Yoko Ono 1933-

By Aliza Wall

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, March 21, 1965, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. Photograph by Minoru Niizuma. https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/15/373.

To know Yoko Ono only as a celebrity wife and supposed Beatles saboteur is to do her a great disservice. Born February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan, Ono would go on to contribute profoundly to both visual and performance art as well as experimental film and music-making. Ono’s early life was one of constant travel, following her father’s banking career from Tokyo to New York and back again. In 1952, she became the first female student to enrol in a philosophy course at Gakushiun University in Tokyo. However, at the end of the same year, Ono’s family moved to New York where she enrolled at (but never graduated from) Sarah Lawrence College. 

In 1955 Ono moved to Manhattan where she became involved with avant-garde artists and musicians. There she became (and continues to be) involved with Fluxus, a loosely connected international community of creatives interested in experimental performance art emphasizing the artistic process over the finished product. Ono’s pieces during this early period often involved the participation of an audience who were prompted by Ono’s verbal or written instructions. Painting to Be Stepped On (1960-61), for example, invited viewers to step on it. Although subtly, this work questions the role of the artist, the viewer, and art itself. Ono furthered these philosophical themes in her 1964 performance Cut Piece, in which the artist invited the audience to cut clothes from her body. Ono implicates the viewer in the creation of the art piece itself which, in turn, subverts traditional notions of art-making and authorship. The piece also question the traditional neutrality and anonymity of the nude female figure in art. 

Following her relocation to London in 1966, Ono began to establish herself as a major artist. At her exhibition Unfinished Paintings and Objects by Yoko Ono, she met John Lennon with whom she would soon marry and collaborate. In 1968, Ono and Lennon debuted their collaboration with the exhibition Four Thoughts: Yoko Ono and John Lennon and later released the experimental album Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. The duo’s most famous performances are their 1969 “bed-ins” which took place for weeks at a time in both Montreal and Amsterdam. In their hotel suite, Ono and Lennon “performed” a series of peaceful actions: urging resistance, arguing with conservatives, singing, and playing with Ono’s daughter Kyoko, all while dressed white pyjamas. These performances expanded upon Ono’s earlier pieces, the distinction between “real life” and art almost entirely obscured, the media replacing the museum as an exhibition space. Although Lennon’s fame arguably gave Ono a larger artistic platform, she was (and continues to be) vilified as the alleged instigator of the Beatles’ split. After 1970, Ono embarked on an experimental music career with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band which performed experimental rock music. Later musical efforts Fly (1971) and Approximately Infinite Universe (1973) performed in the same style and received equal measures of acclaim and disdain. In 1980, Ono and Lennon collaborated on Double Fantasy which won the Grammy Award for album of the year. Later that same year, Lennon was assassinated. 

In 1989, the Whitney Museum presented a retrospective of Ono’s work for which the artist produced bronze-cast versions of her early pieces as a commentary on the commodification of art. Soon thereafter, the Japan Society Gallery in New York City also presented a retrospective entitled “Yes Yoko Ono” (2000). In addition to such retrospectives, Ono continues to create activist works blurring the line between art and life. Her 2007 public work, Imagine Peace Tower, is intended  to “communicate awareness to the whole world that peace & love is what connects all lives on Earth.” It bears the inscription “Imagine Peace” in 24 languages and is filled with written wishes Ono has collected from visitors to her exhibitions since 1966. In some ways, Imagine Peace Tower is emblematic of Ono’s oeuvre: participatory, activist, magical, and perhaps a bit strange. Ono lives in New York City and continues her work as an artist and activist. 

Bibliography

Concannon, Kevin. “Ono, Yoko.” Grove Art Online. September 22, 2015. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000097986?rskey=dW6B9d&result=1. 

Cunningham, John M. “Yoko Ono.” Encylclopaedia Britannica. Accessed August 20, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yoko-Ono. 

Thackara, Tess. “When John Lennon and Yoko Ono Invited the World into Bed with Them.” Artsy. September 25, 2018. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-john-lennon-yoko-ono-invited-bed. 

“Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece explained.” Phaidon. Accessed August 20, 2019. https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/may/18/yoko-ono-s-cut-piece-explained/.