillip Jones Griffiths with camera (a school friend of Adrian's best known for his photographs done in Vietnam); Norman Stevens R. A. (painter); Pete Brown (beat generation jazz-poet who later wrote lyrics for the band Cream); The Beatles; Norman Rowe (artist); Charlie Mingus (jazz bass player wearing a highly decorated robe); George Melly (singer and writer) and his wife Diana; Don McKinlay (Liverpool artist); Pete McCarroll (painter) and his wife Trixi.
In the rear is James Ensor playing the part of Christ. In front of him is Alfred Jarry riding a bicycle. In front of Jarry is the rotund figure Pere Ubu, Jarry’s creation. The little girl in the foreground is Don McKinlay’s daughter Sheena; Sam Walsh (painter); Pat Dawson (a friend of Henri’s wife, Joyce Henri); Mike Wenblatt (hairdresser and jazz musician); Roger McCough (poet); Arthur Dooley (sculptor); John Gorman (later member of Scaffold); Charlie Parker (jazz musician); Carol Mazanovitz (the artist’s sweetheart and one time girlfriend of Stuart Sutcliffe); Henry Graham (painter/poet); Mike Evans (musician/poet) and his girlfriend Josie.
None of these figures were painted from life. Instead, Henri painted a mental image that he had of each person wearing the particular clothes that he strongly associated with each individual.
