30/08/2024
Featured in issue 21, Yoko Ono published ‘Grapefruit’, her foundational book of instruction works, in 1964.
Playful, whimsical, witty and strange, this collection of texts aims to unlock the mind. But as our regular contributor remarks, the grapefruit first makes its appearance in Ono’s work in 1955, in a short story published in a student magazine: ‘Of A Grapefruit in the World of Park’. In this beguiling, strange story one recognises the matter-of-fact tone, the specificity of detail shot through with moments of whimsical description from the “instruction paintings” that Ono began to make in the early 1960s and has gone on making, in some form or other, ever since.
A first edition copy of ‘Grapefruit’ as well as 151 draft typescripts for the book are on display as part of Tate Modern’s major retrospective ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind. You have until Sunday to visit it!