“This is what the vase looked like,” Gordon said. Black-clad handlers had unfurled a cloth that held hundreds of white and blue fragments and placed them next to the unbroken vase. “So, it’s been pre-broken,” Gordon said to laughs in the audience. Musician Kim Gordon performs at a one-night tribute concert in honor of Yoko Ono at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. But due to “conservationists,” “it had to be broken in a very special way,” Gordon told the crowd. Gordon explained that she and Lizzi Bougatsos and Camar Ayewa - the other artists who performed in the museum’s central courtyard - had planned to shatter the vase in front of the hundreds of people who gathered for the Ono tribute. She then asked them to pick up a piece, one by one, to carry home.Īs retold in her subversive book of instructions “Grapefruit,” which came out in 1964, anyone who took a fragment of the vase would promise to meet again in 10 years to reassemble the smashed object.Īt a one-night-only tribute Sunday at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Ono’s “Promise Piece” was once again orchestrated, this time by experimental artist and musician Kim Gordon.Īt the end of the night, a white-and-blue vase that stood as high as Gordon’s thighs was hoisted on stage next to her. One night in London more than 50 years ago, Yoko Ono broke a vase on stage before her audience. The instructions were simple, but take years to complete.

Yoko ono grapefruit analysis