News of the April 1, 2015, passing of Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon’s first wife, prompted thoughts for me of his second wife, a woman I can't seem to shake.
I've bumped into her or her work on both coasts and overseas, so for someone not her age, I know way more than your average Gen Xer need know about Yoko Ono.
I'm talking about Yoko Ono the artist, who I didn't understand was an artist the first time I encountered her in person.
I'm talking about Yoko Ono the artist, who I didn't understand was an artist the first time I encountered her in person.
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| YES Yoko Ono exhibition catalog cover |
My theatrically-inclined friend stretched her arms out in front of her, clasped her hands together, then dramatically jerked them up above her head as she voiced, “Yoko!” in a sing-song tone. It was the playful silliness of a coed. Neither of us actually believed the woman approaching us was the famous widow of John Lennon. Until we walked directly past her. Oops. Fortunately, Ms. Ono didn’t dignify my pal’s street performance with a response.
Nearly 20 years later, I was working as a newspaper arts reporter in the Bay Area when an exhibition of Yoko Ono’s work came to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I couldn’t not cover the show. The conceptual, often interactive, art pieces -- and serious philosophies behind them -- proved unexpectedly fascinating. In one, a white telephone perched on a gallery wall would occasionally ring. Whatever museum-goer happened to answer would be treated to a series of queries from the artist herself.
As I learned more about Ono’s personal biography -- born into a wealthy Japanese banking family, she originally studied classical music and, later, philosophy -- I gained new respect for the woman behind the icon. The actual question I posed during the press conference eludes me, but I recall feeling tickled when I got to speak directly to this 20th-century pop culture legend.
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| "Ceiling Painting" by Yoko Ono (Photo by Oded Löbl © Yoko Ono) |
My Yoko Ono encounters came back to me anew during a spring 2014 trip to Bilbao, Spain. The one thing I knew about Bilbao before visiting is that while in town one must go to the Guggenheim museum, as famous for the sinuous lines of its titanium-surfaced architecture as for the adventurous contemporary artwork on display. Ironically, when I arrived at the landmark European museum I’d looked forward to exploring for years, the featured artist was none other than the American artist Ms. Ono.
Several pieces on display were familiar, including "Ceiling Painting (Yes Painting)" -- the white ladder leading to a magnifying glass and the ultimate word of affirmation, “yes” -- that helped pique the young John Lennon’s ardour for her. I’d seen it and other works long before at SFMOMA. Yoko Ono’s playfully serious -- or is that seriously playful? -- artwork is too thought-provoking to keep to myself, so I’m sharing below the 2002 story I wrote about her SFMOMA 40-year retrospective, “Yes Yoko Ono.”
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| Yoko, Jullian, Sean and Cynthia Lennon (AP/Photo/John Bellissimmo) |
By the way, after an understandably rocky start to the relationship between the two former Mrs. Lennons -- John, after all, left Cynthia for Yoko -- I found it touching to learn that in later years the two women developed a close relationship. In a tribute to Cynthia in Rolling Stone magazine, Yoko says Cynthia “embodied love and peace.”
June 28, 2002 (Originally published in the Oakland Tribune/ANG Newspapers)
'Yes Yoko Ono' traces flow of artist's career
By Monique Beeler
STAFF WRITER
FORGET what you think you know about Yoko Ono. It's probably wrong.
Long maligned as a musical hack and an ear-wrenching singer, the public was
quick to dismiss her as uniformly untalented. Her experimental style and
high-pitched voice understandably won few fans among pop music consumers. But
it was unfair to reject her artwork out of hand.
As a leading figure in Fluxus, the Latin word for flowing, Ono created playful
performances and objects grounded in a philosophy that has influenced
cutting-edge artists for decades. Fluxus was an avant-garde 1960s art movement
that promoted living art and anti-art and opposed artistic tradition and
anything that smacked of professionalism in art.
As one critic observes, Ono and other Fluxus artists encourage viewers to
"contemplate the magic of the ordinary, as well as to comprehend the
ordinariness of the seemingly profound."
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| Yoko Ono (Chronicle/Penni Gladstone) |
During a news conference last week at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
a member of the audience asked Ono about the difficulty of being accepted as a
woman artist in the 1960s.
Ono, sporting spiky blond hair and gold-tinted glasses, says she didn't let a
lack of mass acceptance discourage her personally or professionally.
"It's not the women artists who suffered, because we enjoyed creating and knew
it was connected to the universe," she says in a soft, no-ill-will-intended
tone. "But if you could not allow yourself to open up to it, that was your
loss."
If you missed out on the magic in the past, make up for past losses and
embrace the work of this philosopher-artist at "Yes Yoko Ono," a 40-year
retrospective on display through Sept. 8 at SFMOMA.
Born into a prominent Tokyo banking family in 1933, Ono's privileged
background included private schools and intensive training in classical and
traditional German and Italian music. When she enrolled at Gakushuin
University in 1952, she was the first female philosophy student. Ono later
left to join her family in New York, where she was drawn to the art scene in
lower Manhattan.
Not surprisingly, her interests in philosophy and art initially led her to
create idea-centered works. Early Fluxus artists experimented with making
event scores, a kind of concise script laying out a series of mental or
physical activities for the artist or viewer to perform. Ono called this type
of work "instructions."
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| "Four Spoons" by Yoko Ono |
In 1964, Ono self-published "Grapefruit," a set of 150 instructions in English
and Japanese, considered a landmark book in Conceptual art.
Several examples of Ono's instructions are included in "Yes Yoko Ono,"
including "Instructions for Paintings" (1962), a series of 22 framed pieces.
In each, a few lines of neat Japanese calligraphy dominates the center of the
paper. An English translation of one work reads: "Look through a phone book
from the/beginning to end thoroughly./List all the combinations of figures/you
remember right after that. -- 1961 Winter."
Much of Ono's art encourages the participation of gallery visitors. The famous
"Ceiling Painting (Yes Painting)" (1966), which led to her first meeting with
John Lennon, is on display at SFMOMA. The age and frailty of the piece,
however, prevents museum patrons from climbing up the white ladder to grasp a
magnifying glass hanging from a framed sheet of paper to view the tiny printed
word, "yes."
Poignant allusions to Lennon surface in several pieces. In spring 1970, Ono
and Lennon held a joint show. In the window of the exhibition rested four
spoons on a four-slotted spoon rest. The work was titled "Three Spoons."
The current show includes "Four Spoons," consisting of three spoons displayed
in a spoon rest made for four, a subtle reference to the earlier piece and
John's loss.
In characteristic Ono style, what visitors get out of her show is up to them,
she says.
"I can't control what people think," she says. "I'm hoping some people get
encouraged and inspired from it. It's a world where you can get inspired by
the drop of an apple."
A self-described workaholic who has continued producing art throughout her
life, Ono claims she doesn't take her humor-infused work too seriously.
"In the world there are so many serious issues," she says. "It's nice to have
some fun together."
Hours at SFMOMA, 151 Third St. in San Francisco, are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily,
except Wednesdays; and until 9 p.m. Thursdays. Admission is $6 to $10, free
for children younger than 13. Admission is free on the first Tuesday of the
month; half price from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursdays.
Call (415) 357-4000 or check www.sfmoma.org.
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