Museum of Modern F art: Yoko Ono - one woman show. Dec. 1st -Dec. 15th

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ONO, Yoko.

Museum of Modern [F]art: Yoko Ono - one woman show. Dec. 1st -Dec. 15th.

NY: self-published, 1972. Large sq. quarto (30x30cm.). Wrps., unpaginated (106pp.). Photography by Iain Macmillan; production by Michael Gross.

Yoko’s ex post facto catalogue for the non-existent exhibition advertised by her in The Village Voice (December 2, 1971) with an altered photograph showing her outside MoMA carrying a large white shopping bag printed with the letter F, lined up so that the museum’s sign appears to read Museum of Modern Fart.

The conceptual event consisted of a “sandwitchman” who walked in front of MoMA “from 9 to 6 everyday in the snow” with a sign explaining that “flies were put in a glass container the same volume as yoko’s body the same perfume as the one yoko uses was put in the glass container”. Afterwards the flies were released and a “photographer who has been invited over from england specially for the task” was dispatched to document their travels.

The catalogue, which purports to document the flight of the flies throughout New York City with photographs of the locations (including arrows indicating the exact spots where they were found), instructs the reader to cut out and mail ‘postcards’ with the images of flies on them and mail them, marking their recipients on an included map, and to write their own essays about the process.

Wrappers age-toned, with small nicks to edges and slight wear around staples; internally clean and bright.

Together with:

a typed note xeroxed on Apple Records stationery reading: “Yoko Ono Catalogue has become a waiting event. Please wait.” Signed (in the copy) "Yoko Ono Love”. Accompanied by a dried fern leaf, as issued, and enclosed in a hand-addressed Apple Records envelope, postmarked “New York March 13 ‘72”. Near Fine.

Visitors to the unsanctioned show (who were greeted by a sign at the museum’s ticket booth announcing that the exhibit was an ‘event’), were invited to fill out a card and pay $1.00 in order to receive the as yet unpublished catalogue (the Village Voice ad. also included an order form). While they waited for the catalogue to arrive, subscribers received Yoko’s note in the mail, each one accompanied by a dried leaf.

Rare to find the catalogue together with its ‘Waiting Event’ letter and leaf, few of which can have survived intact.

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