Newly Unearthed John Lennon Drawings Make Their Public Debut
Some 240 rediscovered drawings by John Lennon are being revealed to the public for the first time in Liverpool. The rare gems were made in the 1960s for an animated Beatles music video.
The trove of colorful drawings were produced in collaboration with artist Stephen Verona, and each feature a word from the Beatles’ 1964 hit “I Feel Fine.” Sequenced together, these cells were used to make a short, two-minute lyric video called “She Said So.” It has been described as the very first music video.
The drawings recently surfaced at auction in London, where they were discovered by Joseph Robert O’Donnell, a pop culture memorabilia expert who immediately grasped their significance. Today, they are unveiled as part of a temporary, three-month display at the Liverpool Beatles Museum.
Some six decades ago, the artworks emerged almost by accident. “We started doodling,” Verona once recalled, of the time he met Lennon in a London club and the pair spontaneously began drawing together, straight onto the paper tablecloth.
“I suggested making a film from them,” Verona recalled. Lennon later met the artist in New York, where they sat in his kitchen, smoked, and colored in cartoon images designed by Verona.
The resulting film would have a huge cultural impact, being screened at international film festivals and at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It won several awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle. The original film reel is kept at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., but Verona held on to the drawings themselves.
Source: news.artnet.com/Jo Lawson-Tancred European News Reporter
