Yoko OnoReviews

On December 8, 1980, I had a date. I think it was my third or fourth date with this girl and I was at her place hanging out listening to music and drinking coffee Seriously, just coffee!. I don't what time it was when I left her house, but it was after midnight (EST), this I am sure of. As I normally did, I turned on the radio to WNEW- FM,, no Sirius/XM back then, a NYC rock station. They were playing a Beatles block which was not unusual. Seconds after driving away the DJ said that John Lennon had been shot and killed at The Dakota, he and Yoko's NYC home in Manhattan. 40 years later, I remember this moment as it was yesterday.

This book brings back that moment as if I was watching a high-def movie. The conversations contained herein are nothing short of historic, not just because of the subject, but because of what that subject was saying. John loved to talk. Here he opines on topics as mundane as food to deeply held beliefs about nuclear war, politics and religion. I vividly remember buying the December 1980 issue of Playboy and reading the abridged version of what was to become this book. The Playboy issue was published and delivered BEFORE John was killed. I still have that issue.

One does not need to be a fan of The Beatles or John Lennon for that matter, to enjoy this book. One needs to be curious about history, music and wants to get inside of won't of the true original minds of the 20th century. You may not agree with John's opinions and comments, but I can guarantee you you will find it hard-pressed to put this book down once you start it.

In 1962 the former Städtische Museum Wiesbaden hosted the Fluxus – International Festival of Newest Music, culminating in the legendary destruction of a grand piano. What was then understood as an affront against bourgeois traditions and is still remembered to this day, turned out to be the beginnings of world-wide, ground-breaking upheavals in the visual arts.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Wiesbaden concerts which are regarded in art history as the birth of Fluxus, a meandering river of exhibitions will originate from the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden from July 14th, 2022. As in a musical canon, historic and contemporary melodies, voices and actions will overlap.

In the “Piano Nobile” of Nassauischer Kunstverein, pianos, grand pianos and cellos from the Archivio Conz, made by Sari Dienes, Esther Ferrer, Dorothy Iannone, Alison Knowles, Charlotte Moorman, Ann Noël, Takako Saito and Carolee Schneemann, transform the exhibition into a visual body of sound, framed by smaller cabinet exhibitions. A room dedicated to Mary Bauermeister, for example, shows very early and personal works by the considered “Mother Gaia” of Fluxus. Two other rooms, created in cooperation with Yoko Ono and Takako Saito, to further rooms playfully invite visitors to immerse themselves in the poetics and politics of Fluxus. While the literature on Fluxus emphasises the equal presence of female artists, sixty years of exhibition history nevertheless prove that they have largely disappeared or have been overlooked. The exhibition and research project FLUXUS SEX TIES / Hier spielt die Musik! gives voice to these female Fluxus artists in the shape of a participatory spatial installation, presenting a wide artistic kaleidoscope.

In parallel, contemporary voices complement the historical context. While Ann Noël manifests hitherto unknown Fluxus stories and memories with her textbook The Gospel According to St. Ann, which is based on her meticulous diary entries, Andrea Büttner‘s 5-channel video installation Piano Destructions reveals the (art-)historical gender dichotomy with powerful images and sounds. With a scolding chorus, Andrėja Šaltytė musically transports visitors back to the present and questions the politicisation of language and spaces with her latest video work Kijewer Zunge / I‘m not calling you to use foul language. God forbid!

Ok, this was a very important bk to me. In 1975 when I read this, I wd've just recently heard Ono's "Fly" LP wch I also loved enormously so when I read this it had plenty of impact. I was probably just learning about Fluxus in general at the time. This is "A book of instructions drawings by Yoko Ono" & it exemplifies Fluxus short performance index card scores - such as the ones also explored by George Brecht. I have "LIGHT PIECE" circled in pencil:

"Carry an empty bag.
Go to the top of a hill.
Pour all the light you can in it.
Go home when it is dark.
Hang the bag in the middle of your
room in place of a light bulb."

Love it. Imagining doing that seems fun even now 32 yrs later so this definitely endures the test of time for me. Then there's "PAINTING TO BE STEPPED ON":

"Leave a piece of canvas or finished
painting on the floor or in the street."

Now, many yrs later, she had a piece like this in a museum or a gallery & somebody walked on it & he was arrested & charged. Ono's comment was something to the effect that 'there are many ways to walk on something' as her way of saying that the guy was an asshole. I'm on his side. But, what the fuck, I give Ono slack - her husband was killed by an asshole or a Manchurian Candidate or whatever. Then there's a piece called "LINE PIECE III", another piece I have circled:

"Draw a line with yourself.
Go on drawing until you disappear."

A friend has told me that that's actually a well-known LaMonte Young piece but I suspect that Young might've done a similar thing that wasn't exactly the same or that there was enuf Fluxus cross-fertilization for pieces to have ambiguous authorship. Dunno. Anyway, this bk has a way of thinking that's completely out-of-the-box & I admire it for that. It's chock-full of ideas & she deserves to be considered a great artist even if she is from a rich banking family & has probably never had to work a day in her life. Privileged scum.

$995 mxn

This book, 'YES Yoko Ono' accompanies an exhibition at the Japan Society Gallery in New York (October 18, 2000, through January 14, 2001) that travelled to numerous venues in North America and Asia, beginning with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. --Cathy Curtis.

YES Yoko Ono is a rigorous analysis--by experts in modern Japanese and contemporary Western art, performance, video, and music--of the innovative approaches that made Ono a seminal avant-garde figure in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and continued to influence her work during the next three decades.

Ono was born in 1933 in Japan to a wealthy and pedigreed family. In her early work, the pan-artistic classical Japanese approach to culture mingles with her Zen-like search for moments of concentrated sensory experience and the anti-heroic stance of the young American artists she would meet in New York upon her arrival (with her first husband, a composer) in 1956. Also significant was her sense of herself as an outsider. She spent her early childhood in the U.S. with her family, only to be snubbed by Japanese schoolmates on her return.

In Secret Piece, from 1953, Ono wrote a musical score consisting of nothing but two half-notes in the bass line and a scribbled notation: "With the accompaniment of birds singing at dawn." It became one of the brilliantly inventive instructions for making art pieces in her 1964 book, Grapefruit, an early conceptual work. Since those heady days, she has continued to explore the possibilities, stumbling sometimes (the inert bronze sculptures of the '80s) but never abandoning her fascination with elemental feeling and observation.

Written in 1952 Ono remembers an incident when she was eight years old. Evacuated to the countryside to avoid the wartime bombing during the second world war, she missed the flowers in her mother’s rose garden. She was told that she was now too far in the north of the county for roses to grow. But looking out over what she describes as ‘shinning golden wheat fields,” she spots a single perfectly white rose. She’s even sure she can smell it. When she runs to see it up close, it’s not there. That night she dreams of it again.

This is her artistic memoir of the experience in words and drawings.

I can't believe these reviews! To people who hated it and who hate Yoko Ono: wtf have you ever done that made me feel good about life? Have you ever slowed down time through the economy of words? Have you ever made me wonder? Yoko Ono likes simple words everyone can understand arranged in small, beautiful koans! Little bouquets of language! Just like flowers! You have to stop and smell them!!! What's not to understand/like? I love this!! GTFO!

I carried this book around for about a year when I first got it. I was maybe 14 years old. No one I knew understood why. But it made more sense to me than the world around me did. It still does.

Random discovery at the library. I checked it out largely out of curiosity. I have limited knowledge of Yoko Ono, but suspected she is much more interesting than her maligners make out.

I really liked this. A collection of instructions/poems/rituals for grounding/airing/burning your life. As instructions, clearly you will get out of this little book according to what you put into it. I want to find a copy of this somewhere to own, to have on my shelf to turn to when restless or brokenhearted.

So charming.

Writing technique: C
Writing musicality: C
Performance technique: B
Performance musicality: C
Arrangements: D
Coherence/concept: A
Pacing/listenability: B
Recording/mastering: B
Cover art: D

Enjoyment: B

GPA: 2.4/4½

Writing technique: B
Writing musicality: A
Performance technique: C
Performance musicality: A
Arrangements: A
Coherence/concept: A
Pacing/listenability: A
Recording/mastering: B
Cover art: C

Enjoyment: A plus

GPA: 3.5/4

One doesn't have to be a fast reader; it has taken me fifty years to catch up with this book. To be fair to myself, the initial print run was pretty exclusive, but subsequent printings have been available for several years (decades, actually!)

It is probably a good job that I did not get around to reading this tome until I had matured and gained, at least some degree of, patience. The first couple of pieces that I read seemed plain daft and I was on the verge of dismissing the work but, fortunately, persevered. These snippets/poems, call them what you will, are so 'off the wall', that one needs to attune one's senses to them. After a run at the book, the individual works start to shine with humour and wisdom. I will not pretend that I found every page to contain a gem, but as any prospector will tell you, one has to sift a whole pile of muck to find a nugget of gold. This book is infinitely more rewarding.

I have already mentioned the length of time since this book was written, and so, it was a pleasant surprise to find that it had aged so little: I suppose that the truth is constant... Having attained the correct mindset for this book, I shall be dipping into it on an ad hoc basis.

If you have not got a copy or, as I nearly was, you were put off by your initial reaction to 'grapefruit', I strongly suggest that you give it (another) go.....

I have read an unfortunate number of self help, inspirational and coaching books that pretend to have all the answers if only you would contort your life into their formulas. They are by and large quite useless. Yoko Ono’s Acorn, however, is a whimsical breed apart. It does not prescribe; it invites. Yoko Ono has taken the simple pleasures of a child’s perception of the world and invited all to see them again. No pressure, no journals, no tests, no measurements. Just appreciate:

The sky is not only above our heads
It extends all the way down to earth.
Each time we raise our foot from the ground
We are walking in the sky.

Ono’s pleasing pointillist illustrations are a perfect complement to the short texts. They show great depth and imagination, so they fit beautifully. They can be anything you want them to be. They are reminiscent of Escher and Calder, with a dash of Dali.

Altogether, Acorn is an inspired delight. One last invitation from the author:

Take your pants off
Before you fight.

Tell your congressman.

Yoko Ono finds her point of view: The feminization of society should meet equal rights: "As a result, the feminist revolution will take a more positive step in the society by offering a feminine direction", she stated and proposed a noncompetitive society based on love, rather than reasoning. She thinks, that feminine wisdom would be based on reality and its awareness, intuition and empirical thinking. Also on: http://www.amazon.com/Approximately-Infinite-Universe-Yoko-Ono/dp/B0000009RJ/ref...

Anthology of Ono's early conceptual art pieces. Important stuff, although I could have done without the photos which show some of the instructions realized as actual canvases; they dilute the point somewhat.

Lots of highlights--I've done a decent amount of reading on John Lennon, so it was nice to read new things. Jello Biafra's childhood drawing was fabulous!

yoko's weird look at life½

everyone that dislikes Yoko, dislikes women.

My copy is actually a soft cover uncorrected proof-not for sale. Karen gave it to me.