Yoko Ono and John Lennon from Roberta Flack’s Collection

In 1976, singer Roberta Flack purchased an apartment in the Dakota building at 1 West 72nd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was the first (and for decades, the only) black person to reside in the cooperative apartment complex. 

Her seventh floor, Central Park-facing unit [see below] shared a wall with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the three became friends. 

Their son, Sean Lennon recalls "I was very blessed that I grew up with the coolest neighbour in the world. At first, I didn't even think of Roberta as this incredible artist and musician, she was just this really cool neighbour. We used to call her Aunt Roberta, and we were very close."

Flack performed at John and Yoko’s One-to-One Concert in 1975, covered Ono’s song "Goodbye Sadness" for the first Ono tribute album, Every Man Has a Woman in 1984, and appeared in Yoko Ono’s music video for "Bad Dancer" [see below].

Roberta Flack sold her apartment in 2018, and died in 2025, at the age of 88. Her estate has recently begun to sell some of her belongings, including the above John and Yoko books, bags, cards, and invitations. 

Takako Saito | Schachspiele, Spiele und Bücher

Takako Saito

Schachspiele, Spiele und Bücher

Weissbaden, Germay: Harlekin Art, 1989 

[2] pp., 10 x 16.5 cm., 

Edition size unknown

An announcement card in the shape of a Saito’s signature bowler hat for an exhibition of chess games, games and books that ran from the 23rd of June to the 28th of July, 1989. 

Maddie Lycheck

 

Martin Kippenberger

Martin Kippenberger died on this day in 1997. 

Gaetano Pesce

Gaetano Pesce was born on this day in 1939. He was an Italian architect, urban planner, and industrial designer, whose work was characterized by an inventive use of colour and materials.

Pesce is best known for his work with resin, moulds, and casting techniques used to create vases, chairs, lamps, and the two-dimensional reliefs that he termed “industrial skins.”

Above are some of his innovative pieces produced as exhibition invitations. 

Bianchini Gallery presents the grand opening of the American Supermarket

Bianchini Gallery

Bianchini Gallery presents the grand opening of the American Supermarket

New York City, USA: Bianchini Gallery, 1964

[2] pp., 43 x 55.7 cm., folded double sided exhibition poster

Edition size unknown

Sixty-one years ago today the groundbreaking American Supermarket exhibition opened at the Paul Bianchini Gallery on East 78th Street, New York. Curated by artist and collector Ben Birillo, the exhibition is thought to have effectively launched the genre of Pop Art, catapulting many of the artists involved to international fame: Billy Apple, Richard Artschwager, Mary Inman, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Robert Watts, and Tom Wesselmann.

Each produced works that could be displayed in a supermarket setting, alongside plastic replicas of food. Warhol and Lichtenstein created twelve dollar silkscreened paper shopping bags, of a Campbell’s tomato soup can and turkey, respectively. Mary Inman contributed life-like wax replicas of meats and cheeses. Bob Watts produced egg cartons, Jasper Johns exhibited his 1960 Ale Cans, and Wesselmann contributed a plastic turkey. A turnstile by Artschwager, checkout counters and Muzak gave the gallery the look and feel of a common grocery store. 

Reviewing the show for Time Magazine, Calvin Tomkins wrote “We may well inquire why so many young artists have hit on food as the ideal subject matter. The artists can be counted on to reply promptly, why not? Food is always around, for one thing, and it has always had a solid place in art. Grace Glueck in the New York Times noted that on the eve of the opening collector Robert Scull insisted on the removal of his Jasper John's work, because he did not want anyone touching it.

“In 1964, Dorothy Herzka was the director of the Paul Bianchini Gallery (16 E. 78th Street), one block south of Leo Castelli’s, which had hosted Lichtenstein’s career-making sold-out show in 1962. Blonde, with all-American good looks, Dorothy could almost have been a romance comic “girl in distress” in a “Lichtenstein painting. Charged with devising art shows for Bianchini that showed more of a contemporary edge, Dorothy scheduled the American Supermarket show.

This exhibition was a unique type of art show, even for the heyday of Pop: the gallery was set up like a grocery store, with items for sale that were also original works of art: Warhol soup cans; a 3-D turkey by Tom Wesselman; sculptures of cakes, cookies, and candies by Oldenburg; plaster loaves of bread by Robert Watts; and, presumably for gallery goers to carry purchases home, shopping bags emblazoned with screen prints of a cartoon turkey by Lichtenstein and a Campbell’s soup can by Warhol.”

- Mark P. Bernardo, Lichtenstein in New York

Ben Vautier

On this day last year, Ben Vautier took his own life at the age of 88. His lifelong partner Annie had died a stroke the previous evening.