Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"If one billion people in the world think peace--we'll get peace. You may think, 'well, how are we going to get one billion people to think peace?' Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world. Power works in mysterious ways. You don't have to do much. Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking peace. Thoughts are infectious. Send it out. The message will circulate faster than you think. It's time for action. The action is peace. Spread the word. Spread peace." Yoko Ono, excerpted from Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head
"Our emotional memory creates reality. And we are totally insecure now, because of the memory of our cruelty and atrocity we exercised on others. The sign is there already. The proof is what we create. We are creating smaller and smaller communication machinery--Blackberry for instance. It's hard for your fingers to work on it. A machinery of communication is one of the most important emotional properties, yet we are doing that. That's because we think we want to shrink--protect ourselves physically. Let's be tiny. Almost invisible. Wouldn't that be nice?! They say, in the end it will only be cockroaches that survive. It's not that cockroaches will survive, it's us who become cockroaches and survive. That's what I think. We will be cockroaches for our emotional survival. That's what I think."
Edited with text by Klaus Biesenbach, Christophe Cherix. Text by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jon Hendricks, Yoko Ono, Clive Phillpot, David Platzker, Francesca Wilmott, Midori Yoshimoto.
Yoko Ono’s early years: between New York, Tokyo and London
Clth, 9.5 x 12 in. / 240 pgs / 250 color. | 5/26/2015 | In stock $60.00
In celebration of 'Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971', opening this weekend at MoMA, ARTBOOK & König present a selection of Ono and Fluxus books through Sunday at Frieze New York.
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This new edition of the bestselling publication by avant-garde artist and cultural icon Yoko Ono combines never-published-before texts and invitation pieces written between 2016 and 2018 with drawings from the Franklin Drawings series made in 1994. For Ono, words, artworks and books still have the power to change the world we live in for the better. Thus she continuously shares with us her vision and philosophy toward life: one that is made of pivotal experiences, unstoppable optimism and a love for the other. Following several volumes that have proved to be life companions for many, Everything in the Universe Is Unfinished reflects on her most recent feelings through a delicate interweaving of poems, aphorisms, short stories and drawings. Born in Tokyo in 1933, Yoko Ono moved to New York in the mid-1950s, where she quickly became a critical link between the American and Japanese avant-gardes, participating in Fluxus and achieving new idioms in performance and art. Her boundary-pushing early works include the pioneering performance work Cut Piece and her book of collected conceptual instructions, Grapefruit (both 1964). Ono’s artworks and films are widely exhibited internationally and are included in numerous prestigious museum and private collections. In 2009 she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale. Ono’s groundbreaking work greatly influenced the international development of conceptual art, performance art, and experimental film and music.
This new publication by avant-garde artist and cultural icon Yoko Ono (born 1933) combines never-before-published texts and invitation pieces written in 2016–18 with drawings from the Franklin Summer series Ono started in 1994.
For Ono, words, artworks and books still have the power to change the world we live in for the better. Thus she continuously shares with us her vision and philosophy toward life—one that is made of pivotal experiences, unstoppable optimism and a love for the other. Coming after several volumes that have proved to be life companions for many, Everything in the Universe Is Unfinished reflects on her most recent feelings through a delicate interweaving of poems, aphorisms, short stories and drawings.
Born in Tokyo in 1933, Yoko Ono moved to New York in the mid-1950s, where she quickly became a critical link between the American and Japanese avant-gardes, participating in Fluxus and pioneering new idioms in performance and art. Ono's groundbreaking work greatly influenced the international development of conceptual art, performance art and experimental film and music.
Published by Bakhall. Edited by Orjan Gerhardsson.
In her five-decade career as a conceptual artist, filmmaker, poet, performance artist, photographer and more, Yoko Ono (born 1933) has at once defied and defined the relationship between art and the masses. Live in the Light of Hope is the latest development of that relationship. This simple and compact volume—reminiscent of her legendary artist's book Grapefruit, which shares with it an aphoristic and engagingly straightforward style—presents Ono's recent tweets written in 2016 and 2017, illustrated with her artworks and photographs. These tweets cover a wide range of topics such as art, music, love and peace. Recipes for action related to the pieces in that earlier publication such as "Make a promise to a tree. Ask it to be passed on to other trees" or "In a world where you can be anything, be kind" are presented alongside koans such as, "Keep your head empty so inspiration can come into it." From a cultural icon who has experienced and interpreted the world's events from the latter half of the last century to the first part of this one, Live in the Light of Hope offers an inspirational voice for difficult times.
PUBLISHER Bakhall
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 5.5 x 6 in. / 240 pgs / 8 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/25/2018 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2019 p. 91
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9789177424802TRADE List Price: $29.95 CAD $45.00
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited with text by Klaus Biesenbach, Christophe Cherix. Text by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jon Hendricks, Yoko Ono, Clive Phillpot, David Platzker, Francesca Wilmott, Midori Yoshimoto.
Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971 examines the beginnings of Ono's career, demonstrating her pioneering role in visual art, performance and music during the 1960s and early 1970s. It begins in New York in December 1960, where Ono initiated a performance series with La Monte Young in her Chambers Street loft. Over the course of the decade, Ono earned international recognition, staging "Cut Piece" in Kyoto and Tokyo in 1964, exhibiting at the Indica Gallery in London in 1966, and launching with John Lennon her global "War Is Over!" campaign in 1969. Ono returned to New York in the early 1970s and organized an unsanctioned "one woman show" at MoMA. Over 40 years after Ono's unofficial MoMA debut, the Museum presents its first exhibition dedicated exclusively to the artist's work. The accompanying publication features three newly commissioned essays that evaluate the cultural context of Ono's early years, and five sections reflecting her geographic locations during this period and the corresponding evolution of her artistic practice. Each chapter includes an introduction by a guest scholar, artwork descriptions, primary documents culled from newspapers, magazines and journals, and a selection by the artist of her texts and drawings.
Born in Tokyo in 1933, Yoko Ono moved to New York in the mid-1950s and became a critical link between the American and Japanese avant-gardes. Ono's groundbreaking work greatly influenced the international development of Conceptual art, performance art and experimental film and music. In celebration of Ono's eightieth birthday in 2013, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt organized a major traveling retrospective.
Klaus Biesenbach is the Director at MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at MoMA.
Christophe Cherix is the Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA.
Jon Hendricks is a collector, artist, and the Fluxus Consulting Curator at MoMA.
Clive Phillpot is the former Director of the MoMA Library.
David Platzker is a Curator in the Drawings and Prints department at MoMA.
Yoko Ono is a seminal figure in the development of Conceptual art, performance and Fluxus, as well as film and new music. Her artist's book Grapefruit, first published in 1964 in Tokyo by Wunternaum Press in an edition of 500 copies, contains more than 150 works divided into five sections: MUSIC, PAINTING, EVENT, POETRY, OBJECT. These works--conceptual instructions--are the culmination of a process that dispensed with the physical and arrived at the idea. Since the initial publication of Grapefruit, numerous expanded editions have been produced in many different languages. Today first-edition copies are nearly impossible to find. The Museum of Modern Art has now produced a facsimile of that first edition, making it available again in its original form. This slipcased paperback is produced from the copy of the 1964 book in The Museum of Modern Art Library. It is an exacting replica of Grapefruit as Ono first envisioned it. Born in Tokyo in 1933, Yoko Ono moved to New York in the mid-1950s and became a critical link between the American and Japanese avant-gardes. Ono's groundbreaking work greatly influenced the international development of Conceptual art, performance art and experimental film and music. In celebration of Ono's 80th birthday in 2013, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt organized a major traveling retrospective.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Yoko Ono. Text by Alexandra Munroe. Chrissie Iles. Interview by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist.
As a pioneering conceptual artist, performance artist, film-maker, poet, musician, writer and peace activist for over five decades, Yoko Ono (born 1933) has influenced several generations of artists, musicians and cultural workers across the globe. Throughout her career, Ono has explored an incredible range of media, coining new kinds of artistic genres--most notably with her instruction pieces, which she began making in the 1950s and continues to devise today. Yoko Ono: To the Light accompanies the artist’s major 2012 overview at the Serpentine Gallery in London (a city to which she has longstanding ties). In her introduction, Ono explains the book and show’s title: “We are now at the 13th hour, facing the future together in which we may destroy ourselves or go on to create our heaven on earth. For the Serpentine Gallery, I selected pieces which had the strongest vibration to take us to the light.” In accord with this utopian emphasis, Ono is also presenting #smilesfilm, a worldwide participatory project, as part of her exhibition. Conceived as a way of connecting people across the world, users are invited to upload images of their smiles via Twitter and Instagram, creating a global string of smiles. Included in this volume are reproductions of installations, films and performances, plus archival material relating to several key early works. Yoko Ono: To the Light is a concise introduction to the vast scope of this era-defining artist’s many endeavors.
The Other Rooms is a sequel to Yoko Ono's Grapefruit, a now classic artist's book that was first published in 1964 and became a cult classic following its wider distribution after 1970. Matching the satisfyingly compact size of Grapefruit, and beautifully bound in white cloth, The Other Rooms is conceived as a series of rooms that unfold the story of, in the words of the artist, “the life of a woman seeing through the eyes of her son.” On page after page, or room after room, Ono walks the reader through her unique expression of motherly utopian pedagogy, providing observations and instruction “pieces” such as the following, for “Balance Piece”: a) Politicians should wear pink transparent loose robes or pajama-like outfits without the bottoms at all times. b) A priest should wear a bright red suit with one sleeve and bell-bottom pants with his penis exposed at all times. c) The army should wear drag (cocktail party-type flair skirts) and high-heel shoes with jewelry (earrings, etc.) Other sequences simply describe imaginary rooms, and invite the reader to inhabit them, or suggest new approaches to tasks such as gardening, or to one's hometown, all in the serenely open style for which Ono is so famed. The Other Rooms is joyfully interactive in this sense, finding ways “to open doors… where there are no doors.”
PUBLISHER Charta/Wunternaum Press
BOOK FORMAT Clth 5.5 x 5.5 in. / 252 pgs.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 1/31/2010 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 77
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881587551TRADE List Price: $39.95 CAD $50.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
In this volume, Hans Ulrich Obrist elicits from New York art veteran Yoko Ono a portrait of her life and career that is unprecedented in detail. Across five interview sessions, Obrist quizzes Ono about her earliest works in visual art and music in Japan, her musical development in New York, her friendship with John Cage, her Fluxus days, the founding of the new state of Nutopia with John Lennon and her ongoing campaigns for world peace and human rights. Ono also recounts here the genesis of her installations and performances, so many of which have since become classics of their genre. Throughout these discussions with Obrist, in which architects and artists such as Rem Koolhaas and Gustav Metzger also participate, this icon of twentieth-century culture shows herself to be a generous and smart personality, and a multifaceted artist of enormous influence.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Thomas Kellein.
In 1965, The New York Times called Tokyo-born, New York-based Fluxus artist Yoko Ono "a one person culture explosion." In this generous volume, Ono presents instruction pieces from 1961 to the present, including three scores from her iconic 1964 artist's book, Grapefruit--"Drinking Piece for Orchestra," "Bicycle Piece for Orchestra" and "Painting to Be Slept On"--which are republished here for the first time. Ono has explained the origin of these works: "...sometimes for financial reasons, sometimes for technical difficulties, I could never realize all the ideas which were literally bombarding me. But now, I could just write instructions. It freed me." Also included are more than 100 drawings from Franklin Summer, a series begun in 1994, comprising 1,400 inkblot drawings on paper, and Vertical Memory (1997)--dedicated to Ono's father--a photograph in 21 parts depicting a distorted face. The piece, which Ono considers her best, is a culmination of her life's work.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 6.75 x 9.75 in. / 208 pgs / 168 color / 15 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 77
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783865605313TRADE List Price: $45.00 CAD $55.00
From the earliest days of her career, Yoko Ono has found practical solutions for dismantling the walls that art throws up around its objects. Her Cut Piece of 1964, reprised in 2003 (and documented herein), remains an ever-relevant act of role reversal and vulnerability. Touch Me is a suite of sculptural works that are activated and completed by the tactile participation of the viewer, with the same conceptual simplicity that characterizes so much of Ono's activity. "Touch Me I," for example, utilizes a sheet of fabric with numerous apertures, through which viewers are encouraged to peer, insert or reveal a body part, photograph it and add the Polaroid to a wall of similar contributions. This book documents these playfully interactive works, as well as other new and historical works by the artist. But--unlike so many books on performance-oriented art, which merely document--it is also a beautifully composed bookwork, reproducing Ono's classic instructions for the execution of her works alongside photographs and comments on the hopes and fears of her art in the present political climate.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7.5 x 8.5 in. / 72 pgs / 45 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2009 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 77
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881586967TRADE List Price: $37.95 CAD $45.00
Published by Deitch Projects. Artwork by Yoko Ono.
“The twentieth century was a century in which human experiment in cruelty reached its height. I have decided to be a cockroach for a day, and see what is happening in this city through its eyes.” These words from Yoko Ono, a groundbreaking visionary in the art world for over 50 years, is her manifesto-like description of the thoughts and ideas that went into Odyssey of a Cockroach. This elegant catalogue, with more than 40 color reproductions of the related exhibit, leads its readers through her installation through Ono's exciting narrative.
Yoko Ono: Everything in the Universe Is Unfinished
Yoko Ono: Live in the Light of Hope
Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971
Yoko Ono: Grapefruit
Yoko Ono: To the Light
Yoko Ono: The Other Rooms
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Yoko Ono: The Conversation Series
Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head
Yoko Ono: Touch Me
Yoko Ono: Odyssey Of A Cockroach