Tadanori Yokoo × The Rolling Stones “DROOL / よだれ” 50th-Anniversary B1 Poster (2012) Offset lithograph on paper ｜ B1 size ≈ 103 × 72.8 cm ｜ Very limited, museum-grade rarity

Tadanori Yokoo × The Rolling Stones
“DROOL / よだれ” 50th-Anniversary B1 Poster (2012)
Offset lithograph on paper ｜ B1 size ≈ 103 × 72.8 cm ｜ Very limited, museum-grade rarity

Why this piece matters

• The only Stones tour image ever authorised from Yokoo’s legendary 1966 canvas “DROOL”.

• Printed just once in 2012 for the Japanese‐exclusive Blu-ray box of the documentary Crossfire Hurricane—numbers rumoured to be well under a thousand.

• Institutional provenance: the National Museum of Art, Osaka, catalogues this exact edition in its permanent collection (Acc. No. W650205).

• First time offered by our gallery. 

The untold back-story ( condensed from Yokoo’s 2013 BARKS interview )

1. 1973 – the phantom Japanese concerts
   Udō Artists invited Yokoo to design a poster for the Stones’ first Tokyo dates, but the tour was cancelled; another illustrator’s provisional art briefly surfaced and the commission vanished.

2. 1976 – Nice, France
   The Stones’ New York office asked to use Yokoo’s surreal painting DROOL—a vampiric “Pink Girl” dripping saliva over the Côte d’Azur—for a one-off poster promoting their 13 June Nice show. Mis-routed transparencies and pre-internet logistics killed the idea days before the concert.

3. 2012 – resurrection for the 50th
   Nearly four decades later, to mark the band’s half-century and the opening of the Yokoo Tadanori Contemporary Art Museum, DROOL was finally issued exactly as Yokoo had envisioned—full-bleed, B1 format, his signature and the classic Stones tongue logo re-imagined with a “50” hidden in the lettering.

(Based on the interview “ストーンズ1973年幻の初来日公演ポスターを描いたのは、横尾忠則ではなかった”, BARKS, 4 Feb 2013) barks.jp

Artwork & printing

• Offset lithograph, supervised by Yokoo himself; rich, saturated colour blocks that channel 1960s psychedelia yet print sharp enough to reveal the canvas texture of the original oil.

• Top border spells “THE ROLLING STONES” in hand-cut lettering; lower right corner carries the “Rolling Stones Fifty Years” tongue emblem and YOKOO credit.

• Date “1966 5.20” appears under the signature—acknowledging the painting’s birth—while the print itself is from 2012.

Investment & provenance

Yokoo’s graphic works sit in MoMA, the V&A and, locally, the National Museum of Art Osaka. This B1 carries the identical specification to the museum copy and remains un-framed, un-displayed.

This poster is in very good condition. Please refer to the imagery (both front and back) as this is the exact poster that is for sale. 

Please refer to the additional imagery provided, we have taken the condition into consideration when pricing.

It is not a reproduction or a reprint.

Certificate of Authenticity included.