Of course, even that invisible “evidence” was something a reader of Ono’s catalog could only imagine. In each image, an arrow pointed to the exact spot upon which a fly supposedly had come to rest. Her publication also contained photos of various locations around the city where the perfume-soaked flies allegedly had landed. Ono’s catalog of the imaginary exhibition featured a photo of the artist in the museum’s garden with her jar of flies. (This was make-believe, for MoMA had neither condoned nor become involved in her project.) On it, a text explained that a swarm of flies had been captured in a big bottle containing a dollop of the perfume Ono wore the bottle had then been placed inside the museum, and the aromatic flies released into the air. Over a period of two weeks, a man hired by Ono appeared near MoMA’s entrance wearing a signboard. Typescript of “Cloud Piece,” from the original, typewritten/handwritten contents of Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit, material that was produced in 1963-64 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) Up there, the fallen F had helped spell out the word - well, you know. In the photo, Ono is pictured walking beneath it, carrying a shopping bag onto which, apparently, a large letter F had fallen from a space (created in the retouched photo) between the last two words of the museum’s name. Ono’s ads for this conceptual event featured a photo showing MoMA’s entrance, with the museum’s name spelled out in letters mounted above its sidewalk-spanning awning. In late 1971, she placed advertisements in the New York Times and the Village Voice announcing her Museum of Modern (F)art show at MoMA it featured a printed catalog, copies of which were sold by mail. That’s because, more than four decades ago, Ono already had her first-ever, one-woman show at MoMA - well, sort of or maybe not, depending on how you evaluate what actually occurred. These earlier exhibitions also looked at Ono’s early work, but MoMA’s 1960s survey has a back-story that is as curious as it is uniquely linked to the Museum of Modern Art.Ĭatalog of Yoko Ono’s imaginary Museum of Modern art exhibition (1971), offset printing, 11 13/16 x 11 13/16 x 3/8 inches (photo courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, © 2014 Yoko Ono) Among them: Yes: Yoko Ono which opened at Japan Society in New York in 2000 and was the first Ono retrospective to be based on all-new research and to look closely at the artist’s aesthetic roots in Japanese culture To the Light, a selective retrospective at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2012 and Yoko Ono: Half-A-Wind Show, A Retrospective, which opened in early 2013 at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, and then traveled around Europe. This exhibition, with its early-period focus, comes on the heels of larger, career-spanning surveys that in recent years have been seen in the United States and abroad. Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971 has been organized by MoMA’s Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, Christophe Cherix Chief Curator at Large and Director of MoMA PS1, Klaus Biesenbach and Drawings and Prints Curatorial Assistant Francesca Wilmott. At the same time, this engaging presentation, which examines the development of her art during a formative, early period of her career, gently reveals how profoundly Ono’s art-making has sustained her over the long roller coaster ride of her life. Now, at 82, the woman John Lennon once dubbed “the world’s most famous unknown artist” is enjoying the respect that comes with a high-profile MoMA show. Certainly the world is familiar enough with Ono’s dramatic personal story to know that it has been filled with struggle, success, fame, pain and tragedy in potent measures. Others have been intensely private, like those of the years just before the death of her late husband, John Lennon, in December 1980, when the Lennons withdrew from the music biz. Yoko Ono with “Painting to See in the Dark (Version 1)” (1961) at her exibition at AG Gallery, New York, summer 1961 (photo by George Maciunas, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © 2014 George Maciunas)Īs the world knows, some of its chapters have been lived in the glare of the media spotlight.
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