The exhibition explores some of the most discussed artworks and performances as Cut Piece realized from ‘64
The Tate Modern exposes more than six decades of Yoko Ono’s career, in a solo exhibition that crosses the milestones of her life. “Music of the mind”, until September 1st, is an opportunity to know her thought, through conceptual, performative, film and musical works. There are also some activist projects, which testify the commitment to peace and the environment, characteristic of her production. The relationship with John Lennon and the intensity of it, judged negatively by most Beatles fans for the influence exerted on the dissolution of the band, launched in the 60s the popularity of the Japanese artist naturalized American, until then limited to New York intellectual circles.
FROM NOBLE BLOOD, SHE WAS BORN IN TOKYO IN '33 AND SHE ATTENDED THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS SCHOOL IN THE COUNTRY TOGETHER WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE EMPEROR
Among the first members of the fluxus collective, the still active avant-garde network was born with the aim of “promoting a revolutionary wave in art, promoting the living art, the anti-art” (George Maciunas, fluxus manifesto, ‘63), since 1969 she records many duo albums with Lennon, with whom she will remain linked to him until the day of the musician’s murder, on December 8th, 1980, in front of their home, the Dakota Building, one of the oldest and most exclusive buildings in Manhattan. Husband and wife, through problems with drugs, justice and an over-the-top lifestyle - Ono’s current assets, around 700 million dollars, has recently refreshed with the recognition, at her request, of co-authorship of the song Imagine - become protagonists, for years, of famous non-violent protests. In bed-in against the war in Vietnam, they will invite journalists to film their honeymoon in the presidential suite of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.
HUSBAND AND WIFE, THROUGH PROBLEMS WITH DRUGS, JUSTICE AND AN OVER-THE-TOP LIFESTYLE, BECOME PROTAGONISTS OF NON-VIOLENT PROTESTS
From noble blood and born in Tokyo in ‘33, Ono moved to California at the age of two, following her father in the Yasuda Bank, founded by her maternal grandfather. She was back to Japan several times, where with the emperor’s children attended the most prestigious school in the country: Gakushuin school. She survives World War II by moving to the countryside, to escape the bombings that mark her adolescence, before returning to the United States, where she will enroll at Sarah Lawrence College and take part in the cultural fabric of the Big Apple.
THE INTENSITY OF THE LOVE AFFAIR WITH JOHN LENNON LAUNCHES HER POPULARITY IN THE 60S
The London exhibition explores some of the most discussed artworks and performances, from ‘64 Cut Piece, a happening where she invites those participants to cut her clothes, to the provocative Film No.4 (Bottoms) of ‘66, a sequence of close-ups of buttocks, to promote a pacifist petition, to Wish Tree, which since 1996 has seen the artist direct the planting of trees to which the public can hang their desires in the form of paper messages.
