John Lennon's sketches and manuscripts up for sale
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E-mail CNTV, May 31, 2014
A collection of John Lennon's original handwritten manuscripts, sketches and drawings is going up for auction at Sotheby's in New York next week. The former Beatle, who was shot dead in 1980, produced the pieces for his books, "In His Own Write" and "A Spaniard in the Works".
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A collection of John Lennon's original handwritten manuscripts, sketches and drawings is going up for auction at Sotheby's in New York next week. |
Whimsical drawings, poetry and prose.
It's the largest private collection of John Lennon's work ever to come to the market.
"This is the first time this artwork, the original artwork, has been seen in the United States, and in fact it's very rarely, if ever, been seen in public." Richard Austin, Head of Books & Titles of Sotheby's New york said.
One of the highlights is a cartoon of a boy with six birds that appeared in "A Spaniard in the Works," published in 1965.
It has a pre-sale estimate of 12 to 15 thousand US dollars.
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A collection of John Lennon's original handwritten manuscripts, sketches and drawings is going up for auction at Sotheby's in New York next week. |
"That was actually used as the cover for the single 'Free as a Bird,' which was the last full Beatles release that was taken from an earlier John Lennon recording that the surviving Beatles worked on. So that is one of the few works that sort of bridged between Lennon as an artist separately and the Beatles." Richard Austin said.
A nine-page manuscript, a Sherlock Holmes parody called "The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield," is estimated to fetch 50 to 70 thousand dollars.
Also up for auction is "The Fat Budgie," one of Lennon's many nonsensical poems.
Lennon's comical nature and biting wit are well known through his many interviews.
Most of these sketches and writings are well documented - but seeing them in the flesh gives an even greater insight into the mind of one of the 20th century's biggest cultural icons.
"There's also just a lot of very funny sketches, you really see Lennon's humor coming through in a lot of the artwork. He loved to draw these sorts of grotesque, fantastic characters, and you see a lot of those on display on the walls as well. It's something that when you go through, everyone seems to crack a smile when they start looking at the drawings." Richard Austin said.
The auction is timed to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Lennon's "In His Own Write". It's also 50 years since the Beatles made their historic first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in the US.
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