Associated with the Fluxus movement and an avant-garde inspired artist, renowned artist Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo, Japan on February 18, 1933. The Fluxus movement was founded by George Maciunas and characterized as an association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists that developed in the early 1960s. However, Ono chose to work as an independent artist and just claimed that she had simple interest in the movement; was not a member of it. Her famous marriage to Beatle John Lennon, Ono has made quite a name for herself in the performance and conceptual art world. While living in NY with her family, Ono attended Sarah Lawrence College where she fell in love with the artistic world and became a follower of La Monte Young, a minimalist composer and a follower of performance art. It was here at Sarah Lawrence that Ono was introduced to Bohemian freedom and would soon charge her peace activist lifestyle.
Ono’s early work can be described as performance and conceptual art. For example, Ono had a gallery opening where paintings were set on the floor and were not officially complete until the viewers walked over them and smudged, smeared, and made footprints on the paintings. Characterized as an explorer of her time, Ono’s performance work is still well known today. Her very famous piece, “Cut Piece”, was performed in 1964 at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. This performance consisted of Ono, loosely fitting clothes, a stage, a pair of scissors, and an eager and willing seated audience. This piece was described as a “performance in Tokyo by walking on stage and casually kneeling on the floor in a draped garment. Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting until she was naked.” Ono used her performances to solicit help from others to help her form a clearer self-identity. An article from the Media Art Net explained that “Cut Piece entailed a disrobing, a denouement of the reciprocity between exhibitionism and scopic desires, between victim and assailant, between sadist and masochist.”
Ono’s early exploration of performance work, was during a time where series and more abstract performances were not as popular and readily available for the public. Ono began to get out the point of performance work though her book titled “Grapefruit” which was a book that was made up of several different groupings of instructions “to be completed in the mind of the reader.” These ready-made instructions she included in the book became a good basis for a solid amount of her performance work that would come in the future. She actually had a show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY (one of her instruction based pieces) and because her fan following was getting larger by the day, the show was almost closed due to a fan riot.
On June 6, 2009 Yoko Ono and John Baldessari will be awarded the prestigious Golden Lion at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009 for Lifetime Achievement. In the article Ono is explained as one who “shaped our understanding of art and its relationship to the world in which we live.” Also, a few years ago, “Yes Yoko Ono” her First American Retrospective” showed from October 18, 2000 to January 14, 2001 at the Japan Society Gallery.
Ono is described as a performance artist who uses her art to communicate her internal suffering with her audience. Her reasoning and emotions behind her work remind me of what goes into my performances. My performances encompass something personal going on in my life and then are translated metaphorically through performance art. I feel that I can learn a good amount more from her and her large role that she still plays in the contemporary art world.
Wikipedia Article
Article: Venice Biennale
Media Art Net Article
"Yes Yoko Ono" Article
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