5/17/2023 0 Comments The spectacle yoko ono disruptingOno’s collaborations with her late husband, Beatles legend John Lennon, including Bed-In (1969), a weeklong antiwar protest in their honeymoon suite, boldly communicated her commitment to social justice. At turns poetic, humorous, unsettling, and idealistic, Ono’s early instruction pieces anticipated her later work, such as Cut Piece (1964), a performance in which people were invited to cut away portions of her clothing Sky Machine (1966), a sculpture that speaks to her environmental concerns and To See the Sky (2015), a spiral staircase installed beneath a skylight that visitors were invited to ascend in order to contemplate the sky. The instructions range from feasible to improbable, often relying upon the reader’s imagination to complete the work. In 1964, she compiled more than 150 of her instructions in her groundbreaking artist’s book, Grapefruit. Though easily overlooked, the work radically questioned the division between art and the everyday. Painting to Be Stepped On (1960–61), for example, invited people to tread upon a piece of canvas placed directly on the floor, either physically or in their minds. Ono’s earliest works were often based on instructions that she communicated to the public in verbal or written form. Over the next decade she lived in New York, Tokyo, and London, greatly influencing the international development of Fluxus and Conceptual art. Born in Tokyo in 1933, she moved with her family to New York in the mid-1950s and enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College. Since emerging onto the international art scene in the early 1960s, Yoko Ono has made profound contributions to visual art, performance, filmmaking, and experimental music. “We can evolve rather than revolt, come together, rather than claim independence, and feel rather than think.”
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