"GimmeSome Truth: The Artwork of John Lennon," may have been the title of lastweekend's Lennon exhibition in New York, but fans and collectors who paidthousands of dollars for prints of the late Beatle's work may have purchased something that is not the truth at all.

Some of the drawings Yoko Ono presented at the show in honorof Lennon's 71st birthday and sold as "lithographs, serigraphs, and copperetchings hand printed from the original drawings" for thousands of dollars have been allegedlyrecomposed and colored by Ono, essentially cut-and-paste mashups of Lennon themes rather than Lennon prints.Florida-based Gary Arseneau, who calls himself an "artist, creator of originallithographs, scholar, and author" sent ARTINFO an email accusing Ono ofaltering Lennon's pieces.

"The so-called 'Artwork of John Lennon' being offered forsale in SoHo this weekend was actually posthumously forged in color and newcompositions, each part of bogus editions with counterfeit John Lennon chopmark/signatures," wrote Arsenau in the email.

Lennon, who was astudent at the Liverpool College of Art before Beatlemania hit, created threebooks of his writings and illustrations before his death — "ASpaniard in the Works" (1965), "In His Own Write" (1964), and the posthumouslypublished "Skywriting by Word of Mouth" (1986).

Feeling thatLennon's art should get more attention, Ono began issuing limited-editionprints of his drawings for sale in the mid-'80s, exhibiting them around theworld. Each of the reproductions contains what Ono says is Lennon's chop mark (the red stamp artists mark their work with in Japan), an embossed Lennon signature, and Ono's real signature. Ono attracted criticism over the years for inserting color into Lennon'soriginal black-and-white illustrations.

Ono has denied past theallegations that Lennon's artwork was misrepresented in the past. Afterindividuals Ono called "professional people" suggested adding color to the latemusician's drawings so that galleries were more likely to hang his work intheir windows, Ono said, "OK, at least let me color it because John probablywould not have minded it if I did it," according to Boulder Weekly in 2010.

Of the piecesexhibited in last weekend's exhibition, four appear to have been colored andrecomposed. "Bag One," part of series Lennon presented to Ono as a wedding giftin 1969, which is listed at $8,000, was unaltered, but printed three times ineditions of 300, 5,000, and 3,000, thereby effectively negating the notion of"limited-edition." Hues of red, blue, green, yellow, and orange were added to"Come Together," a '60s illustration originally published in black-and-white inthe book "In His Own Write." That piece is listed at $5,000. Another reproduction,"Crabs Crabbing," which sells for $1,700, takes a whale from one of his book illustrations, adding it to a beachscene.

The last — and most aggressively interpolated — work is "Herd Moving," which goes for $5,000 framed and is advertised as having been created for Sean Lennon, the singer's son. This piece takes a giraffe and a rhinofrom "In His Own Write" and multiplies them, flips them, and colors them, placingthree of each figure in a new work also filled with snakes copied from another composition, three identical elephants (evidently taken from yet another composition), and a monkey swinging from a tree. Essentially, it is a whole new artwork.

Rudy Siegel, aproducer with the company that helps organize the Lennonexhibitions, dismissed Arseneau's theories. "He's been chasing this exhibit around for thelast 10 years, and he says the same rhetoric about some other art work," Siegeltold ARTINFO.

Siegel defendedOno. "Yoko has taken the originals and she has added color, but all the lines,and all the drawings are by John," he said. "John has a lot ofthose characters that he drew over the years.... I am surethose characters were drawn in totality. Yoko has been in the art world for 60or 70 years, do you really think Yoko is going to perpetrate a fraud?"

Bag One Arts, thecompany that represents the Lennon reproductions, told ARTINFO that nobody wasavailable at press time to respond to inquiries.

Arseneau remainsadamant that the artworks should not be sold under Lennon's name. "The dead don't create artwork, much less sign...," wroteArseneau. "Yoko Ono has no shame."