//Painting To Be Stepped On, Yoko Ono, 1961. Photograph: George Maciunas//

“People said Yoko Ono ruined the Beatles, but I think the Beatles ruined her in many ways”

Anne Bean, artist, to The Guardian, 2021.

Saturated as mass culture has recently been by Get Backery, I note the lack of celebration for another significant anniversary: 70 years since Yoko Ono became the first female student to be accepted onto the philosophy course at Tokyo’s Gakushuin University in 1952.

As noted in Inventing Downtown, Melissa Rachleff’s incisive history of New York’s artist-run galleries from the early 50s to the mid-60s, Ono left Gakushuin after two terms to join her parents in Manhattan, where she promptly enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College to study poetry and composition.

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Tags: 112 Chambers Street, Fluxus, Gakushuin University, George Maciunas, Get Back, Inventing Downtown, John Cage, John Lennon, La Monte Young, Marcel DUchamp, Melissa Rachleff, Painting To Be Stepped On, Sarah Lawrence College, Simone Forti, the Beatles, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoko Ono

I’m extremely grateful to artist/designer/photographer Ash Hudson for sending precious photographs and design sketches from the archive of his late mother Ola Hudson, the super-talented fashion designer and costumier best known for providing David Bowie with the formal yet other-worldly collection of garments he wore in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth and as The Thin White Duke on the subsequent Isolar world tour.

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Tags: Ash Hudson, Bob Gruen, Carly Simon, Dean Stockwell, Dewar's, Diamond Dogs, Iggy Pop, Isolar, John Lennon, Nicolas Roeg, Ola Hudson, Skitzo, Slash, The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Pointer Sisters

//Jacket photograph Terry Richardson with shots from Walrod’s Instagram feed//

Design authority Jim Walrod wears a deep and wide-ranging understanding of his subject – specifically that pertaining to modernism in furniture, interiors, product design and architecture  – lightly.

This is refreshing in a field populated by bloodless experts and humourless know-alls. The founder of important 90s/00s store Form & Function, Walrod –  described as “the ultimate design raconteur” by André Balazs and “the furniture pimp” by the Beastie Boys – is above all an enthusiast.

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Tags: André Balazs, Andy Spade, Apartamento, Beastie Boys, Bettina Hubby, Cheetah Chrome, Debbie Harry, Fiorucci, Form & Function, Hit Parader, I Knew Jim Knew, Index, Instagram, Isamu Noguchi, Jasper Johns, Jim Walrod, John Lennon, Kenny Scharf, Mary Boone, Max's Kansas City, Nancy Grossman, Nicola L., Patrick Parrish, Peter Halley, Powerhouse Books, Robert Rauschenberg, Rock Scene, Ted Bundy, Terry Richardson, Tom Sachs, Tough Life Diary, Vincent Price, Yoko Ono

//Jack Henry Moore (right) outside the Melkweg, Amsterdam with fellow film-makers Kit Galloway and Dave Jones, early 70s. Photo: The Generalist/The Videoheads//

Jack Henry Moore – who has died aged 73 – was one of the unpindownables of the counterculture in the 60s and 70s.

Known principally as a pioneering video film-maker and sound recordist (the archive he leaves behind is estimated to contain more than 70,000 hours of tape compiled over five decades), Moore was central to the establishment of many of the foundation stones of the underground in London and other European cities.

//With Lennon and Ono 1968. Photo: The Generalist/The Videoheads//

Moore joined fellow ex-pat American Jim Haynes in his theatrical experiments in Edinburgh in the mid-60s, where they staged productions by the likes of Lindsay Kemp. As in his native Oklahoma, Moore’s openness about his homosexuality necessitated a geographical shift, this time south to London.

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Tags: 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, Alexandra Palace, Chris Rowley, Drury Lane Arts Lab, International Times, Jack Henry Moore, Jim Haynes, John Lennon, Lindsay Kemp, Melkweg, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, The Alchemical Wedding, The Deviants, The Nothing Man, Traverse Theatre Company, UFO, Yoko Ono