オノ・ヨーコ

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. Her father Ono Eisuke repeatedly moved back and forth between Japan and the US for work, and she grew up in both countries. In 1939 she attended the newly established Jiyu Gakuen preschool in Tokyo, where she was given musical education based on the principle of absolute pitch and learned to compose music to the ticking of a clock. There she had early contact with a way of perceiving music that involved no distinction between art and life. She learned the piano from early childhood and later had voice training, acquiring a wide vocal range and taking an interest in composition. However, after graduating from Gakushuin Girls’ Senior High School where she was active in the drama club, she entered the philosophy department of Gakushuin University. In 1952, she wrote a Japanese text titled “The Soundless Music” and created “An Invisible Flower”, consisting of English text and illustrations. The same year, while in her first year of university, she moved with her family to the suburbs of New York City and studied poetry and music at Sarah Lawrence College. From 1956 onward she lived in Manhattan with the composer Ichiyanagi Toshi, and in 1960 she rented a loft on Chambers Street where she organized a series of events with the composer La Monte Young. Over a span of six months, 10 or more events were held, with musicians including Mayuzumi Toshirō and David Tudor performing and such figures as John Cage, Isamu Noguchi, and Katsura Yuki in the audience. In 1961 her solo concert “Works by Yoko Ono” was held at Carnegie Hall, and she had the solo exhibition “Paintings & Drawings of Yoko Ono” at Manhattan’s AG Gallery run by George Maciunas, who would later lead the Fluxus group. After spending a decade more or less coinciding with her twenties in the US, Ono returned to Japan in 1962, and presented “Works of Yoko Ono” at Sogetsu Kaikan in Tokyo. The program, which consisted of mutually interactive events in a darkened hall (such as “Audience Piece”, in which the performer stares at the audience) and an exhibition of artworks in the lobby, was an extension of her activities in the US the previous year. Among the works was “Instructions for Paintings”, a set of more than 20 sheets of paper with only handwritten text intended to constitute paintings without images, with the premise that readers would mentally construct and imagine paintings and subsequently take action on that basis. This approach, analogous to presenting written instructions in place of sheet music in a musical score, linked visual art to music, in which the presence of the performer is required to complete the work. Furthermore, the fictive premises of instructions such as “Go on transforming a square canvas in your head until it becomes a circle” encouraged people to view everyday objects in a fresh light through the power of imagination, a concept central to Ono’s creative practice. In 1964 she privately published (under the name Wunternaum Press, Tokyo) “Grapefruit” (now in collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York [MoMA]), a compilation of over 150 instructions in English, a third of which are also translated into Japanese, which she had written over several years. This illustrates Ono’s transition from the paradigm of unique handmade paintings to that of reproducible printed multiples, in other words, a shift towards emphasizing concepts and their expansion over objects per se. “Grapefruit”, published before she once again departed for the US, included scores for events in Tokyo’s urban spaces, which were rapidly changing ahead of the 1964 Olympics, as well as in galleries. Through her involvement with programs at Sogetsu Art Center and events staged by Nam June Paik and the art collective Hi-Red Center, Ono also forged connections between Japanese and American artists. During this period she presented “Morning Piece”, in which she sold fragments of milk bottles with future dates from the rooftop of her home, simultaneously manifesting the dream of holding onto future time and seemingly critiquing the circulation of works of art as market commodities. This illustrates the multiple layers of meaning and humor infusing even Ono’s humble pieces. At the 1964 summer event “Yoko Ono Farewell Concert: Strip Tease Show”, where “Grapefruit” was for sale in the lobby, Ono staged “Cut Piece”, a performance where she sat still on stage and audience members were invited to cut off pieces of her clothing and keep them as souvenirs. She rendered visible various forms of violence in which bystanders become accomplices, and illuminated relationships between the individual and the collective. As a participatory piece involving her own body and questioning the relationship between performer and audience, it was a landmark in the history of performance art. Notably, when the piece was included in an American reissue of Ono’s collected works (published by Simon & Schuster) in 1970, the instructions stated that the performer did not necessarily need to be female. After returning to New York, Ono participated in performances such as “Sky Piece to Jesus Christ” (1965) with Fluxus members, produced experimental film works (shot by Jonas Mekas), and presented her works at venues including the Judson Memorial Church. In 1966 she traveled to London to perform at the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), and subsequently had solo shows there in the autumn of that year (at Indica Gallery) and the following autumn (at Lisson Gallery). From 1968 onwards, she collaborated more frequently with John Lennon on events, films, and music releases. In their 1969 Christmas campaign “War Is Over! If You Want It”, Ono and Lennon delivered this message on billboards and posters in 12 cities worldwide at the height of the Vietnam War, envisioning a global pacifist network also connected through media such as radio. In parallel with activities that conveyed messages to massive audiences in urban spaces and at Plastic Ono Band concerts, Ono showcased the development of her conceptual practice, including new works like the installation “Amaze”, in the 1971 retrospective “This Is Not Here” at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Meanwhile, that same year she released the booklet-style work “Museum of Modern (F)art” (now in collections including MoMA), which took the form of a catalogue for a fictitious exhibition at MoMA, advertised in newspapers and distributed via mail order. The booklet contained over 100 postcards featuring the ambiguous motif of a fly, which she was also exploring in music albums and film works at the time, freely buzzing around the museum interior and urban spaces. The word “[F]art” in the title hints at a critique of the museum’s approach, including its failure to adequately exhibit female artists. In addition to this criticism of institutions, the postcards also notably feature locations grappling with urban issues such as environmental degradation and rampant redevelopment. These concerns were also reflected in Ono’s participation in the “One Step Festival” concert in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture in 1974, a decade after her last appearance in Japan, motivated by her agreement with the event’s goal of considering the environment. While Ono’s contributions to Conceptualism and Fluxus were the focus of international attention at events such as Documenta 8 in 1972 and the 1990 Venice Biennale, broader interest in her wide-ranging creative activities has surged with retrospectives at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, 1989) and the Japan Society (New York, 2000). In addition to the works in these exhibitions, Ono has continued producing pieces such as “Cricket Memories” (1998) and “A Hole” (2009) that deepen her exploration of the intersection of micro-level violence, towards individual members of familial and social circles, and macro-level wars and mass violence plaguing the world throughout history. Ono deploys language and the body to encourage thought and action in others, offering opportunities for social transformation through person-to-person communication. Above all, her works negate boundaries between genres and regions, and build on the fictive framework of “instructions” to propose fresh perspectives on the everyday and our environment. Constantly affirming the power of the individual imagination, her approach is continuously being updated to this day in 2020s works such as “Imagine Peace” (2022). (Seki Naoko / Translated by Christopher Stephens) (Published online: 2024-03-06)