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"IMAGINE PEACE badge" (2007)
by Yoko Ono
badges: 1 3/8 inches diameter
Private collection of Mikihiko Hori
" IMAGINE PEACE
Yoko Ono, among the earliest of artists working in the genre known
Conceptual Arts, has consistently employed the theme of peace
and used the medium of advertising in her work since the early 1960s.
Yoko Ono Imagine Peace Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace
explores these aspects of her work over the course of more than
forty years.
Three recent pieces - Imagine Peace (Map) (2003/2007); Onochord
(2003/2007); and Imagine Peace Tower (2006/2007) - offer gallery
visitors to an opportunity to participate individually and collectively
with the artist in the realization of work. Consider the world with
fresh eyes as you stamp the phrase "Imagine Peace" on the location
of your choice on maps provided for this purpose. Using postcards
provided send your wishes to the Imagine Peace
Tower in Reykjavik, where they will shine on with eternally more than
900,000 others. Or beam the message "I Love You" to one and all
using the Onochord flashlights. Take a flashlight and an Imagine
Peace button, the artist's gift to you, and carry the message out into the
world. As Ono has often observed, "the dream you dream alone is
just the dream, but the dream we dream together is reality."
The exhibition continues in nine locations with Imagine
Peace/Imaginate La Paz billboards across the San Antonio region.
YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace is made
possible by the generosity by Bjom's Audio Video-Home Theater, Colleen
Casey and Tim Maloney, Clear Channel Outdoor, Rick Liberto, Smothers
Foundation, and Twin Sisters Bakery & Cafe. "
" John & Yoko's Year of Peace (1969 - 70)
Ono's Imagine Peace project carries conceptual and formal
strategies the artist had employer from the earliest years of her
career, not only in her seminal solo works, but in her collaborations
with John Lennon. In 1965, she created works specifically for the
advertising pages of The New York Arts Calendar. Picking up from
her Instructions for Paintings, a 1962 exhibition at Tokyo's Sogetsu Art
Center in which she exhibited written texts on the gallery walls
designed to inspire viewers to create the described images in their
minds, Ono created purely conceptual exhibitions with her
Is Real Gallery works.
The theme of peace is also evident in works sush as White Chess Set,
recreated here as Play It By Trust (Garden Set version) (1966/2007).
Lennon's songwriting during this period had shifted from more
conventional themes of romantic love to grander anthems for the
Flower Power generation. The Baetles' worldwide satellite broadcast
of Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" in the summer of 1967 featured a
parade of signs with the word "love" in multiple languages.
The couple's most famous collaborative works, the Bed-Ins (1969)
and the War Is Over! campaign (1969 - 1970), were conceived as
elements of a large peace advertising campaign. The Bed-Ins took
advantage of the inordinate amount of press attention the couple
received by inviting the world press to their honeymoon suite where
they talked about peace! Ono told Penthouse magazine's Charles
Childs: "Many other people who are rich are using their money for
something they want. They promote soap, use advertising
propaganda, what have you. We intend to do the same."
In December of 1969, they launched their War Is Over! campaign, a
project that included billboards and posters in 11 cities of the world
simply declaring "War Is Over! If You Want It. Happy Christmas from
John & Yoko." As with Ono's earliest instruction pieces, viewers were
invited to transform their dreams into reality. Ono has explained,
"All my work is a form of wishing." "
YOKO ONO: IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace
September 26th - October 28th, 2007
UTSA Art Gallery / Department of Art and Art History
The University of Texas at San Antonio
After a week-long Bed-In for Peace in Montreal and a Peace conference at The University of Ottowa, John and Yoko visited Niagara Falls in Canada at 4pm on Wednesday 4 June 1969.
They were on their way to Toronto and then home to London.
On the same day (4 June 1969), the Beatles single “The Ballad Of John and Yoko” was released.
50 yılı aşkın bir süredir yayınlanan Pirelli takvimi sadece bir takım insana dağıtılan ve parayla satın alınamayan özel bir takvim.
Vertical Memory, 1997 (detail)
Set of 21 Iris prints with text plaques
Each 12 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches (31.7 x 49.5 cm)
Apr18-May31 2008, Tue-Sat 10am-6pm
Vertical Memory is one group of a series of Conceptual Photographs.
It's entering a dialogue with photography as a media.
Vertical Memory consists of 21 identical portraits with 21 different texts either all in English or all in Japanese.
It was created putting together photographs of my father, my husband, and my son. I selected photographs of them facing the same direction, overlapped them and morphed them.
From the moment I was born to the moment I will pass away, men have always been present in my life.
Every photo represents the man who was looking over me at a precise moment when I went through an important situation of my life.
And how much of my life I have spent, taken, lying down.
Vertical Memory
1997
Doctor I
I remember being born and looking into his eyes. He picked me up and slapped my bottom I screamed.
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Father
I was two-and-a-half when I arrived in San Francisco on a liner to meet him for the first time. He came on board, kissed my mother, and then looked at me looking up at him.
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Stranger
My mother was late in coming home to the hotel we had been staying at. I went in front of the elevator and waited for her. A man who came out of the elevator told me that I should not be standing there and he would help me find my mother. I remember him being very kind, but my mother got very upset about it all.
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Teacher
In our elementary school, he was always irritable and we girls were terribly scared of him. Later, he died of cancer of the stomach. “No wonder he was irritable. He was probably not a bad person,” commented my mother.
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Shosei (a young male assistant)
He had oily hands and a red face with a big grin and took me to school. I didn’t like him, so I would walk very fast. But he always caught up with me. I told my mother that I could go to school by myself. “You still don’t know how scary the world is, Yoko. A girl cannot go anywhere without an escort,” said my mother.
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Doctor II
During the war, I was sent to Nagano Prefecture with my younger brother, younger sister and a maid to avoid the bombing, He mad a few house calls when I became ill from malnutrition. One day, he told me to close my eyes as he examined me. I felt very uncomfortable. Suddenly, warm, wet lips were pressed on my mouth. I froze. As I opened my eyes I saw him looking down at me.
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Doctor III
He had one tooth missing and smelled of alcohol. He took my appendix out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Doctor IV
He took my tonsils out so that I wouldn’t keep catching cold.
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Doctor V
He was a psychiatrist who told me my problem was that I was not dating.
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Doctor VI
He took my wisdom teeth out.
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Doctor VII
He performed a few abortions.
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Doctor VIII
He delivered my son and daughter.
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Artist I (X111)
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Artist II (XIV)
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Artist III (XV)
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Artist IV (XVI)
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Artist V (XVII)
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Artist VI (XVIII)
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Priest
He was called in to perform the last rites and suggested I give my last confession. I refused.
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Doctor IX
He closed my eyes. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” I said. “You can’t close my mind’s eye!”
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Attendant
I saw a dark hole in a shape of an arch. I saw my body being slid into it. It looked like the arch I came out at birth, I thought. I asked where it was going to take me to. The guy stood there looking at me without saying a word, as I lay down. It all seemed very familiar. What percentage of my life did I take it lying down? That was the last question I asked in my mind.
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by Yoko Ono
Apple, plexiglas pedestal with brass plaque.
Pedestal 91.5 x 25.5 x 25.5 cm
Collection of the artist
“One of the ‘Unfinished Objects’ shown at Indica Gallery in 1966, ‘Apple’ embodies the life cycle of birth, decay, death and rebirth.
Placing the apple on a pedestal in a gallery foregrounded the beauty of that cycle and encouraged viewers to imagine the fruit’s inevitable decomposition and its potential, through its seeds, for regeneration. The apple is equated with Eve, the archetypal female, and the ruinous effects of succumbing to her/its temptation.”
Joan Rothfuss, Yes Yoko Ono (New York: Japan Society and Harry N.
Abrams, 2000).
The reverse of the catalogue of the Indica exhibition - Yoko at Indica - showed John Dunbar taking a bite from the apple.
Literature: Daily Sketch November ’66 Art & Artists,
January ’72 Artforum, January ’72
Added September 12, 2007
Night-time view of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND showing the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
‘I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon.
My love for you is forever.’
Yoko Ono
‘Imagine all the people living life in peace’
John Lennon
‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.’
Yoko Ono
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
9 OCTOBER 2009
On Friday 9th October 2009, Yoko Ono will be in Iceland for the annual lighting of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
Later the same evening, at 10.30pm (Reykjavik time), Yoko will unveil a new IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND in Second Life, an online virtual world.
You are invited to join us on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND for this event.
SECOND LIFE
Second Life is the internet’s largest user-created 3D virtual world community, designed and built by its inhabitants.
It’s an online universe brimming with people and possibilities: a place to connect, shop, work, love, explore, and just be.
You can find out more about it here.
Membership is free.
GET STARTED
Sign up to Second Life here.
Download the necessary software for your PC or Mac here.
That’s it! You’re ready to enter Second Life.
There’s an easy and very helpful guide to getting started here.
Once you have entered Second Life, you will find IMAGINE PEACE TOWER Island here.
UNVEILING: WORLDWIDE DATES AND TIMES
The unveiling ceremony will begin at approximately the following dates and times:
Oct 9th 02.30pm Anchorage
Oct 9th 03.30pm Los Angeles
Oct 9th 04.30pm Guatemala
Oct 9th 05.30pm Chicago
Oct 9th 06.30pm New York, Montreal & Toronto
Oct 9th 07.30pm Rio de Janeiro
Oct 9th 10.30pm Reykjavik
Oct 9th 11.30pm Liverpool & London
Oct 10th 00.30am Europe
Oct 10th 01.30am Baghdad
Oct 10th 02.30am Moscow
Oct 10th 03.30am Karachi
Oct 10th 04.30am Dhaka
Oct 10th 05.30am Bangkok
Oct 10th 06.30am Shanghai
Oct 10th 07.30am Tokyo
Oct 10th 08.30am Sydney
Oct 10th 09.30am Vladivostok
Oct 10th 10.30am Suva
Oct 10th 11.30am Auckland
Oct 10th 12.30pm Kiritimati
You can check what time the event will be happening here.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
LIGHTING UP TIMES AFTER THE CEREMONY
After the opening ceremony, the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will begin its cycle of illumination approximately 15 minutes after sunset on every Second Life day and will remain illuminated until dawn. The days are much shorter in Second Life than in the real world. Sunset happens in Second Life every day at the following times, both am and pm:
01.30, 05.30, 09.30: Chicago, Baghdad, Bangkok, Vladivostok
02.30, 06.30, 10.30: Anchorage, Montreal, Toronto, Reykjavik, Moscow, Shanghai, Suva
03.30, 07.30, 11.30: Los Angeles, Rio de Janiero, Liverpool, London, Karachi, Tokyo, Auckland
04.30, 08.30, 12.30: Guatemala, Europe, Dhaka, Sydney, Kiritimati
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
When you arrive at the island, you will first visit the VISITORS CENTER.
IN THE VISITORS CENTER:
ONOCHORD DOCUMENTARY FILM
explains more of the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s ONOCHORD.
ONOCHORD TORCHES
are to hold in your hand and flash “i ii iii” (I love you) to one another.
ONOCHORD POSTCARDS
are to explain the message and send to your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER DOCUMENTARY
explains the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
IMAGINE PEACE POSTCARDS, BUTTONS, T-SHIRTS etc
are free and for you to share with your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE & IMAGINE PEACE TOWER BOOKS
are available to read in the VISITORS CENTER.
WISH TREES
Outside the VISITORS CENTER and around the island you will find WISH TREES.
Make a WISH and your wish will also be sent to the real life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.
BOAT RIDES
Also outside the VISITORS CENTER are some boats in which you can travel around the island.
CONTROL PANEL
These are stationed around the island, and enable various modes of dancing as well as teleporting you to different vantage points on and above the island:
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER WISHING WELL
The wishing well of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER consists of white panels inscribed with the words IMAGINE PEACE in 24 different languages
CLOUDS
There are 4 CLOUDS – at 125m, 225m, 300m and 500m. Inspired by the writings from Yoko’s GRAPEFRUIT and her album artwork for IMAGINE and LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO, these are platforms where you can take in the view, meet, talk and dance, while clouds magically form under your feet. You can fly or teleport between these platforms using the CONTROL PANEL, and from the top platform, you can take a parachute jump back down to the base and enjoy the view.
HOT SPRING SPA
Volcanic springs are common in Iceland. In fact, the real IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is entirely run on Geothermal Energy – from naturally occurring hot water. Here is a place to meditate, unwind and enjoy the view.
HOT AIR BALLOON
Inspired by John and Yoko’s film ‘Apotheosis” (which was all filmed from a hot air balloon) you can take a ride around the island on the IMAGINE PEACE balloon.
LINKS
Beginning October 9th you can find the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER here.
More information about the real world IMAGINE PEACE TOWER
More information about Yoko Ono’s WISH TREES
More information on SL Developer Herzog-Brenham
Original article: ROLE magazine (Oct 2009)
Grafitti of Yoko Ono as of Aug, 19, Prague on the ever changing Lennon wall
Probably you cannot see it now...since the wall is re-decorated by young artists every day.
"You have Lenin, we have Lennon" was the famous beginning of this protest
crop from here: www.flickr.com/photos/14329779@N06/7950141644/in/photostream
.... Of all of Harold Town's (1924-1990) "Superstar" prints, his double portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is arguably the most iconic and charming.
1969, the year this lithograph was created, was a significant year for the couple. They not only married in the spring, but recorded the first Plastic Ono Band's album "Live Peace in Toronto 1969" during a local music festival ....
Today we visited the John and Yoko Suite in the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. This is the light board outside the hotel.
See my video:
John and Yoko Suite Amsterdam Hilton
From the website of the Hilton Hotel Amsterdam:
Knowing their March 20, 1969 marriage would be a huge press event, John and Yoko decided to use the publicity to promote world peace. They spent their honeymoon in the presidential suite (Room 702) at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel for a week between March 25 and 31, inviting the world's press into their hotel room every day between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. After their nonconformist artistic expressions such as the nude cover of the Two Virgins album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead the couple were just sitting in bed, wearing pajamas—in John's words "like angels"—talking about peace with signs over their bed reading "Hair Peace" and "Bed Peace". After seven days, they flew to Vienna, Austria, where they held a Bagism press conference.
10 days celebration!
Hilton Amsterdam kindly invites you to visit the exclusive photo exhibition in the lobby and in the Amstel room commemorating John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 50 years ‘Bed-in for Peace’. You can experience this one of a kind exhibition from the 22nd till the 30th of March from 10.00am - 20.00pm.
During these days we proudly present you the world famous John & Yoko Suite. Our Concierge Team is more than happy to show you around the Suite, please do not hesitate to ask at the concierge desk.
Daytime view of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND showing the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, VISITORS CENTER, Jetty, Boats, Hot Air Balloon, Wish Tree & Spring Spa.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
‘I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon.
My love for you is forever.’
Yoko Ono
‘Imagine all the people living life in peace’
John Lennon
‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.’
Yoko Ono
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
9 OCTOBER 2009
On Friday 9th October 2009, Yoko Ono will be in Iceland for the annual lighting of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
Later the same evening, at 10.30pm (Reykjavik time), Yoko will unveil a new IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND in Second Life, an online virtual world.
You are invited to join us on IMAGINE PEACE TOWER ISLAND for this event.
SECOND LIFE
Second Life is the internet’s largest user-created 3D virtual world community, designed and built by its inhabitants.
It’s an online universe brimming with people and possibilities: a place to connect, shop, work, love, explore, and just be.
You can find out more about it here.
Membership is free.
GET STARTED
Sign up to Second Life here.
Download the necessary software for your PC or Mac here.
That’s it! You’re ready to enter Second Life.
There’s an easy and very helpful guide to getting started here.
Once you have entered Second Life, you will find IMAGINE PEACE TOWER Island here.
UNVEILING: WORLDWIDE DATES AND TIMES
The unveiling ceremony will begin at approximately the following dates and times:
Oct 9th 02.30pm Anchorage
Oct 9th 03.30pm Los Angeles
Oct 9th 04.30pm Guatemala
Oct 9th 05.30pm Chicago
Oct 9th 06.30pm New York, Montreal & Toronto
Oct 9th 07.30pm Rio de Janeiro
Oct 9th 10.30pm Reykjavik
Oct 9th 11.30pm Liverpool & London
Oct 10th 00.30am Europe
Oct 10th 01.30am Baghdad
Oct 10th 02.30am Moscow
Oct 10th 03.30am Karachi
Oct 10th 04.30am Dhaka
Oct 10th 05.30am Bangkok
Oct 10th 06.30am Shanghai
Oct 10th 07.30am Tokyo
Oct 10th 08.30am Sydney
Oct 10th 09.30am Vladivostok
Oct 10th 10.30am Suva
Oct 10th 11.30am Auckland
Oct 10th 12.30pm Kiritimati
You can check what time the event will be happening here.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
LIGHTING UP TIMES AFTER THE CEREMONY
After the opening ceremony, the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will begin its cycle of illumination approximately 15 minutes after sunset on every Second Life day and will remain illuminated until dawn. The days are much shorter in Second Life than in the real world. Sunset happens in Second Life every day at the following times, both am and pm:
01.30, 05.30, 09.30: Chicago, Baghdad, Bangkok, Vladivostok
02.30, 06.30, 10.30: Anchorage, Montreal, Toronto, Reykjavik, Moscow, Shanghai, Suva
03.30, 07.30, 11.30: Los Angeles, Rio de Janiero, Liverpool, London, Karachi, Tokyo, Auckland
04.30, 08.30, 12.30: Guatemala, Europe, Dhaka, Sydney, Kiritimati
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER IN SECOND LIFE
When you arrive at the island, you will first visit the VISITORS CENTER.
IN THE VISITORS CENTER:
ONOCHORD DOCUMENTARY FILM
explains more of the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s ONOCHORD.
ONOCHORD TORCHES
are to hold in your hand and flash “i ii iii” (I love you) to one another.
ONOCHORD POSTCARDS
are to explain the message and send to your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER DOCUMENTARY
explains the history and philosophy of Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
IMAGINE PEACE POSTCARDS, BUTTONS, T-SHIRTS etc
are free and for you to share with your friends.
IMAGINE PEACE & IMAGINE PEACE TOWER BOOKS
are available to read in the VISITORS CENTER.
WISH TREES
Outside the VISITORS CENTER and around the island you will find WISH TREES.
Make a WISH and your wish will also be sent to the real life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.
BOAT RIDES
Also outside the VISITORS CENTER are some boats in which you can travel around the island.
CONTROL PANEL
These are stationed around the island, and enable various modes of dancing as well as teleporting you to different vantage points on and above the island:
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER WISHING WELL
The wishing well of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER consists of white panels inscribed with the words IMAGINE PEACE in 24 different languages
CLOUDS
There are 4 CLOUDS – at 125m, 225m, 300m and 500m. Inspired by the writings from Yoko’s GRAPEFRUIT and her album artwork for IMAGINE and LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO, these are platforms where you can take in the view, meet, talk and dance, while clouds magically form under your feet. You can fly or teleport between these platforms using the CONTROL PANEL, and from the top platform, you can take a parachute jump back down to the base and enjoy the view.
HOT SPRING SPA
Volcanic springs are common in Iceland. In fact, the real IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is entirely run on Geothermal Energy – from naturally occurring hot water. Here is a place to meditate, unwind and enjoy the view.
HOT AIR BALLOON
Inspired by John and Yoko’s film ‘Apotheosis” (which was all filmed from a hot air balloon) you can take a ride around the island on the IMAGINE PEACE balloon.
LINKS
Beginning October 9th you can find the Second Life IMAGINE PEACE TOWER here.
More information about the real world IMAGINE PEACE TOWER
More information about Yoko Ono’s WISH TREES
More information on SL Developer Herzog-Brenham
Original article: ROLE magazine (Oct 2009)
Download, print & display these posters in your window, school, workplace, car and elsewhere.
Post them on your Social Media feeds.
Send them as postcards to your friends.
We say it in so many ways, but we are one.
I love you!
Yoko Ono Lennon
1 December 2015
by Yoko Ono
Climb up a ladder to reach the sky.
Try ladders of different heights.
See if the sky looks any closer
from a higher ladder.
from 100 Acorns
Yoko Ono, 1996
by Yoko Ono
Climb up a ladder. Look at the painting on the ceiling with a magnifying glass, and find the word ‘YES’
The interactive object known as Ceiling Painting was an important work shown at Ono's historic 1966 Indica Gallery show in London. The viewer is invited to climb a white ladder, where, at the top, a magnifying glass, attached by a chain, hangs from a frame on the ceiling. The viewer uses the reading glass to discover a block letter "instruction" beneath the framed sheet of glass-it says "YES." It was through this work that Ono met her future husband and longtime collaborator, John Lennon.
Q: How did you meet Yoko?
John Lennon: There was a sort of underground clique in London; John Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithfull, had an art gallery in London called Indica, and I'd been going around to galleries a bit on me off days in between records, also to a few exhibitions in different galleries that showed sort of unknown artists or underground artists.
I got the word that this amazing woman was putting on a show the next week, something about people in bags, in black bags, and it was going to be a bit of a happening and all that. So I went to a preview the night before it opened. I went in - she didn't know who I was or anything - and I was wandering around. There were a couple of artsy-type students who had been helping, lying around there in the gallery, and I was looking at it and was astounded. There was an apple on sale there for two hundred quid; I thought it was fantastic - I got the humor in her work immediately. I didn't have to have much knowledge about avant-garde or underground art, the humor got me straightaway. It was two hundred quid to watch the fresh apple decompose.
But it was another piece that really decided me for or against the artist: a ladder that led to a painting, which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a white canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. I climbed the ladder, looked through the spyglass, and in tiny little letters it said, YES.
So it was positive. I felt relieved. It's a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn't say NO or FUCK YOU or something.
I was very impressed. John Dunbar introduced us - neither of us knew who the hell each other was. She didn't know who I was; she'd only heard of Ringo; I think it means apple in Japanese. And Dunbar had sort of been hustling her, saying, "That's a good patron; you must go and talk to him or do something." Dunbar insisted she say hello to the millionaire - you know what I mean. And she came up and handed me a card that said BREATHE on it - one of her instructions - so I just went [pants]. This was our meeting.
The second time I met her was at a gallery opening of Claes Oldenburg in London. We were very shy; we sort of nodded at each other - she was standing behind me. I sort of looked away because I'm very shy with people, especially chicks. We just sort of smiled and stood frozen together in this cocktail-party thing.
The next thing was, she came to me to get some backing - like all the bastard underground do - for a show she was going. She gave me her Grapefruit book. I used to read it, and sometimes I'd get very annoyed by it; it would say thing like "paint until you drop dead" or "bleed." Then sometimes I'd be very enlightened by it. I went through all the changes that people go through with her work - sometimes I'd have it by the bed and I'd open it and it would say something nice and it would be all right, and then it would say something heavy and I wouldn't like it.
So I gave her the money to back her show. For this whole thing, everything was in half: There was half a bed, half a room, half of everything, all beautifully cut in half and all painted white. And I said to her, "Why don't you sell the other half in bottles?" having caught on by then to what the game was. And she did that - this is still before we'd had any nuptials - and we still have the bottles from the show; it's my first. It was presented as "Yoko Plus Me" - that was our first public appearance. I didn't even go to see the show; I was too uptight.
Q: When did you realize that you were in love with her?
JL: It was beginning to happen; I would start looking at her book, but I wasn't quite aware what was happening to me. Then she did a thing called Dance Event, where different cards kept coming through the door every day saying BREATHE and DANCE and WATCH ALL THE LIGHTS UNTIL DAWN, and they upset me or made me happy, depending.
I'd get very upset about it being intellectual or all fucking avant-garde, then I'd like it, and then I wouldn't. Then I went to India with the Maharoonie and we corresponded. The letters were still formal, but they just had a little side to them. I nearly took her to India, but I still wasn't sure for what reason; I was still sort of kidding myself, with sort of artistic reasons and all that.
When we got back from India, we were talking to each other on the phone. I called her over; it was the middle of the night and Cynthia [Lennon's first wife] was away, and I thought, well, now's the time if I'm gonna get to know her any more. She came to the house and I didn't know what to do, so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I'd made, all this far-out stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. She was suitably impressed, and then she said, "Well, let's make one ourselves." So we made Two Virgins. It was midnight when we started; it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.
From 'Lennon Remembers'
(Jann Wenner editor of Rolling Stone magazine interviewing John Lennon in December 1970)
Mend Piece by Yoko Ono at Andrea Rosen Gallery pleas for peace and evokes the Japanese art of kintsugi.
via Instagram www.instagram.com/p/_LYRwEmGpe/
Ausstellungsansicht | Exhibition View
Kunsthaus Graz, Space01 & Space02, Lendkai 1, 8020 Graz
Laufzeit | Duration: 14.11.2014-15.02.2015
www.museum-joanneum.at/Kunsthaus
www.museumsblog.at/DamageControl
© Universalmuseum Joanneum / N. Lackner
I took this from inside of the lobby, looking through glass, and this guy sensed that I was there taking a picture. Amazing how we're so sensitive to another's "gaze." (And how little he was concentrating on the chess board.)
The WAR IS OVER! campaign was launched on 15 December 1969 at the Peace for Christmas concert, a benefit for UNICEF held at London’s Lyceum Ballroom.
Ono and Lennon performed with George Harrison, Keith Moon, Billy Preston, and The Delaney and Bonnie Band, Alan White, Bobby Keyes, Keith Moon, Klaus Voormann, Jim Gordon and Billy Preston - as the Plastic Ono Supergroup. Their two-song, twenty-five minute set featured extended versions of both sides of their latest single: Cold Turkey and Don’t Worry Kyoko.
A huge War Is Over! banner was hung across the stage, and postcards were distributed to the audience.
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT
September 26-October 2, 2007 ● SAN ANTONIO CURRENT
-- Page 5
ON THE COVER
An "Imagine
Peace" billboard
rises above the
9-11 memorial on
Highway 90, part
of the Yoko Ono:
Imagine Peace
retrospective that
opens at USTA this
week. See story,
page 23. Photo by
Antonio Padilla.
-- Page 23
www2.sacurrent.com/util/printready.asp?id=67475
ARTS
A retrospective of Yoko Ono’s conceptual and
performance-based work opens at the UTSA
1604 campus and on billboards around town
this week
Double jeopardy
Another unpopular war, another message from the pop-culture phenomenon we love to misunderstand
By Elaine Wolff
ewolff@sacurrent.com
On hold for Yoko Ono, and the phone system is playing “Watching the
Wheels,” from Double Fantasy, the “comeback” album released by Ono
and John Lennon shortly before he was murdered in New York on
December 8, 1980. I’m back in my childhood basement in Minnesota,
lounging on ribbon-candy shag carpet while the turntable plays. Ronald
Reagan’s Morning in America hasn’t chased the smell of patchouli and
cultural revolution from the folds of my sister’s tie-dyed prom dress
yet, and the dropouts I imagine changing the world look like ashram
devotees, not a young Bill Gates. Even now, when I hear the song I
experience a yearning sense of possibility, which makes me realize that
I may be a Beatles fan, but I’m the anti-war child of the post-Beatles
Lennon.
Still waiting. Someone picks up the line and puts it back on hold.
“Wheels” is followed by “Nobody Told Me,” the hit single from Milk and Honey, which Ono completed after Lennon’s death and released in 1984.
1984. We haven’t realized George Orwell’s darkest predictions yet. No one — well, almost no one — imagines the vast ’borg of technological Joneses that we will become in two short decades. Name the year since Reagan took office at the beginning of that same decade to which the refrain “strange days indeed” doesn’t apply. It’s hard not to wonder wistfully what Lennon, that artistic chameleon, would have made of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9-11, WMDs, the iPhone (John Lennon on the internet!).
And harder still to remember that while Lennon morphed attitudes and methods almost by the hour, his greatest influence — artistic and personal, responsible if nothing else for Lennon’s sporadic rejection of commercialism and public expectation — has remained unfashionably constant while history has circled around to meet her. To say I’m a child of the post-Beatles Lennon is to say that I’m a child of Yoko Ono as much as John.
Yoko Ono, Japanese child of privilege, World War II refugee, media whipping girl, was an up-and-coming artist in 1966 when John Lennon walked into London’s Indica Gallery — a story that is now apocryphal in the Beatles legend, but deserves equal weight in Ono’s story, because it is in effect the day the artist and the pop-culture phenomenon traded places. Before the ’60s were over, Lennon and Ono would capitalize on his fame to draw attention to the war in Vietnam, and on a related note, to the Nixon Administration’s aversion to political criticism.
1969’s infamous honeymoon Bed-Ins led to 1971’s utopian “Imagine,” and over the next few years, Lennon would challenge his adoring fan base with songs titled “Woman is the Nigger of the World” and “I Don’t Wanna be a Soldier Mama.”
But we just couldn’t get over the Beatles and the homewrecker role we had assigned Ono to see the depth of her influence, to notice that two talented iconoclasts were creating art together and in response to one another. A generation later, the media would embrace her as a fashion icon, sometimes a musician, but never the conceptual artist that led a reliable Billboard-hit generator off the beaten musical path — even as her forerunners and compatriots became art-world crossover successes: Claes Oldenburg, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik.
But Ono moved in the same (sometimes belatedly) exalted circles as those nearly household names, participating in influential live performances as part of Fluxus — an early 1960s movement that drew its energy from an antiart-establishment attitude and a critique of storefront capitalism — adopting and developing themes that are recognizable today in Onochord, an interactive work that encourages participants to blink “I love you,” part John Cage, part Morse Code, using a small flashlight, as well as in her current “Imagine Peace” billboards.
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San Antonio artist and teacher Ken Little will adapt Ono’s noted 1964 Fluxus performance “Cut Piece” on October 26 as part of Yoko Ono: Imagine Peace, which opens in San Antonio September 26. The show, which debuted at Ohio’s University of Akron, tries to restore balance to the Ono-Lennon artistic relationship. “Imagine,” after all, was inspired by Ono’s “instruction pieces,” in turn the legacy of a decade that was throwing off the dogma and academic hegemony of post-WWII Abstract Expressionism as violently as possible, preferably with a large, interactive audience at hand. The Bed-Ins were perfect Fluxus performance works, accessible, anti-establishment,
socially progressive — and visionary in their attempt to use mass media to spread a message of their choosing.
In 1965, like Oldenberg and Fluxus founder George Maciunas before her, Ono parodied the art marketplace with her “Conceptual Sales List.” Ono and Lennon’s collaborative work built on the notion of ideas as commodities with the power to counteract physical reality. “It’s got to be sold to the man in the street,” Lennon told Newsweek following the Montreal Bed-In that produced the wildly popular recording of “Give Peace a Chance.” “We want to make peace a big business for everybody.”
Lennon was in turn big business for Ono and almost everything he touched, and Imagine Peace doesn’t shy away from his symbiotic influence on Ono. In part because of his early interest, and premature death, one of Ono’s “Conceptual Sales List” items becomes reality next month on an island in Iceland: the “Imagine Peace Tower,” 20 meters high and engraved with the lyrics of the eponymous song, will be unveiled on October 9, Lennon’s 67th birth anniversary.
Just ahead of the San Antonio show’s opening, Ono spoke with the Current by phone.
Even from the beginning you thought about and addressed the idea of commodification, the way that ideas become a product for consumption. And it seems like that’s even more true now. Do you think with your work that that aids it, or ...?
Well, still things like this happen. The billboard and all that — it’s not a commodity at all, it’s just a message, you know? Well, in the world where everything’s become commodity, it’s kind of difficult to keep on doing it, but I think it’s not really that difficult. I think we should just step up and do it.
And, too, with celebrityhood, sometimes people look at Fluxus and they say that’s the time when art became more about the individual’s ideas and their opinions, as opposed to just the work itself.
Well, I don’t know, because I’m just right in the midst of it, in a way, in that I’m an artist who’s been doing things hopefully that meant something to people, etcetera. That’s for the critics, I think, what happened historically, etcetera. I think Fluxus is a good thing that happened, and it’s still going on. When George [Maciunas] decided to call it Fluxus, I don’t think he thought that it would go on like this. But also I’m sure that he would have loved it.
I’ve noticed that here in San Antonio there’s been a renewed interest in Dadaism, and movements that are also related to those concepts, again in a time of war and conflict. Do you think there’s a reason that those types of art movements or ideas are more appealing when the world seems to be ...
But I think there’s a big difference between Dadaism and what, for instance, I’m doing. Dada was actually expressing a kind of sadness, or whatever it is, reflecting what was going on at the time and not liking it. So it was kind of rebellious art, shall we say. But I’m not rebelling against anything, I’m just trying to make a more positive world by doing things together.
During [your and John Lennon’s] Year of Peace, which this exhibit is partly about, one of the things you said is that we need to remember that it’s not about “them,” there’s not a “them” that’s doing something bad, it’s about us as a whole ... how does the message “imagine peace” encourage us to think that way?
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Well, the fact that we’re always curious about “them,” and it’s not very logical to be like that, we should do what we think is right and don’t put our attention too much on others.
How important is it to you [for viewers] to see parallels between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War when they go to the exhibit?
Well, I think that really it’s getting to a point that we can be very, very positive about the situation, because I really think that everybody’s starting to see what’s happening. And so we can all stand together and try to change. In old days, we used to have so much respect for lawyers, doctors, politicians, you know? And now we’re starting to think, wait a minute, what was this respect about, so we’re starting to wise up and starting to mature, so to speak, and we’re starting to take responsibility ourselves.
Is it important for you as an artist to feel that you see an impact from your work, or feel a response from the audience?
Well, you never know what people are thinking, really, so if you focus on that too much, you go crazy. There was a very interesting thing: John and I were walking down the street, John Lennon and me, and a fan came and said, “John I loved your record, the newest record’s fantastic.”
So [John] said, “Oh, which song? And the guy sort of like looked, “Um, uh ... “
“Oh, are you talking about this record? Which title was it?”
“Uh, um ... “
The fact that the guy wanted so much to please John that he probably didn’t listen to the record or buy it or anything, but just thought that if you meet somebody like John you’re supposed to say, “I love your record.” So there are many people who might say something to me, or who might say that they dislike my thing or whatever, but you never know what that really means.
When the war in Iraq first began, there was some criticism saying that the art world was not being active or political enough, but it seems since then [it’s] become very involved in expressing values or feelings.
The thing is, yes, some people are very courageous in coming out, sort of saying something about what’s going on now, commenting on it, but even if you don’t do that, and most people say, well, most of them are doing that — don’t be negative about it, because just the fact that you are being an artist and doing an artwork in a world situation like this is very courageous. As you said about the society that’s more and more increasing the idea of commodity, and all that: So why are you going to be an artist? It’s not the best way to make big money.
The celebrityhood that’s conferred on [some] artists now, I feel is a way of saying, you won’t get rich being an artist, but maybe we’ll make you famous for a little while instead.
I think that — I say this so many times, but I still should say this — this whole world, there are two industries, peace industry and war industry. And the war industry people are so together, they’re so united in what they want to do, so they don’t even have to talk to each other, they just action, that’s it. Whereas the peace-industry people are so meticulous, and idealists, and so fastidious that they just keep on arguing and discussing endlessly, that, oh no, this is not the right way; oh, your way is not right; oh my way — so we can never get together.
Are we always doomed to be a step behind then?
Exactly. We can never win over the war-industry people. The fact that you’re just being a florist or something — that is fine, you’re in the peace industry, you’re doing something peaceful rather than making weapons and killing people. So basically we have to embrace everybody in the peace industry instead of being snobs and saying, oh, that’s not right, or why are you just a florist. It’s beautiful that all of us are in the peace industry. So, the next step is for us to have some understanding about each other, forgiving each other, and get together. And if we don’t do that, if the peace industry is not as strong as the war industry, well, of course we’re always going to have
war. •
Antonia Padilla
The peace industry meets the war industry; one of Yoko Ono's "Imagine Peace" installations on Highway 90 near the 9-11 memmorial.
VISUAL ART
Yoko Ono:
Imagine Peace
Featuring John and Yoko’s Year of Peace
10am-4pm Fri,
1-4pm Sat
Through Oct 28
Opening reception: 5-9pm Wed, Sep 26
UTSA Art Gallery
UTSA 1604 Campus
FILM
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
6pm Mon, Oct 1
Retama Auditorium
UTSA 1604 Campus
YOKO ONO: IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace
September 26th - October 28th, 2007
UTSA Art Gallery / Department of Art and Art History
The University of Texas at San Antonio