Yoko Ono and John Lennon, "War Is Over," 1969.
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The One and Only Ono
"Yoko Ono had an art presence before she met Lennon...her instruction pieces were prescient."
By John Perreault
INSTRUCTION: DESCRIBE
Yoko Ono's first major retrospective, at Japan Society through January 14, covers everything from the early, really early, instruction paintings and events; through the participatory, conceptual objects; through her pro-peace works with John Lennon; films ("Fly", a fly crawling around the naked body of a woman; "Bottoms", an anthology bare bottoms walking; and "Rape" in which the camera aggressively follows a woman picked at random); through the bronze works and the recent installations and drawings.
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INSTRUCTION: MEE PRECONCEPTIONS HEAD-ON
The exhibition will prove to all that Ono had an art presence before she met Lennon. The pre-Lennon work is original, powerful, was and continues to be influential. Her instruction pieces, whether paintings, events, or mind events were prescient. Of course, the minute Ono met Lennon---he climbed that ladder and saw the word YES in "Ceiling Painting" (1966) and they fell in love over a bit of banter about "Painting to Hammer a Nail In", at the Indica Gallery in London in 1966---fame had to be one of Ono's materials. She could either be crushed by it or use it for other ends. At that point in time, the Beatles were indeed more famous than Jesus, as Lennon had quipped when they first came to the U.S., and Lennon was probably the most beloved of all. The Ono/Lennon billboard "The War is Over If You Want It", their Montreal and Amsterdam bed-ins and their naked-as-two jaybirds Virgins album cover reached the world. Mass media became an art material. Two poets met in media space. She and Lennon used pop fame to make political artworks. And then of course Lennon was shot.
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INSTRUCTION: REMEMBER. INCLUDE YOURSELF. USE THE FIRST PERSON PRONOUN.
The path not taken: I was a performer in Ono's Chamber Street Loft in 1961. This now legendary series of pre-Fluxus evenings, was put together by the seminal minimalist composer La Monte Young. I was one of several performers in a piece by poet Jackson MacLow. MacLow, who was very chance-oriented, had several pieces in which we interpreted graph paper scores by using the entire loft as a musical instrument and articulating, in some instances, the various syllables laid out for our interpretation. I remember Ono. She was quiet. But I do not remember the now famous "Painting to be Stepped On" that, disappointedly, Marcel Duchamp did not step on.
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INSTRUCTION: LOOK
Here are some of the things I thought: These calligraphic instruction paintings are really beautiful ("Painting in Three Stanzas": 'Let a vine grow. Water every day. The first stanza—till the vine spreads/ The second stanza—till the vine withers. The third stanza—till the wall vanishes).' This was done in 1962 with the Japanese calligraphy done by Ono's then husband Ichiyanagi Toshi. That time has made the works look more lovely than was probably first intended is interesting, but the salient point here is that Ono, ahead of the yet-to-be-labeled minimalist aesthetic, left her "hand" out of the art equation. She apparently couldn't find a Japanese typewriter. Taking a leaf from Duchamp’s notebook ("Use a Rembrandt as an ironing board.") she pushed art just a little bit further into the imaginary and the cognitive , thus presaging conceptual art.
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INSTRUCTION: PARTICIPATE.
Wrote "peace" on the tag provided and tied it to Ono's "Wish Tree" (1996) in the lobby.
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INSTRUCTION: READ.
You actually have to do this since so many of the works involve texts of one sort or another. If you don't read, you don't see. The real question is whether or not you can "get" the art without the explanatory wall texts. Start by looking at/reading the exhibit without reading the wall texts. Go around a second time and this time read the wall texts. Does it make a difference? Go home and read the enormous catalogue. The catalogue gives a full view of Ono's art, with and without interpretations. It is so thorough that even list my 1989 Ono interview in The Voice. Yes, critics notice such things.
Theoretically, since most of Ono's artworks are ideas as much as things or rather than things, this tome, this instant collectable (with a CD of three new songs), could suffice. Nevertheless, there is more tension when you see the instructions, the phrases, the "objects" in a sacred art space, when you see ideas actualized. There is more of a shock to the system. Art out in the public arena is more social, and Ono’s art is social as well as meditative and private. It is important to see and feel other people's reactions.
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INSTRUCTION: DREAM
Did you dream of any of the artworks? Make up a dream: This is a dream about Ono's all-white chess sets. I was playing chess with someone who was wearing an all-white ski mask. I hate chess. I was cheating. When I got up to go to the toilet, I caught my own reflection in a mirror and realized that I was also wearing an all-white ski mask.
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INSTRUCTION: CHOOSE.
If you had all the money in the world, which artwork would you buy? And why?
"Half-A-Room" (1967), because it is a major piece: half a painting, half a cabinet, half a chair…half a room. It is about your better half, about half a loaf is better than none, half-time, the halves and the half-nots.
Actually it may really be about objects and their Platonic, mental images. You cannot see half a chair without seeing the whole one. I am also reminded that Ono studied Existentialism as a young philosophy student: existence precedes essence. Objects create mental images. So the work may not be neo-Platonic after all.
Or I could go for "Cleaning Piece" (1996-97) or---not in the exhibit---her "Ex It" (1997) installation involving coffins with trees growing out of them and the sound of birds.
But there is something else to think about: I already "own" many of the works, because I remember the words. Some of Ono's best works are not saleable objects, such as this 1960 piece: "Use your blood to paint. Keep painting until you faint (a)/ Keep painting until you die (b)."
Are there any pieces I would sign?
I would sign: "Lighting Piece", 1955: 'Light a match and watch till it goes out.' Also: "Cut Piece", 1964.(Ono allows people to come up from the audience and cut off her clothes with scissors).
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INSTRUCTION: EVALUATE
In room after room, you see artworks that time has turned elegant, for instance, "Glass Keys to Open the Skies" (1967) or "Three Spoons" (1967). Yet the work is still provocative. It is not that you will question them as art---since Dada is the air we breathe---it is instead that you will question your relationship to art. Everything is white. Even the "Blue Room." Everything is only half there. You have to fill in the blanks. You have to use your imagination. If you can't, you won't see the art.
Ono makes art in the tradition of the Japanese scholar-poet. Some of the best pieces are tentative, poetic, off-balance, diffident. They exist beyond media categories. One is never sure if they are sculpture, music, theater, or poetry. Ono has shown the way for the artist who will not settle down into proscribed categories, and thus, metaphorically, can lead the way for all.
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