Don Van Vliet Artwork

"Abstract Composition" Inscribed "to LUCAS from Don NY GREAT House" Signed "VV 82" Drawing measures 10 3/4" x 13 3/4" In early November 1982, Don Van Vliet came to NYC for a few days to do interviews and make his first promotional appearance on the David Letterman show for our latest (and sadly our final) album "Ice Cream for Crow", which had been released in September 1982 on Virgin/Epic in the US. The night before his legendary appearance on the Letterman show on Nov. 11th, he visited me in my West Village apartment, and produced this intense abstract composition, which he inscribed to me that evening. Don almost always carried a sketch pad and various colored markers and pencils with him (sometimes in a brown paper grocery bag), and would sketch away prodigiously when the spirit moved him. The elongated phallic-shaped coffee stain was a deliberate flourish added to the composition, which incorporates several of Van Vliet's signature embedded faces in profile amidst the apparent chaos.