John Lennon

An ephemeral art installation by

Yoko Ono entitled Apple –

comprising a four foot high acrylic plinth,

a bronze plaque engraved ‘APPLE’, a real, green

apple with a stalk, priced at two hundred pounds –

was part of a 1966

London show: Unfinished Paintings and Objects

By Yoko Ono. One of the guests

invited to the preview was John Lennon.

He saw the apple, took it from the plinth,

bit into it, and put it back – like any

Hooray Henry or Scally scoffing at art.

The artist was speechless, and ‘furious’

she recalled. Lennon apologised,

and later reflected that  ‘…the humour

got me straight away…two hundred quid

to watch the fresh apple decompose’.

He redeemed himself in time, not least

by founding, with colleagues, Apple Music.

 

Fifty eight years later the piece is on show

again in London, part of Yoko Ono:

Music of the Mind, curated by Ono

in her ninetieth year. The gallery

perhaps will acquire the Apple as part

of its permanent collection and allow

each apple to decay in its own time,

inspiring spectators to think of the tree

of knowledge, and the apple of discord.

 

Another piece in the exhibition

is Helmets (Pieces of Sky). Used or

replica World War 2 German helmets

are hanging from the ceiling at waist height,

filled with pieces of sky blue jigsaw –

each one stamped in white lettering with

‘y.o. London ’24’ – for visitors

to take, and join together. Yoko, aged 12,

and her younger brother would leave fire-bombed

Tokyo for the countryside in search

of food, the ambivalent sky above them.

Her multi-media work of nearly

seventy years is ironic, humane,

inventive, resonant, and always the

genius side of kitsch.