Yoko Ono Publishes Grapefruit

One of the greatest and most referenced works of instruction-based art, Grapefruit remains a canonical example of the dematerialized art object popularized at the time by Lucy Lippard.

Ono published the book on July 4, 1964 in Tokyo, itself consisting of instructions for paintings, music, events and objects, printed in an edition of 500. A work such as “Painting to Be Stepped On” exists as a written instruction that anyone can carry out and each performance of it differs.

While perhaps Ono's most well-known work, the conceptual artist had written instruction pieces since the mid-1950s, which sat close to the early Fluxus event scores of George Brecht and La Monte Young.

Artworks as sets of rules executed by others is the principle that later links conceptual art to code and technological art, as explored in “Living Aesthetics: A Grammar of Protocol Art and Worldbuilding”.