Yoko Ono | Instruction Paintings

Yoko Ono
Instruction Paintings
New York City, USA/Tokyo, Japan: Weatherhill, 1995
63 pp., 18.5 x 18.5 cm., slipcase
Edition size unknown

One of the earliest books on Ono to focus (retrospectively) on a single body of work, this title documents an exhibition of Ono's at George Maciunas' AG Gallery in New York. The title features six illustrations of the works and the text (in both English and Japanese) to the Instruction Paintings: Painting to the See the Skies, Painting for the Wind, Painting in Three Stanzas, Painting to Shake Hands, Painting for Burial, Smoke Painting, Painting to See the Room, Painting to Hammer a Nail, Waterdrop Painting, Painting to Let the Evening Light Go Through, Painting To Be Constructed in Your Head (5 versions), Painting Until it Becomes Marble, A + B Painting (2 versions), Portrait of Mary, Painting to Enlarge and See, Painting for a Broken Sewing Machine, and Painting to be Constructed in Your Head.

In the six-page introductory text Ono is quite candid about her first marriages (to composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and later to film producer Tony Cox) and about a brief stay in a clinic during a bout of depression.

Photographs by George Maciunas and cover design by Ono.