Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yono Oko 1964

You get a sense of this book when you read the introduction by John Lennon that is blurbed on the cover.  The introduction reads “Hi! My name is John Lennon I’d like you to meet Yoko Ono.” On the one hand, it is an introduction; on the other hand, it is tongue in cheek, funny, creative, and totally out of the box.  And thinking and writing and creating out of the box is what this book is all about.

Ono was a well-known but fringe musician, writer, and conceptual artist in the 1960’s before she married Lennon in 1969, at which time her notoriety and fame skyrocketed.  I became aware of her great talent and impact when we saw a one person exhibition of her work at the Tate Modern in London last year.  That was also where I learned of “Grapefruit”, her first book.  I finally located it in the Minuteman Library Network and read it, somewhat stunned as page after page was filled with strange, wondrous, and far out ideas and instructions for projects.

Ono is a conceptual artist, and the idea of conceptual art was captured in the Declaration of Intent by Lawrence Weiner when he wrote that:

1. The artist may construct the piece.

2. The piece may be fabricated.

3. The piece need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.

In other words, it is us, the ‘receiver’ or the viewer who gets to determine whether we want to admire and engage with the idea, the end product produced by others, or the end product produced by the artist.  Ono is perhaps the most extreme embodiment of these principles since almost all of the ‘instructions’ in this book are impossible to carry out and therefore, are meaningful only in their conception, not in their realization.

In sections labelled music, painting, event, poetry, object, film, dance, information, program, letters, and on film, Ono specifies and suggest actions for the reader to carry out.  Here’s one in the section on music:  “Imagine one thousand suns in the/sky at the same time./Let them shine for one hour./Then, let them gradually melt/into the sky./Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.”  If you’re scratching your head, join the group.

Instructions such as those fill this very weird volume. There are no page numbers, so it’s impossible to tell how many sets of instructions there are, but there are hundreds.  Another favorite of mine is entitled “Part Painting” and starts with this sentence: “congratulations.  you are one of 10,000 selected people to whom we are sending this part painting by Yoko Ono. each person has received a portion of this painting.  we are planning to hold a gathering in the future to put all the parts together to appreciate the painting in its original form…”  Again, a fascinating idea, but one that will never get carried out.  Here’s another from 1960 entitled Kitchen Piece: “Hang a canvas on the wall. Throw all the leftovers you have in the kitchen that day on the canvas. You may prepare special foods for the piece.”  Okay, that one I could do but don’t intend to.   Here’s another that I just might try to carry out. It’s entitled Pea Piece:  “Carry a bag of peas. Leave a pea wherever you go. 1960.”

In one of those ‘connections’ that I love and have come to recognize as my reading has expanded and broadened, Ono writes two instructions which echo a chapter in Adam Moss’s book, “The Work of Art”, which I’ve also read this month.  In a chapter on the poet Marie Howe, Moss cites Walt Whitman’s opening stanza from “Leaves of Grass” in which Whitman wrote, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself and what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”  One hundred years later, Ono has written two sets of instructions, one labelled ‘Air Talk’ and one labelled ‘water talk’, in which she reflects on the air we share and the water that all of us contain.  The concept is the same—-we’re all here and in this together.  Whitman and Ono—-two great conceptual artists.

With all of her conceptual strangeness, Ono has been consistent in her decades long pursuit of peace, oneness, kindness, and connection in the world.  I loved this crazy book!