According to the vendor, Lennon handed out pieces of paper such as the above to visitors at a preview of an Art exhibition Guildford Minus 40, held at the Royal Institute Galleries in Piccadilly in 1968. The exhibition was held by part-time staff dismissed by the Guildford School of Art. It is claimed that a piece of paper, whatever its size, cannot be folded more than eight times. According to www.lennon.net, John sent a memo to a member of staff at Bag Productions in 1968 which appears to be the predecessor for the printed sheet in this lot.

The Fluxus art movement began in the early sixties, and flourished throughout the decade until the early seventies. It was an avant-garde movement which: ...promoted artistic experimentation mixed with social and political activism and often celebrated anarchistic change.... John Lennon is said to have described Yoko Ono as ...the worlds's most famous unknown artist. Everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does... As journalist Arthur Danto wrote: Ono's relationship to Fluxus is a matter of delicate art-historical analysis, but if she fits in anywhere... it would be with this movement. Lennon's famous first encounter with Yoko and her art occurred on 9th November, 1966 when he entered the Indica Gallery in London, climbed up a ladder, looked up at a piece of paper attached to the ceiling through a magnifying glass and read a word in tiny letters, YES.