🎨Yoko Ono

Ideas are the art!

An active advocate for world peace, a counterweight to popular culture, a genius in the Art of Contrast, Yoko Ono created Art that challenged the Status Quo, that cast a light on the elements of commercialism plaguing art history.

Counter culture has ridden along in cultures wake since, the get go. It's the nature of life.

For many centuries making and or seeing art was an isolated goodness reserved for the wealthy.

The counter culture of Yoko Ono challenged the viewer to participate in the process. This challenged the passive uninformed gaze of the ultra rich- that did nothing for the Great Work they had access to. How did Ms Ono come by her avant-garde approach to making and appreciating art?

FLUXUS 1950-60S

“Fluxus is Fluxus, Fluxus is what you make of it.” -Yoko Ono

The Surrealist movement brought about after WW1, was the offshoot that gave birth to performance Art, art and video, and so much more that we in 2024 use and enjoy without realizing how avant-garde these activities were before the 1950s.

I was looking up information on the pre cursor to Surrealism, the DADA group when I came across the Fluxus movement, to which Yoko Ono was at one point an adjacent participant, much admired by Maciunas.

Her earliest works were titled, INSTRUCTIONS. The earliest DIY, presented as Fine Art you might say. One such piece was quite literally instructions of a art work you would create on the spot in your mind, without an example of her idea of how it should look.

Arthur C. Danto is quoted in an article by the Fluxus Museum.

[please read the full article https://fluxusmuseum.org/holding-page-for-yoko-ono/ ]

“At the Indica Gallery, Ono exhibited Painting to Hammer a Nail. A small panel hung high on the wall, with a hammer hanging from its lower left corner. Beneath it was a chair, with–I believe–a small container of nails. If you wanted to comply with the implicit instructions, you took a nail, mounted the somewhat rickety chair, grasped the hammer and drove the nail in. At the opening, Ono recalls, ‘A person came and asked if it was alright to hammer a nail in the painting. I said it was alright if he pays 5 shillings. Instead of paying the 5 shillings, he asked if it was alright to hammer an imaginary nail in. That was John Lennon. I thought, so I met a guy who plays the same game I played.’ Lennon said, ‘And that’s when we really met. That’s when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it and, as they say in all the interviews we do, the rest is history.’”

Fluxus valued the process over the product, they embraced anti-commercial, and sometimes anti Art- Art, they pioneered performance Art in their way.

This background in counter culture art forms paved the way for her performance pieces both solo & with her late husband John Lennon.

The song, “Give Peace a chance” was performed by the couple and friends during their Montreal Canada BED-IN.

Oko and Lennon chose to use their celebrity status and the public interest in their then recent nuptials and staged a week long protest “in a bed” in their hotel.

The idea is the Art

Audience participation is a feature in Ms. Ono's body of work.

I feel the modern world has embraced “anti-art” and made it culturally relevant. What Yoko started makes a lot of sense to the minds of today. Not so much in 1950-and 60s.

Yoko Ono's Wishing Tree Is the Inspiration for the second class this month.

But considering Yoko Ono's ground breaking performance pieces, I welcome you to embrace your inner Aquarius and reflect on a Act of Art that would engage the people in your space.

■ Create a Reel or Tiktok video of yourself as a performance piece.

■ as an art installation in your own home or if you have access to a public space such as, School bulletin board or community events board, you can create an interactive art installation.

This Wishing Tree below will be done later this month! I am excited to share it with you!

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Article Sources:

●https://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/yoko-ono-music-of-the-mind

●https://www.vulture.com/2015/05/yoko-ono-one-woman-show.html

●https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono

●https://fluxusmuseum.org/holding-page-for-yoko-ono/

●https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_Tree_(Yoko_Ono_art_series)

The Wishing Tree inspired by Yoko Ono. Created by Maja Larson 2024

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