Artist and activist, pioneer of conceptual and participatory art, performance art, and experimental music and film, celebrated widow of Beatles founder John Lennon, and committed advocate for world peace, Yoko Ono is the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Modern in London. From her Instruction Paintings, which transform the artwork into a work in progress, to her Wish Tree, her "unfinished objects," and her Sky TV, some 200 works by the artist, born in Tokyo in 1933, are on display.

“Listen to your heartbeat,” “Walk through every puddle in the city,” “TOUCH,” “FLY”… Strange injunctions indeed, these written instructions designed for visitors usually confined to the role of “viewer”… Transgressing the rules of the museum experience, these “instruction pieces,” conceived in the mid-1950s by Yoko Ono, transformed the spectator into an actor. Called upon to experiment, imagine, even create or complete the work, the viewer might be led to “construct a painting in [their] head” or to
hammering nails into a painting…

In 1961, at her first solo exhibition in New York, she invited visitors to walk on her canvas (Painting to be trampled) or to look at it in the dark… These famous Instruction Paintings completely redefined the artwork: no longer a finished object to contemplate, but a participatory work in progress, a modular process, a work in progress…: like a musical score, the instructions given by the artist are open to all interpretations. “This allows the work to exist in infinite variations that the artist herself cannot foresee,” explained Yoko Ono, for whom art, less a creation, must be an experiment and a sharing.

Completely revolutionary in its time, this conception of the artwork opened up new perspectives that, far from being exhausted, are still being explored today. A radical body of work if ever there was one, even more radical than that of the most iconoclastic members of the Fluxus group (to which it is generally linked), Yoko Ono's protean art was, in fact, at the forefront of the avant-garde. It is to this innovative art that Tate Modern pays tribute today.

A PIONEERING WORK

Among the key works exhibited was Cut Piece in 1964: kneeling on stage in the traditional Japanese female posture, impassive, the artist invited spectators to cut pieces of her clothing with scissors. Staging the vulnerability of the body, violated intimacy, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and the power dynamics and violence inherent in human relationships, this performance had a profound impact on the art world. In 1966, her Apple, placed on a pedestal and destined to decompose until its possible rebirth through the seeds, caused a sensation.

Similarly, in the same year, his film Bottoms, which was censored, consisted of filming a succession of moving bare buttocks "in place of signatures on a peace petition," clearly demonstrating the humor that pervades many of his works. This humor is always imbued with poetry, allowing a certain gravity to emerge. This is evident in the objects cut in half in his Half-A-Room (1967), his all-white Chess Set, or his Sky TV (1966) broadcasting a live sky filmed in real time…

“YOKO ONO – MUSIC OF THE MIND”
TATE MODERN
BANKSIDE, LONDON (ENGLAND)
FROM FEBRUARY 15 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 2024
TATE.ORG.UK