The year was 1966 and Beatlemania was at an all-time high. The Beatles had traveled to Japan on tour to play five nights of concerts at the Budokan arena in Tokyo from June 29 to July 3. Due to the frenzy and mobs surrounding the four musicians, the Japanese authorities decided to keep them sequestered in their presidential suite at the Hilton Hotel and then securely shuttled to the concert hall.
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During the approximately 100 hours they spent in their Tokyo hotel suite, the four Beatles painted what is their only extant artwork made collectively. Over two nights, they created the painting, with each member of the group working on a quadrant of Japanese art paper using oil paint and watercolors.
"They'd stop [painting], go and do a concert, then it was “Let's go back to the picture!”’ said Robert Whitaker, a photographer who was on tour with The Beatles. "I never saw them calmer or more contented than at this time."
The colorful abstraction is unique because of its individual paintings by each Beatle but also as a whole. Powered by a melange of bright colors, geometric shapes and swirling patterns, the spirited artwork offers an intriguing look at The Beatles' artistic inclinations. However, it also works cohesively as one painting, with all members working with a color scheme dominated by reds and oranges offset by black or navy outlines. In a circle in the center of the work, where they had put down a lamp, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon signed their names.
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After it was finished, the untitled painting was given to Tetsusaburo Shimoyama, the chairman of the official Beatles fan club in Tokyo. It wasn't until the 1980s that a Japanese journalist started calling the painting Images of a Woman because he saw female genitalia in Paul McCartney's quadrant. The work was auctioned in Japan in 1989 and then traveled to New York in 2012, where it sold at Philip Weiss Auctions for $155,250.
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Now, the painting will be offered again at Christie's 'Exceptional Sale' on February 1, 2024 in New York with an estimate of $400,000-600,000. Although there is photographic evidence of the Beatles working on other artworks, this is the only known surviving painting. The auction lot is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from Tracks UK and a hardcopy of Robert Whitaker's book, Eight Days a Week: Inside The Beatles' Final World Tour.
