While many may only know of Yoko Ono as John Lennon’s wife during their much publicised relationship in the 1970s, the much respected artist -now 91 years old- is a pioneer in her own field who's particularly known for her conceptual art pieces. Prescriptively engaging and endlessly playful, Tate Modern’s new exhibition is a retrospective on all of Yoko Ono’s major works throughout her life.
Born in Tokyo in 1933, Ono moved to New York in 1952 with her family and spends most of her life in Japan, the US, and the UK. She’s a polymath: an artist, filmmaker, singer, poet, and pacifist who participates in performance art throughout her storied career. Indeed, Tate’s exhibition is littered with video footage of Ono’s past public performances. Ono’s Cut Piece demonstration in 1964 for example, elicits a visceral reaction of discomfort as the video shows the clothes Ono’s wearing being gradually sheared off by exhibition visitors. One participating audience member in particular, incessantly cuts off Ono’s undergarments and bra, leaving her visibly distressed and exposed.
The beating heart of the entire exhibition however, is Ono’s Instructions for Paintings (1961-62), a series of creative prompts that may have been blueprints to those “One Drawing A Day” notebooks that now take permanent residence in art galleries and bookshops. One set is handwritten in Japanese by Ono’s first husband Toshi Ichiyanagi, while another -Typescripts for Grapefruit (1963-64) are a set of typewritten cards.
Both collections are displayed in verse form, and these instructions -as far as “instructions” go- are often mischievous in their elusiveness:
’Draw line with yourself.
Go on drawing until you disappear.’ (1964)
'Put your shadows together until
they become one.'
One instruction on the other hand, might have been more tempting to try if not for the Covid-19 pandemic:
‘Stay in a room for a month.
Do not speak.
Do not see.
Whisper in the end of the month.’ (1963)
These conceptual art pieces are designed to be realised by Ono’s audience members in their minds and/or in the real world. The art therefore, is the idea itself. But does Ono create the artwork by conjuring up the idea for us or do we, the audience, create the art by imagining it in our heads? This style of conceptual art that Ono pioneered is elusive in nature as we are forced to ask to age old question: what even is art?
One glaring theme that emerges from Ono’s prescriptive pieces however, is that the ideas she presents are heavily concerned with tangible objects and physical sensation. Her Instructions for Paintings are littered with objects- canvases, rocks, hammers, nails, newspapers, photographs, typewriters, shoes, and dresses. Senses are also thrown into sharp relief as we are told to conjure up smells, the tick of a clock, the feel of the wind.
And there is a whiff of Bill Brown’s thing theory about it. In Bag Piece (1965) -in which visitors are encouraged to interact with each other under thick black blankets- Ono posits that ‘By being in a bag, you show the other side of you, which is nothing to do with race, nothing to do with sex […] And you can talk soul to soul’. But doesn’t the colour, texture, and heaviness of the blanket then become the focus -and impediment- of the intended experience? As soon as we’re freed from our identifiable characteristics, we’re now confined to the “thingness” of the weighty object we’re under, forced to acknowledge the veil obscuring our visions and movements.
Thankfully, visitors soon get first-hand experience to how Ono’s elusive and often esoteric logic to art are realised: dotted around the exhibition are Ono’s previous Instructions brought to life, demanding our participation. There are graphite pens for visitors to draw their own shadows on a wall, nails to hammer into a canvas, notes to write to our mothers. In these interactive pieces dotted around the exhibition, visitors could carry out Ono’s notes that by now have burrowed into their heads. And it’s a deliciously cathartic experience, finally being able to bring her instructions to life.
Experience Tate Modern’s Yoko Ono exhibition for yourself before 1st September 2024.
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