Grapefruit.
Ono, Yoko. Grapefruit. Tokyo: Wunternaum Press, 1964.
Square 8vo.; English and Japanese; heavy cardstock; printed wrappers. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; one of 500 copies. Grapefruit is one of the defining artists’ books of the 1960s and, in its first edition, one of the scarcest books of the postwar period. The original Japanese edition, released the same year as A Hard Day’s Night, attained mythic status when its re-release in 1970, after the breakup of the Beatles, brought this formerly obscure item to widespread prominence. When the Beatles broke up, Yoko Ono was blamed. Inconsolable fans seized on her, an alien creature, whose esoteric art seemed to exercise a mysterious influence on John Lennon, as the villain responsible for their anguish. The role assigned to her in this pop culture psycho-drama has long overshadowed Ono’s work, making it difficult to appreciate the genuine importance of her artistic legacy.
Grapefruit is an important early example of Fluxus, or Conceptual art (any distinction, always difficult to parse, was particularly evanescent in 1964). It contains a series of “event scores.” These are instructions to be (or not to be) enacted by other individuals at other places and times and are meant to serve in place of a physical work of art. The immateriality of the artwork was revolutionary. This not only changed art aesthetically, it had profound practical and logistical implications as well – an exhibition, in the form of an idea or series of ideas, could now be written down and sent through the mail, to be mounted and shown in a gallery on the other side of the world. The artist’s physical presence was no longer required. Thus the avant-garde, for the first time, became truly international, and artists’ publications took center stage. No work exemplifies both of these revolutionary changes better than Grapefruit.
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