(Conceptual Art) Ono, Yoko. Grapefruit. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1971. 1st Sphere Books Edition; 3rd edition overall. Square 24mo - 5-1/8" x 5-1/16". [280] pp., plus [4] pp. "Other Works by Yoko Ono." Perfect-bound color pictorial stiff paper wrappers, featuring the iconic and memorable cover design to both front and rear wrappers conflating the book's title with Yoko Ono's controversial 1966 avant-garde film Bottoms (composed exclusively of close-ups of naked human subjects walking on a treadmill). Titles printed in black and white to spine. This exceptional copy is SIGNED BY BOTH YOKO ONO AND JOHN LENNON on the front free endpaper. A full Letter of Authenticity from PSA/DNA (Cert. No. AR000397) will accompany the volume to certify the absolute authenticity of the two historic signatures.
The physical condition of the item is graded VERY GOOD + (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The exterior wrappers exhibit light, uneven sun-fading to the spine and front cover, minor creasing to the lower fore-edge corner of the front wrapper, and a touch of light rubbing to the spine tips. Internally, the text leaves exhibit typical age-tanning to the paper stock but otherwise remain clean, tight, and in fine condition throughout.
Fluxus, Performance Art, and the Genesis of Grapefruit
Emerging from the radical vanguard of the 1960s international Fluxus movement, Yoko Ono participated as a definitive pioneer in the development of Conceptual and Performance art. Working both independently and collaboratively, Ono produced a celebrated body of texts, event scores, films, and musical compositions that shattered traditional boundaries separating the artwork from the viewer. First self-published in a legendary limited run of 500 copies in Tokyo in 1964, Grapefruit serves as the ultimate distillation of her conceptual philosophy. Composed of witty, surreal, and deeply poetic "instruction pieces," the book invites readers to complete the artwork inside their own minds or through whimsical physical acts. A prominent example includes her "LAUNDRY PIECE," which playfully warns that "In keeping this instruction, you may lose all your underwears," before directing the practitioner to record the exact time they noticed a worry—explicitly instructing not to write down what the worry was—before washing the time-record in a washing machine and then eat the washed time-record.
The 1971 Selfridges Launch and Publishing History
Following a second, expanded edition, published by Peter Owen in 1970 (which famously added an introduction by John Lennon), this 1971 Sphere Books paperback represents the third edition overall and the first accessible mass-market format. To promote this specific release, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a landmark two-day promotional event on July 15 and 16, 1971, signing copies for lines of fans at Selfridges department store and the Claude Gill bookshop in London. Because this fragile paperback format was heavily read and handled, copies signed during that brief 1971 promotional campaign rarely survive intact, making a PSA/DNA-certified copy signed by both central figures of twentieth-century counterculture an extraordinary scarcity.
THE SURVIVAL OF THIS ICONIC ARTISTS' BOOK, COMPLETE WITH ITS PAPERTRAIL OF ACCREDITED AUTHENTICITY AND BEARING THE DUAL SIGNATURES OF YOKO ONO AND JOHN LENNON, REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF THE AVANT-GARDE, CONCEPTUAL ART, OR MID-CENTURY POP CULTURE.
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