Elusive artist's book

Museum of Modern [F]art. Yoko Ono – one woman show. Dec. 1st – Dec. 15th. For Information Call 675-8138.

New York: n. p, 1971.

Price: $3,000.00


About the item

First edition, stamped "Copyright 1972 / By Yoko Ono" (Most cataloguers note this erroneously and unironically as being published in 1971, and by MoMa, who had nothing to do with this publication). Black and white illustrations throughout, "CONcept / cover design / inside design / photo of John Lennon by Yoko Ono. Photography by Iain Mcmillan. Production by Michael Gross", [112] pp. Square quarto (30 cm). Elusive artist's book. White illustrated wrappers. A very good copy with tanning near the spine and light soiling on covers (as usual), tips of corners are moderately bumped (with a small chip at one corner of unprinted rear cover), internally fresh and clean.

Item #325120

In 1971, "Yoko Ono staged an 'intervention' at MoMA without the museum’s permission, to which she gave the puckish title of 'Yoko Ono — One Woman Show'... Ms. Ono’s guerrilla contribution to MoMA’s program that year took the form of revealing (falsely) that she had released an army of flies around the museum, as a kind of Fluxus fifth column. For the card announcing her fictional show, she retouched a photo of the museum’s signage to insert a naughty letter “f” before its final word, thus creating the 'Museum of Modern (f)Art.' 'I did a conceptual show and that was it, for me,' said Ms. Ono, never expecting her fictional solo exhibition to become reality..." (Gopkin, Blake, "Yoko Ono and MoMA, Together at Last", NY Times, May 6, 2015)). MoMA did eventually create a Yoko Ono exhibition, Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971 (May 17 - September 7, 2015).

The book takes the form of Fluxus score as well as Mail Art piece, in the tradition of the New York Correspondence school. The reader is instructed to cut out and mail the postcards with images of flies on them and mail them, marking their recipients on an included map, and to write their own essays about the process, before finally treating the book as a piece of sculpture. Second only to Grapefruit in Ono provocations.