PBA Galleries

Rare first edition of Yoko Ono's compilation of 'event scores'. Often considered a Fluxus artwork, the work was in fact published by Ono's own imprint, Wunternaum Press, in Tokyo. Event scores were intended to replace the physical work of art with instructions that an individual may wish to enact. For example: "City Piece. Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage." Event scores were developed by a number of artists attending John Cage's Experimental Music Composition classes at the New School for Social Research in New York. While Ono did not attend these informal lessons, her husband at the time, Ichiyanagi Toshi (an experimental musician), did. Toshi and Ono became regulars of Cage's circle of friends by 1959. The first edition contains over 150 works, virtually all are in English with about a third translated into Japanese. They are divided into five sections: Music, Painting, Event, Poetry and Object. Later editions included 80 additional works and two additional sections: Film and Dance. Quite rare, with no copies appearing in book auction records for at least 30 years and copies only rarely appearing in the trade. WorldCat locates only 5 copies within the United States.