Music of the Mind

YOKO ONO

Co-editors
Juliet Bingham, Connor Monahan
and Jon Hendricks
5............... Foreword

13.............. Introduction
Juliet Bingham

24.............. Kindred Spirits

Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi
Yasufumi Nakamori

78.............. Yoko Ono in Tokyo

From Drama to Instructions
Naoko Seki

112............. Total Communication Equals Peace

Andrew Wilson

187............. PEACE is POWER

Yoko Ono

212............. Yoko Ono

Silence the Object of Her Painful Scrutiny
David Toop

224............. A Shadow is a Memory

Visibility and Reception of Ono’s
Work in Germany 1962–72
Patrizia Dander

240............. Yoko Ono

A Kind of Meeting Point
Helen Molesworth, Barbara Rose, Yoko Ono,
Catherine Lord and Sanford Biggers

260............. ‘Hello? This is Yoko’

A narrative chronology
Kira Wainstein
272.............
To the Wesleyan People, 23 January 1966
Yoko Ono
276.............
Lyrics
Yoko Ono

282............. Notes
288............. List of works
296............. Index
 5
Toilet Thoughts Film No. 3 1968 installed at
Yoko Ono Golden Ladders, Faurschou Foundation,
Beijing 2015. Digital print on paper, 59.4 × 42
Foreword
YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND celebrates the ground-breaking and influ-
ential work of artist and activist Yoko Ono (born 1933). Widely acknowledged
as a pioneer of early conceptual, film and performance art and as a celebrated
musician, Ono is also renowned for her activism and campaigning for world
peace. Her radical strategies and collaborations continue to resonate with
generations of artists and musicians today.
This major survey exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with Yoko
Ono’s studio, spans more than seven decades of her powerful, participatory
practice, from the mid-1950s to present day. Tracing the development of Ono’s
multidisciplinary practice and collaborations in America, Japan and the UK,
it brings together her early ‘instruction’ pieces through to recent, large-scale
participatory installations.
The scores from Ono’s foundational book Grapefruit 1964 – a do-it-yourself
publication of instructions, all of which are open to interpretation by anyone
and everyone, guide visitors on their journey through this exhibition. We are
invited to step on a painting, water a canvas, perform inside a bag, greet visi-
tors by shaking hands anonymously, put our shadows together, hammer
a nail or play a game of chess, to celebrate our mothers, to share our hopes,
our dreams and our wishes, and most importantly to imagine.
The exhibition takes its title from Ono’s Music of the Mind series of concerts
and events in London and Liverpool in 1966 and 1967. The title reflects her
concept of silent music, that her instructions, also concerts, were to produce
sound in the listeners’ imagination. In her text To the Wesleyan People 1966,
reproduced in this book, Ono explained her concept, ‘When a violinist plays,
which is incidental: the arm movement or the bow sound … I think of my music
more as a practice (gyo) than a music. The only sound that exists to me is the
sound of the mind. My works are only to induce music of the mind in people
… In the mind-world, things spread out and go beyond time. There is a wind
that never dies.’
The exhibition traces Ono’s radical approach to language, art and partici-
pation along with her belief in the power of the mind to achieve positive action
through the act of visualisation, to realise a peaceful world.
This exhibition is a close collaboration between Tate Modern and Kunst-
sammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. We are enormously grateful to
Yoko Ono’s wonderful team, without whom this project would not have been
possible. We thank Connor Monahan, Studio Director, at Yoko Ono’s Studio One
 6 7
for contributing to our research and supporting our endeavours, and every-
one at Studio One for their support including Karla Merrifield, Michael Sirianni,
Susie Lim, Marcia Bassett, Sari Henry, Simon Hilton, Gina Devincenzi, Nick
Lalla and Sibyl Bender. We appreciate Jonas Herbsman’s contributions with
all things contractual. We are grateful to Jon Hendricks, curator of the Gilbert
and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection and friend and artistic collaborator of
Yoko Ono, for generously sharing his knowledge and insights into Ono’s
fascinating practice.
We are extremely grateful to the artist’s studio, institutions and private
collectors who have so kindly lent their treasured works. We thank Go
Hasegawa for his support with loan research.
We thank our Tate Modern curatorial team for shaping this intriguing
journey through Ono’s multifaceted and visionary practice: Juliet Bingham,
Curator, International Art; Andrew de Brún, Assistant Curator; and Kira
Wainstein, Research Assistant, Curatorial, Tate Modern. Many heads were
involved at various stages of the exhibition’s development. We acknowledge
the research contributions of former Tate colleagues: Frances Morris, Emerita
Director of Tate Modern who is an advocate for Yoko Ono’s practice; Clara Kim,
Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Museum of Contemporary
Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Tamsin Hong, Curator, Exhibitions, Serpentine
Gallery; and Yasufumi Nakamori, Director, Asia Society Museum, New York.
For their unwavering support, we thank Catherine Wood, Director of Programme,
Tate Modern, and Neil Casey, Associate Director, Business & Operations, Tate
Modern. At Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen we thank Patrizia Dander,
Head of Curatorial Department, for organising the exhibition’s Düsseldorf
leg with the support of Catherine Frèrejean, Assistant Curator.
We join the curators in thanking our many colleagues at Tate Modern and
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen for their help in realising this exhibition,
including art handling, media technicians, registration, conservation, tour
management, communications, digital, development, publishing, enterprises,
and visitor services.
Juliet Bingham, Patrizia Dander, Yasufumi Nakamori, Naoko Seki, David
Toop and Andrew Wilson have contributed fascinating texts to this publication.
We are grateful to Helen Molesworth, Sandford Biggers, Catherine Lord, the
Estate of Barbara Rose, Yoko Ono, and Getty, for granting permission to
reproduce an edited version of the podcast Recording Artists: Yoko Ono and
to Kira Wainstein for the narrative chronology and Andrew de Brún for select-
ing Yoko Ono’s writings and quotes. Thanks go to our editorial team, Juliet
Bingham, Connor Monahan and Jon Hendricks of Studio One. Also to Reiko
Tomii for translating and to our colleagues in Tate Publishing: Emilia Will,
Emma O’Neill, Hannah Robinson and Bill Jones, as well as to Cordula Frevel
at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, who oversees the German edition.
Also, our thanks are extended to the wonderful graphic design team at
A Practice for Everyday Life.
YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND is generously supported by John J.
Studzinski CBE, who we thank for championing this project and providing vital
support which has enabled Tate to present Yoko Ono’s significant and forward-
thinking practice in such depth. We also extend our thanks to the Yoko Ono
Exhibition Supporters Circle including Alexandra Howell, E. Rhodes and
Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Chris Keesee, Bob Rennie and Tate Americas
Foundation for their generous support.
The exhibition in London has been made possible by the provision of
insurance through the UK Government Indemnity Scheme, and we thank HM
Government, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and
Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-
Westfalen is generously funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of
the State of North Rhine-Westfalia. We express our gratitude for their con-
tinuous support.
Finally, we offer our deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to Yoko Ono,
for the gift of her expansive and transformative practice, which continues to
resonate with and unite people around the world, and which, like a wish or
a whisper, touches each one of us.
A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.
Yoko Ono
Karin Hindsbo. Director, Tate Modern
Susanne Gaensheimer. Director, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
9

leftWish Tree for Stockholm 1996 installed at

Yoko Ono: Grapefruit, Moderna Museet, aboveWish Tree 1996, installed at Poetry
Stockholm, Sweden, 6 June–16 September 2012 Foundation, Chicago, 10 May–22 August 2019
 13
abovePEACE is POWER 2017 installed at The
Museum of Modern Art, New York 2019,
translated in 24 languages. Vinyl on
windows, dimensions variable
PEACE is POWER 2017,
pp.10–11
installed at The Learning Garden of Freedom,
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto,
30 May–15 November 2020. Vinyl on wall,
dimensions variable
Introduction
Whisper your desire to the wind. Ask the wind
to take it to the end of the world.1
Lighting Piece 1955 – one of Yoko Ono’s earliest instruction pieces – was
composed in New York State. Her parents had moved there from Tokyo a few
years after the end of the Second World War, and Ono joined them later in
the early 1950s, enrolling at the liberal arts college, Sarah Lawrence. Ono tri-
alled her nascent score in Scarsdale, with her sister and a few friends pres-
ent, later including it in her self-published book Grapefruit 1964 with the sim-
ple instruction, ‘Light a match and watch till it goes out.’ Lighting a match and
watching the expiring flame became a ritual that she repeated. Lighting Piece
was first publicly performed in New York on 24 November 1961 at the Carnegie
Recital Hall, as part of her ‘opera’, AOS – To David Tudor. The work’s title was
a comment on the ‘blue chaos’ of war – ‘ao’ is Japanese for blue, ‘os’ is from
chaos – likely referring to the horror of the atomic bombing of the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and also Ono’s inner turmoil and a
reflection on the world around her. Performed by a group of artists who
became central to Fluxus in the following years – including Ay-O, George
Brecht, Philip Corner, Jackson Mac Low, Jonas Mekas, La Monte Young and
Ono herself – AOS presented a ‘mountain’ of human bodies dimly illuminated
by a match and movements performed by Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer,
among others. The performance foregrounded elements that would reoccur
throughout Ono’s practice, as the score noted:
flashing a light (flash-light) to see other performers, lighting a match …
Several dancers should be behind a large canvas put across the stage, they
may use scissors, or other instruments to cut out holes on any place of the
canvas and stick portions of their body ... the whole thing should be very
quiet. A large bag which includes all the performers can be used also in
place of the canvas.2
A year later in Japan, Ono incorporated Lighting Piece as part of her solo per-
formance A Piano Piece to See the Skies on 24 May 1962 at Sogetsu Art Center
in Tokyo, one element of her event-based programme and exhibition, Works
of Yoko Ono. According to her then husband, composer and musician, Toshi
Ichiyanagi, this performance was made up of ‘inaudible sounds’, ‘sounds that
reached the sky’ and ‘breaths’. 3 The concert was conducted in darkness, only
 Cut Piece 1964, performed by Yoko Ono at
Théâtre Le Ranelagh, Paris, 15 September 2003.
Photograph by Ken McKay
partially lit by flashlights, spotlights or a match to change the audience’s per-
ception, as Ono noted, ‘I wanted most things to be performed in the dark, there-
by asking the audience to stretch their imaginations. A glimpse of things was
seen by occasionally lit matches and torches. This went on for four hours.’4
Ono sought to challenge the relationship between performance and audience
by encouraging the audience to take a more active role.
A few years later, at the invitation of her friend and Fluxus coordinator
George Maciunas, Ono recorded the simple action of striking a match for her
silent film, No.1 (Match) 1966 in photographer and filmmaker Peter Moore’s
New York apartment, with Moore as cameraman. Using a high-speed scien-
tific film camera in extreme slow motion, at a filming rate of 2,000 frames per
second instead of the standard twenty-four seconds, the action of striking a
match was protracted from seconds into several minutes. The companion
work EYEBLINK 1966, similarly rejected cinematic narrative, instead drawing
attention to the passing of time.
The instruction, performance and film are all different expressions of the
same idea, which draws the mind from an ordinary gesture to notions of
transience, the immaterial and the ephemeral. We are invited to contemplate
(or imagine) or carry out a brief sensory act and in doing so focus our aware-
ness on ourselves and our surroundings. Ono’s artwork can often take several
forms: a score, a performance, an object, a film, music and audio, or as an
event. Outlining her approach in a lecture in 1966, Ono commented that her
early events had no ‘script’, but rather had ‘something that starts it moving
– the closest word for it may be a “wish” or “hope”’ – and that transforms in
the hands, minds and words of others.5 Transformation is a key aspect of Ono’s
practice, with her instructions or scores operating as ‘seeds’, activated by
the individual or collectively through mind and action.
Ono moved between Japan, the United States and England for three
decades before settling in New York in 1971. During a two-year stay in Japan
between 1962–4, she published her foundational book of instruction works,
Grapefruit. It consists of instructions – a hybrid form between poetry and
score – which aims to stimulate the imagination and unlock the mind. Grapefruit
was first published with five sections: Music, Painting, Event, Poetry, and
14 15
Sky Piece to Jesus Christ 1965. Carnegie Recital
Hall, New York. Photograph by Peter Moore
Object – and later expanded in the 1970 edition to include two more sections
of works: Film and Dance, alongside a selection of Ono’s writings. The instruc-
tions are to be completed – in reality or in the imagination – by anyone and
everyone. The scores act like music scores, which exist so anyone can play
the composition and create their own music. The minimal and poetic lan-
guage instructs us to dream, to wish and to imagine. In some cases, they are
a single verb: PROMISE, QUESTION, BREATHE and FLY. They also exist as
short phrases, for example in the ‘Event’ section: ‘Throw a stone into the sky
high enough so it will not come back’ or ‘Bandage any part of your body’. The
section on ‘Painting’ offers tasks for the imagination (as do the other sec-
tions), including, ‘Make a hole. Leave it in the wind’. ‘Music’ scores include
TEAR, RUB, PEEL and PEEK; or a cathartic instruction that asks us to ‘Scream
against the sky’. Some scores in the ‘Music’ and ‘Poetry’ sections focus on
sounds and the body, from ‘listen to each other’s pulse’ to an instruction to ‘lis-
ten to a heartbeat’. In the ‘Poetry’ section, various ‘touch poems’ aim at com-
municating and understanding through touch: ‘touch each other’, ‘feel the wall’
and let a child ‘touch everything possible and leave its fingermark there in
place of a signature’.
After returning to New York from Japan, Ono visited London for the
Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in September 1966, which led to a five-
year stay in England from 1966 to 1971, where she connected with artists,
musicians, and writers, and met John Lennon (1940–80), her future husband
and long-term collaborator. Ono was one of only two women to take part in the
month-long programme of talks and performances at DIAS. In a symposium
talk, she outlined key aspects of her participatory art, which as Andrew Wilson
notes in his essay in this publication, are ‘event-based, engaged with daily
life, personal, unfinished or partial, a catalyst for creative transformation, and
existing within the realm of imagination.’
In November that year, her solo exhibition opened at John Dunbar’s influ-
ential Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London, signalling a shift in her practice.
Featuring predominantly white and transparent objects labelled as ‘unfinished’,
visitors were encouraged to participate and either physically or conceptually
complete the works, including Painting to Hammer a Nail 1961, first realised
 16
MY BODY IS THE SCAR OF MY MIND shown during performance of Cut Piece in
Two Evenings with Yoko Ono, presented by Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS),
Africa Centre, London 28–29 September 1966. Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
1966. At Indica and in her touring concert, Music of the Mind, stepladders
featured with an invitation to visitors to ascend, physically and metaphorically.
In Japan, she had presented Fly 1964 as a stepladder from which guests took
flight, and Ceiling Painting 1966 at Indica where visitors climbed a ladder to
discover the word ‘YES’ on a piece of paper suspended from the ceiling, only
visible through a magnifying glass. Visitors could also engage with White
Chess Set 1966, a game of only white pieces and squares, embodying her
anti-war stance. The following year, Ono protested the ban (by the British
Board of Film Censors) of her FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7, which served
as a ‘petition for peace’, the screening of which in 1967 was cancelled by the
Royal Albert Hall. That same year, at another London location, in Lisson
Gallery, the installation Half-A-Room 1967 featured halved domestic objects,
reflecting Ono’s statement that life is half a game, with molecules perpetu-
ally on the verge of change. 6
Throughout her career, Ono has utilised her art and increasingly global
platform to advocate for peace and humanitarian causes, initially collabo-
rating with Lennon (whom she had first met at her solo show at Indica Gallery).
Acorn Peace 1969 involved sending acorns to world leaders, while the WAR
IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT billboard campaign used the language of advertising
to spread a message of peace. The film BED PEACE 1969 documented the
second of their infamous ‘bed-in’ events, staged in Amsterdam and Montreal,
during which they spoke with the world’s media to promote world peace
during the Vietnam War. Ono commented:
I like to fight the establishment by using methods that are so far removed
from establishment type-thinking that the establishment doesn’t know
how to fight back. For instance, they cannot stamp out John and Yoko
events Two Virgins, Bed Peace, Acorn Peace, and War is Over poster event …
The job of an artist is not to destroy but to change the value of things. And
by doing that, artists can change the world into a Utopia where there is
total freedom for everybody. That can be achieved only when there is total
communication in the world. Total communication equals peace. That is
our aim. That is what artists can do for the world!7
17
John Lennon and Yoko Ono during a performance of Instant Karma
on Top of the Pops 1970. Photograph by Richard DiLello
Music has enabled Ono, individually, but also together with Lennon and their
group Plastic Ono Band, to amplify her activist priorities. Ono’s music became
a bridge between the two worlds of avant-garde art music and mainstream pop.
Plastic Ono Band is a musical group which believes that “the message is
the music”, and the communication of it is the performance. Whoever has
a message is therefore part of the group.
The music is in your mind.
The mind is what we share.
like sunshine and water. 8
Ono has long identified with many movements for women’s rights, 9 and her
art and music have at times focused on the dynamics of power, vulnerability,
and violence. Cut Piece 1964 has increasingly been understood as a pivotal
early work of feminist art history, although it is open to multiple readings
including those posed by Ono herself. During her early performances in Kyoto
and Tokyo in 1964 and at DIAS in London in 1966, Ono’s performance of the
work was accompanied by a large handwritten sign that read, ‘My body is the
Scar of My Mind’, and Ono’s own quote that, ‘It was a form of giving, giving
and taking’. Kevin Concannon writes that Ono ‘has characterised it as a test
of her commitment to life as an artist, as a challenge to artistic ego, as a gift,
and as a spiritual act … In September 2003, at the age of seventy, Ono per-
formed Cut Piece in Paris “for world peace.” Thirty-nine years after her first
performance of the work, she told Reuters News Agency that she did it “against
ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence.”’10 In her 1971
recording for her album Fly, the lyrics for ‘O’Wind (Body Is the Scar of Your
Mind)’ speak of this scar turning into a wind of pain, which, when it passes the
world nine times, ‘turns into a breeze’. The concepts of trauma and healing
run consistently throughout Ono’s practice.
On the same album, in 1971, Yoko Ono released the track ‘Fly’. It was the
soundtrack for the film Fly 1970–1 which explored the symbolism of a fly crawl-
ing on the body of a naked woman. The film was based on Ono’s 1968 film
score, Fly (Film No. 13) from Thirteen Film Scores by Yoko Ono, London ’68,
 18
which reads ‘Let a fly walk on a woman’s body from toe to head and fly out of
the window’ – suggesting both confinement and liberation. Directed by Ono
and Lennon, it features actress Virginia Lust, real flies ‘supplied by New York
City’, and a multi-layered soundtrack that mixes Ono’s voice with Lennon’s
guitar instrumentals. Ono described both the woman’s body and the fly as
autobiographical. The stillness and passivity of the woman’s body in Fly is
reminiscent of Ono’s stance in her performances of Cut Piece – qualities Ono
felt male society often demanded of women and which she has challenged
throughout her work and music.
In stark contrast, the fly also embodies the concept of a free spirit, a pun that
intrigued Ono, as the word ‘fly’ in English can mean both an insect and the act of
soaring. Ono imagined herself as the fly during the creation and performance of
the vocals. Yet, flies also carry associations of dirt, decay and revulsion. The film
can be read as a feminist manifesto, challenging the societal objectification
and mistreatment of women. Throughout her early works, Ono frequently
explored the notion of flight and the word ‘fly’ as a concept. Whether it was
her poetic instruction, birth announcements or participatory sculptures, Ono
consistently used flight as a symbol of liberation and empowerment.
Included in this publication are the lyrics and album covers to some of her
feminist anthems including ‘Sisters, O Sisters’ 1972, ‘Woman Power’ 1973,
and ‘Rising’ 1995 (realised on Ono’s solo album Rising 1995, and which is also
the soundtrack to her 2013 work Arising, featuring the testimonials of women
who have suffered harm). These words and works seek to empower women
to build a new world, to have courage and rage, amplifying Ono’s message
that seeks to denounce violence against women.
Ono’s artworks can be read as a way of dealing with her own experiences
of suffering and an ongoing wish to heal the wider society. As a child fleeing
the bombing of Tokyo during the Second World War, Ono found comfort in the
constant presence of the sky. Helmets (Pieces of Sky) 2001 is made of Second
World War helmets, each containing blue puzzle pieces of an image of the
sky. The accompanying instruction reads: ‘Take a piece of sky. Know that
we are all part of each other.’ Visitors are invited to take a piece – perhaps re-
uniting in the future to re-assemble the sky. The work relates back to Promise
19
WHISPER 17 November 2013. Performed by Yoko Ono
at Sydney Opera House. Video, projection, colour
and sound (stereo), 10min, 27sec
Piece 1966, first performed at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre in London,
where Ono broke a vase on stage and asked people to take the pieces
home, promising that they would all meet in ten years’ time and put the vase
together again.
Ono’s instruction for the collective, participatory work Add Colour (Refugee
Boat) 2016 reads, ‘Just blue like the ocean’. Participants are invited to add
hand-written messages onto white walls and a white boat. The concept was
first introduced by Ono during her Chambers Street loft events and later with
Ono’s Add Colour paintings of the mid-1960s at Indica Gallery, London, where
visitors played a role in adding to ‘unfinished’ white surfaces. Just as these
early works were an open invitation for the audience to complete the work,
so Add Colour (Refugee Boat) invites the audience to share their hopes,
desires and thoughts.
Ono’s Wish Tree draw upon the Japanese tradition of writing wishes on
paper and tying them to small trees at Buddhist temples. Ono asks partici-
pants to make a wish, write the wish down, tie it to the branch of a Wish Tree,
and to then ‘keep wishing until the branches are covered with wishes.’11 The
wishes are preserved and continue on in connection with the IMAGINE PEACE
TOWER in Iceland. These wishes translate Ono’s belief that the mind has the
power to realise good through the act of visualisation and collective action:
‘Power works in mysterious ways. We don’t have to do much. Visualise the
domino effect and just start thinking PEACE. Thoughts are infectious. Send
it out. The message will circulate faster than you think.’
This exhibition opens with Ono’s greeting in Telephone Piece 1964,
recorded 1971, and closes with WHISPER 2013, which was performed by Ono
in her eightieth year at Sydney Opera House in Australia. Here, the artist’s
powerful vocals echo with the words, ‘I wish ... let me wish ...’. Ono’s invitation
to imagine and to whisper is a call to action, a provocation to change the
world, one wish at a time.
Juliet Bingham, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern
 20 21

FILM NO. 1 (‘MATCH’) / Fluxfilm No. 14

right

1966. Directed by Yoko Ono. Based on Lighting

Lighting Piece 1955.
above
Piece 1955. Included in the Fluxfilm Anthology
One of one hundred and fifty-one
compiled by George Maciunas, 1966. Film, 16mm,
typescripts for Grapefruit, 1963–64.
shown as video, black and white, 5min, 4sec
Lighting Piece 1955, photographed 24 May 1962.
Performed by Yoko Ono in Works of Yoko Ono,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo. Photograph by
Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Yasufumi Nakamori
In such mediums as painting, music,
poetry, and action, Ono has created
worlds of original ‘language’ that are
totally separate from one another. This was
25 considered unusual even among Ono’s
peers in New York. Morton Feldman, a
composer of chance operation, called
Ono ‘New York’s enfant terrible’, and even
Cage treated her as an exceptional talent.
Kindred Spirits
Ono influenced the people around her to
varying degrees. So-called ideas spring
from her one after another, and she will
calmly give one to this or that person,
remaining equable even when someone
Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi steals one.
Toshi Ichiyanagi1
Yoko Ono and the Julliard-trained Japanese
composer and pianist Toshi Ichiyanagi were
parting ways romantically when Ichiyanagi
publicly rebutted Donald Richie’s harsh criti-
cism of Ono’s performance at Sogetsu Art
Center (titled Sogetsu Contemporary Series
15: Works of Yoko Ono on 24 May, 1962) as
derivative.2 There, Ono performed her scores
including Lighting Piece 1955 and A Piano
Piece to See the Skies 1962. In the July 1962
issue of the monthly arts magazine Geijutsu
shincho, Richie, a film and art critic then based
in Tokyo, claimed that in the Sogetsu concert
‘Ono did not demonstrate any originality’ and
Instructions for Paintings 1962. Handwritten by
Toshi Ichiyanagi. Painting for a Broken Sewing
Machine 1961 winter. Ink on paper, 25.1 × 35.9
her ideas were ‘borrowed from people in New
York, particularly John Cage’. Richie even
complained that the Sogetsu Art Center
hardly lived up to the reputation it had once
held ‘for presenting the finest of Japanese
avant-garde art’ by presenting the Ono pro-
gramme. In his response, published in the
following issue of Geijutsu shincho, Ichiyanagi
articulated the vast difference between Ono’s
piece A Piano Piece to See the Skies and
John Cage’s silent piano composition 4’33”.
Ichiyanagi explained that Ono’s piece ‘began
with the repetition of sounds inaudible to
humans, proceeding to the repetition of
sounds that reached the sky’, and it ‘con-
cluded with the repetitive breathing that
necessarily results from an energetic per-
formance’. Ichiyanagi continued, to the
contrary, Cage’s piece embodied the absence
of deliberate sounds and Cage ‘considered
every sound that was heard during the
performance [of 4’33”] music.’3 Importantly,
the rebuttal evinces that Ichiyanagi was
one of Ono’s few trusted allies, fully under-
standing her originality and contribution to
the field of experimental music. 4
Six years earlier, in 1956, both at age 23,
Ono and Ichiniyagi had eloped and immersed
themselves in New York’s experimental art
and music scenes of the era. When Ono and
Ichiyanagi met in the mid-1950s against the
background of the exploration of Asian
aesthetics and philosophy in New York, he
was a student at The Julliard School (from
1954–7) and she, in attendance at Sarah
Lawrence College from 1953–6, where she
wrote songs and developed her interest in
twelve-tone music. 5 Classically trained,
Ichiyanagi was also a composer of twelve-
tone music in the tradition of Arnold
Schönberg and Alban Berg. Fascinated by
electric composition, Ichiyanagi was in the
circle of emerging composers in New York.
As Alexandra Munroe points out, by 1959,
when he took a course in experimental music
taught by John Cage (who was a student of
Zen Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki) at the New
School for Social Research. Absorbing many of
his ideas on chance and indeterminacy, Ono
and Ichiyanagi were associated with Cage.
Cage was vastly influential ‘through creating
and transmitting an alternative modern
aesthetic founded in Asian thought’. 6
Around that time, to make a living, Ono
performed in various cultural programmes
at universities, colleges, and various orga-
nisations such as the Japan Society, Brooklyn
College and the Fine Art Festival of Thiel
College in Pennsylvania. Her demonstrations
included calligraphy, music, origami and the
recitation of traditional poems; she also
recited her own poems.7
Instructions for Paintings 1962. Handwritten
by Toshi Ichiyanagi. Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Hammer a nail in the centre of
a piece…’). Ink on paper, 25.1 × 35.9
The couple’s connection to the downtown
avant-garde art and music scene deepened
after Ono signed a lease for a loft at 112
Chambers Street in December 1960. Soon
after, Ono and the composer and musician
La Monte Young began organising a series
of performances at the loft that included
music, dance and poetry in which Ichiniyagi
participated. In particular, from December
1960 to June 1961, Ono and Young organised
performance events under the title Chambers
Street Loft Series, in which Ichiyanagi was
one of the featured artists. The programme
consisted of performances by Terry Jennings
(18–19 December 1960), Toshi Ichiyanagi,
Music (7–8 January 1961), Henry Flynt, Music
and Poetry (25–26 February), Joseph Byrd,
Music and Poetry (4–5 March), Jackson Mac
Low (8–9 April), Richard Maxfield (28–30
April), Compositions by La Monte Young (19–
20 May), Simone Morris (née Forti), Five Dance
Constructions + Some Other Things (26–27
May), Robert Morris, An Environment (3–7 June)
and Dennis Lindberg, Blind: A Happening
(28–30 June). 8 The breadth of disciplines
among these artists demonstrates Ono and
Ichiyanagi’s wide reach in their own commu-
nity in New York.
The year of 1961 – their last year toge-
ther in New York – was critical for Ono and
Ichiyanagi, respectively, in their forward-
looking music practices and performances,
and therefore in getting their works recog-
nised professionally.
While Ono and Ichiyanagi were absorbed
26 27 in the international downtown scene, they
were also a key element in the Japanese
avant-garde music scene that connected
New York and Tokyo. Introducing their avant-
garde cohorts from Tokyo in New York was
part of their programmes. During the Japanese
composer Toshirō Mayuzumi’s two-month
stay in New York, Ono and Ichiyanagi organ-
ised and appeared together with him at a
three-person concert on 3 April 1961, An
Evening of Contemporary Japanese Music
and Poetry, which took place at the Village
Gate in Greenwich Village. Presented by
David Johnson, the line-up included music
by Mayuzumi (known for bringing together
avant-garde instrumentation and traditional
Asian musical techniques) and Ichiyanagi,
and poetry by Ono. Ono staged and narrated
A Grapefruit in the World of Park, accom-
panied by David Tudor, Cage, Mayuzumi,
Ichiyanagi (on piano) and others who played
violin, viola and cello. 9
Soon after the Village Gate concert, in
May 1961, Ichiyanagi gave a recital, his first,
at Carnegie Recital Hall. His performance
included works by Cage, Morton Feldman,
Stefan Wolpe, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown,
Yoko Ono, Toshi Ichiyanagi and Jonas Mekas
during the installation of Paintings & Drawings
by Yoko Ono, AG Gallery, NYC July 17–30, 1961.
Photograph by George Maciunas
as well as his own Ichiyanagi Music for Piano
No. 2 1959 and No. 7 1961. Eric Salzman,
describing Ichiyanagi’s performance of his
work in a review for the New York Times, wrote
that ‘a high, distant, cold glissando rubbed
somehow out of the innards of the piano
and a furious rumble of elbows and fists on
the keyboard’. 1 0 The concert celebrated
Ichiyanagi’s time in New York, but by then he
was gaining attention in the wider United
States, performing his avant-garde pieces
including IBM for Merce Cunningham 1960
– a score based on early IBM computer cards
– in Hawaii and other locations. 11 Notably,
through his New York years, Ichiyanagi came
to be known as Cage’s protégé.
That same summer, between 17 – 30 July,
Ono had a solo show at AG Gallery, Paintings
& Drawings by Yoko Ono. In addition to her
Instruction Paintings (‘paintings constructed
in your head’), she showed calligraphic
and other works on paper, at the request
of galler y co-owner George Maciunas.
Ichiyanagi was present. Soon after that,
Ichiyanagi returned to Tokyo to take charge
of programming for the American music
festival organised by Mayuzumi’s Institute
for Music of the 20th Century. Ichiyanagi
decided to stay in Japan after the festival,
while Ono’s first recital took place on 24
November at Carnegie Recital Hall (now
Weill Recital Hall) entitled Works of Yoko
Ono. Presented by the music producer
Norman J. Seaman, Ono’s programme in-
cluded A Grapefruit in the World of Park, A
Piece for Strawberries and Violin, and AOS
– To David Tudor. Voice and instruments
were provided by Ono, together with Ay-O,
George Brecht, Philip Corner, Mac Low, Jo-
nas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer, Young, Charlotte
Moorman and others, with movements by
Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer among
others. 12 The concert revealed the multi-
disciplinary nature of Ono’s practice, its
hybrid of poetry, sound and movement.
On 3 March 1962, Ono travelled to Japan.
Ichiyanagi had arranged for her exhibition and
concert at Sogetsu Art Center. Requested by
Ono, Ichiyanagi participated in the exhibition
by let tering some of her Ins truc tion
Paintings.13 Her return coincided with the
explosion of Japan’s anti-art and conceptual
art movements against the background of
the strong anti-US sentiment as a result of
the then-recent revision of the Anpo (the US–
Japan Security Treaty). 14 Soon after her
arrival, she felt limited by her association
w i th h e r f a m o u s c o m p o s e r hu s b a n d
Ichiyanagi and the American composer John
Cage, highly admired figures in Tokyo’s
avant-garde arts scene.15 With this feeling of
burden and self-loss (partially from the harsh
critique she received from her 24 May
concert at the Sogetsu Art Center, the
subject of the aforementioned debate be-
tween Richie and Ichiyanagi) and through the
process of her re-discovery, Ono took some
time for herself and detached from Ichi-
yanagi.16 She would end up staying in Japan
two years, performing and creating new
scores actively and strengthened her ties
with Tokyo’s art and music scene through
various collaborations (Hi-Red Center’s
Shelter Plan in 1964).
Beginning with the 24 May concert, Ono
organised and appeared in several concerts
at the centre during her two-year stay (inclu-
ding her Farewell Concert: Strip Tease Show
in August 1964 when she performed her Cut
Piece that she had premiered in Kyoto in
July). Meanwhile, only four days later, on 28
May, Ichiyanagi and pianist Kenji Kobayashi
performed Sogetsu Contemporary Series 14:
Kobayashi Kenji + Ichiyanagi Toshi, Duo
Recital, playing pieces including Ichiyanagi’s
The Pile 1961. 17 (This was not his first
appearance at Sogetsu Art Center: he had
performed a solo concert there soon after
his return to Japan in 1961.) For both Ichiyanagi
and Ono, the Sogetsu Art Center provided a
platform to perform and connect with their
Japanese audiences.
John Cage and David Tudor’s visit to
Japan in the autumn of 1962 – which caused
the famous ‘Cage shock’ in Japan’s music
scene18 – brought Ono and Ichiyanagi to per-
form together. They performed and travelled
28 29 together with their guests from New York City
(including Peggy Guggenheim) throughout
Japan, beginning in Tokyo and touring to
Kyoto, Osaka and Sapporo. At the first event,
Sogetsu Contemporary Series 17: John Cage
on 9 October 1962 at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan
concert hall, Cage performed his Music Walk
1958 together with Ono, Tudor, Ichiyanagi,
Yūji Takahashi, Kobayashi, Mayuzumi, and
Toru Takemitsu.19 The following evening at
the same venue, the concert Sogetsu Con-
temporary Series 17: David Tudor saw Ono
(voice) and Tudor (piano), assisted by Cage,
perform in the premiere of Cage’s ‘Arias and
Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix’. Cage and
Tudor travelled to and performed in Kyoto
and Osaka on 12 and 17 October respectively
and it is significant that Cage dedicated
the premier of his 0’00” 1962 to both Ono
and Ichiyanagi. They would also perform in
Young’s Poem, together with Cage, Tudor,
Kobayashi, Takahashi, Takemitsu and
Mayuzumi. The tour ended with the concert
Sapporo Contemporary Music Festival, at
Sapporo Shimin Kaikan, Sapporo, on 26
October, presented as part of Sogetsu Art
Center’s contemporary music programme.
Yoko Ono (centre); Toshi Ichiyanagi (right
of Ono); Sam Francis (far left) attending
the closing party of Hi-Red Center exhibition,
Grand Panorama, Naiqua Gallery, Tokyo,
16 May, 1964. Photograph by Minoru Hirata
Alongside Cage and Tudor, a group of musi-
cians were organised, including Kobayashi,
Ichiyanagi and Takahashi, and the conductor
Seiji Ozawa. Ono performed with the group
in the premiere of Ichiyanagi’s Sapporo,
conducted by Ozawa. 20
Ichiyanagi and Ono had spent their for-
mative years together developing a shared
language. Despite this critical connection,
by the end of the Cage / Tudor Japan tour in
the autumn of 1962, each artist was deeply
engaged in their own separate professional
paths and personal lives. Ono was becoming
known as a force in the international circle of
the Fluxus movement and Ichiyanagi as a
dominant figure in Japan’s intermedia art
and avant-garde music scenes. Ono had met
Anthony Cox, a young American film producer
(who often visited Ono whilst she was in the
clinic resting) and their daughter Kyoko was
born in August of 1963. The same year,
Ichiyanagi married Sumiko, and they had a
son, Kei, in 1964.
While the Japan tour by Cage and Tudor
exposed Japanese audiences to their ex-
perimental music and its methodologies, it
also provided Ichiyanagi and Ono with
opportunities to collaborate and perform
together, seemingly the final occasions
on which the pair worked closely together.
Nevertheless, as Ichiyanagi stated in his
1962 rebuttal, he and Ono shared a critical
methodological language in experimental
music. Quoting French composer Olivier
Messiaen – who said, when he visited Japan:
‘If you don’t know a language, you can’t
understand its meaning. For example, since
I don’t know Japanese, I don’t understand it
even as I listen to it’ – Ichiyanagi continued,
‘Though he said a simple thing, I thought his
way of thinking was so clear and so typically
Western. I wish that critics could understand
that an artist has his or her original language,
and sometimes it cannot be understood by
existing senses. This especially applies
to Ono’s works, which have new metaphys-
ical rules.’21
More than half a century later, in his 2017
interview, Ichiyanagi mentioned that he
continued to remain fascinated by Ono’s
John Cage, Yoko Ono, David Tudor and
above
Kenji Kobayashi (left to right), performing
at NHK, Tokyo, October 1962. Photograph by
Yasuhiro Yoshioka
‘ability to use her own courage to discover
the essence without being bound by con-
ventional wisdom’.22 On her work Freight Train
1999 displayed in the 2001 Yokohama Triennial
where he also participated, Ichiyanagi said, 30 31
‘I thought it was a work that was typical of
her, with no humans in it, just sound, and it
evoked a scene packed with people being
transported to Auschwitz’, and further stated
‘her work, which expresses inner struggle,
had a special presence. She was a genre in
itself. Although she was originally a poet, her
identity was not to belong to anything.’23
In these years, despite their eventual
divergences and differences, Yoko Ono and
Toshi Ichiyanagi understood each other
through the conceptual language they had
developed together from their intimate years
of the late 1950s to the early 1960s.
Yoko Ono performing in John Cage’s Music
below
Walk with David Tudor (center) and John Cage
(rear; back turned), Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
9 October 1962. Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
 Chambers Street Loft Series, New York
pp.32, 34–5

c.1960–1. Photographs by Minoru Niizuma. These

photos show those who either participated in
or attended these events, including John Cage,
Simone Forti, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Kenji Kobayashi,
Jackson Mac Low, Charlotte Moorman, Toshirō
32 33 Mayuzumi, Isamu Noguchi, Yoko Ono, Robert
Rauschenberg, David Tudor and La Monte Young
among others.

Publicity photograph taken at Yoko Ono's

below

loft on Chamber's Street for An Evening

of Contemporary Japanese Music and Poetry,
the Village Gate, 3 April 1961. Photograph
by Minoru Niizuma
34 35
 Yoko Ono with Painting to See in the Dark
(Version 1) 1961 from Paintings & Drawings
by Yoko Ono, AG Gallery, New York, 17–30
July 1961, printed 1993. Photograph by
George Maciunas

36 37

Entrance to the exhibition Paintings &

Drawings by Yoko Ono, AG Gallery, New York,
17–30 July 1961, printed 1993. Photograph
by George Maciunas
 38 39

Waterdrop Painting (Version 1),

from left to right A Plus B Painting, Painting to
from left to right

Painting for the Wind, Smoke Painting, Painting See in the Dark (Version 2), Shadow Painting,
in Three Stanzas, Painting to be Stepped On, Waterdrop Painting (Version 1 and 2), Time
Painting to Let the Evening Light Go Through Painting, Painting to See in the Dark (Version
1961. Photographs by George Maciunas 1) 1961. Photographs by George Maciunas
Part Painting or Painting Until It Becomes
Marble ‘To Richard’ 1961. Sumi ink on paper,
15.9 × 284
Photograph conceived as a poster for Works
by Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York,
24 November 1961. Photograph by George Maciunas
 44 45

Instructions for Paintings 1962.

pp.44–47 above Painting In Three Stanzas 1961 summer Painting to Be Constructed In Your Head
above below Painting to Hammer a Nail 1961 winter
Handwritten by Toshi Ichiyanagi. Ink on (‘Look through a phone book from the ...’)
paper, each 25.1 × 35.9 below Painting to See the Sky 1962 summer 1961 winter
 46 47

Portrait of Mary (‘Send a canvas to

above Painting to Be Constructed In Your Head
below Painting to Be Constructed In Your Head
above Painting to Be Constructed In Your Head
below

a Mary ...’) 1962 spring (‘Observe three paintings carefully ...’) (‘Imagine dividing the canvas into twenty ...’) (‘Go on transforming a square canvas ...’)
1962 spring 1962 spring 1962 spring
 The Pulse 1962, photographed 24 May 1962,
above AOS – To David Tudor 1961. Performed in
below

printed 2024. Performed by (left to right) Works of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
Yoriaki Matsudaira, Toshirō Mayuzumi, Yūji 24 May 1962. Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Takahashi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Kenji Kobayashi
and Kuniharu Akiyama in Works of Yoko Ono,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo. Photograph by Akio
48 49 Nonaka

Invitation to Works of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu

Art Center, Tokyo, 24 May 1962. Designed
by Yoko Ono and Kōhei Sugiura. Ink on paper,
47.6 × 11.4
 50 51

All works from Audience Piece to La Monte

Young 1962, photographed 24 May 1962 in
Works of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo.
Photographs by Yashiro Yoshioka.

Performed by (from left to right) Yoriaki

above Performed by (from left to right) Yoko
below

Matsudaira (2nd); Yoko Ono (4th); Kenji
Kobayashi (6th); Nobuaki Kojima (7th); Tatsumi
Yoshino (9th); Santarō Tanabe (15th); Toshi
Ichiyanagi (20th)
Performed by (left to right): Yoko Ono;
below
Kenji Kobayashi; Nobuaki Kojima; Kazutada
Tsubouchi; Tatsumi Yoshino; Tatsumi Hijikata;
Santarō Tanabe
Performed by (left to right): Yoko Ono
above
(2nd); Kenji Kobayashi (4th); Nobuaki Kojima
(5th); Kazutada Tsubouchi (6th)
Ono (2nd); Kenji Kobayashi (4th); Nobuaki
Kojima (5th); Kazutada Tsubouchi (6th); Tatsumi
Yoshino (9th); Santarō Tanabe (12th); Kuniharu
Akiyama (standing)
53

Painting to Shake Hands 1961, first realised

1962. Yoko Ono From My Window, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 8 November
2015–14 February 2016. Acrylic paint on
canvas, 190 × 130
54 55

From left to right: David Tudor,

opposite, left

John Cage, Yoko Ono and Toshirō Mayuzumi

performing John Cage’s Music Walk 1958, Tokyo
Bunka Kaikan, photographed 9 October 1962.
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka

leftPerformance of Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Sapporo,

conducted by John Cage (center, back to camera)
and performed by (left to right) Yoko Ono
(seated); Yūji Takahashi (behind Ono); Kenji
Kobayashi (second, seated); Ryū Noguchi;
Toshinari Ohashi; Tōru Konishi; David Tudor Yoko Ono performing in Sogetsu Contemporary
and Toshi Ichiyanagi, Hokkaido Broadcasting Series 18: John Cage and David Tudor, Kyoto
Company, Sapporo, photographed 27 October 1962. Kaikan Second Hall, 12 October 1962. Photograph
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
56 57

Tickets for Three Kyoto Events, 20–22

top, left

July 1964. Contemporary American Avant-Garde

Music Concert, Yamaichi Hall, 20 July 1964.
Evening till Dawn, Nanzenji Temple, 21 July Announcement for Yoko Ono Farewell
above

1964. Symposium, French Cancan Coffee House, Concert: Strip Tease Show, Sogetsu Art Center,
22 July 1964 Tokyo, 11 August 1964

leftProgramme for Contemporary American Avant- Ticket for Yoko Ono Farewell Concert:
below

Garde Music Concert: Insound and Instructure, Strip Tease Show, Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo,
Yamaichi Hall, Kyoto, 20 July 1964 11 August 1964
 58 59

Cut Piece 1964, photographed 11 August 1964.

Performed by Yoko Ono in Yoko Ono Farewell
Concert: Strip Tease Show, Sogetsu Art Center,
Tokyo. Photographs by Minoru Hirata
 61

Cut Piece 1964, filmed 21 March 1965.

overleaf

Cut Piece 1964, photographed 21 March 1965. Performed by Yoko Ono, in New Works of Yoko
Performed by Yoko Ono in New Works of Yoko Ono, Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. Film
Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. Photographs by David and Albert Maysles. Film, 16mm, black
by Minoru Niizuma and white, and sound (stereo), 8min, 27sec
 64 65

Bag Piece 1964, photographed 11 August 1964.

Performed by Yoko Ono and Anthony Cox in
Yoko Ono Farewell Concert: Strip Tease Show,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo. Photographs by
Yasuhiro Yoshioka
67

Bag Piece 1964, photographed 27 June 1965.

Performed in Perpetual Fluxfest, Cinematheque,
New York. Photographs by George Maciunas
 68 69

Script for Strip Tease Show published

pp.68–74

1966. 7 sheets, mimeograph on paper, 28 × 21.7

70 71
72 73
74 75

Strip Tease for Three 1964, photographed

11 August 1964, printed 2024. Performed in
Yoko Ono Farewell Concert: Strip Tease Show,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo. Photograph by
Yasuhiro Yoshioka
 77

AD for Bagwear 1966. From the

above and right

exhibition catalogue for The Stone, Judson

Gallery, New York, March 1966. Offset on
paper, 3 sheets, each 28 × 21.6
Naoko Seki
In the summer of 1964, before her departure
for the United States, Yoko Ono published
Grapefruit, an artist’s book in which she
included over 200 instructions that she had
conceived in the previous ten years or so.
While this body of work is well known as part
of her great oeuvre, it has usually been dis-
cussed in terms of Ono’s relationships with
79 such contemporaries as John Cage, David
Yoko Ono in Tokyo
Tudor, La Monte Young, Dick Higgins and
other Fluxus artists – which is to say, her
instructions have often been studied in the
context of contemporary music after the mid-
1950s and contemporary art in the 1960s and
From Drama to Instructions 1970s, mostly in the US. Composed in a
series of short words, Ono’s instructions
have also been compared to such traditional
Japanese practices as seventeen-syllable
haiku poems and terse kōan riddles given to
disciples by their Zen masters.
To add to these past readings, primarily
developed in Europe and the US,1 I would like
to suggest the importance of Ono’s student
years in Tokyo in the early 1950s, when she
made the earliest of these instructions. In
particular, I will focus on her membership
of the drama club at the Gakushūin Girls
High School in 1949–52, in order to trace
the evolution of her practice of instruction
and reconsider its significance in her cre-
ative work.
Interest in Musical Composition
Born in 1933 in Tokyo, Ono spent her first
decade between the US and Japan, becom-
ing bilingually fluent in both Japanese and
English. These ten years preceded the out-
break of the Pacific War. From 1942 onwards,
she spent her teens in Tokyo, before leaving
for the US for the third time in 1952.
While in Tokyo, she lived in a household
filled with information about the latest devel-
opments in Western culture. Relatives of the
Ono family included Anna Bubnova-Ono
(1890–1979), a violinist who came to Japan
from Russia in the midst of the Russian
Revolution, and Anna’s elder sister, the artist
Varvara Bubnova (1886–1983), who intro-
duced Russian constructivism to Japan. 2
Ono’s father, Eisuke, had endeavoured to
become a pianist prior to his marriage to her
mother, Isoko Yasuda, and before taking up
a position at a bank.
In 1939 Yoko Ono entered Jiyū Gakuen
(literally ‘Freedom School’), her mother’s
alma mater, known for its building complex
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was in the
school’s newly inaugurated Yōji Seikatsu-
dan (literally ‘Infants' Life Group’) that Ono
received a music education grounded in the
principle of ‘perfect pitch’. Here, too, she
came into contact with the idea of music that
makes no distinction between art and life –
creating, for example, a composition based
on the sound of a clock. In other words, even
at an early age she had learned to appreciate
everyday sounds as much as those of musi-
cal instruments. 3
Ono subsequently took lessons in piano
and vocal music – but what she really wanted
to become was a composer.4 She would rather
create her own new works than play pieces
composed by others, and she decided to
prepare for the entrance exam for the music
department of the Tokyo University of the
Arts. However, when her father pointed out
that there had existed few professional female
composers in history, Ono, since she was
already at the Girls' High School of Gakushūin,
decided instead to study philosophy at the
university within Gakushūin’s school system.
She would not pursue music until she left for
New York where her father was assigned as
a branch manage at a bank. 5 In 1953 she
enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College where
she spent much time in the college’s music
library listening to Arnold Schoenberg and
Anton von Webern, 6 and later attending
Harvard for summer school in 1954.
Encounter with Drama
Ono’s path to her art via music may be better
understood when we look at her activities at
her high school drama club. These are vital in
understanding her future practice of instruc-
tions and their realisations, as well as her
collective works with Fluxus.
Let us rewind the clock to 1945. Early that
year, fleeing the frequent US air raids on
Tokyo, Ono evacuated to near Karuizawa, a
highland area northwest of the capital. After
the war, she returned to Tokyo on a truck but,
finding the city in ruins, stayed with her grand-
father in the ancient town of Kamakura. In the
spring of 1946, she entered Gakushūin’s Girls’
Junior High School, commuting by train to the
campus in the Toyama area of Shinjuku Ward.
The journey, which took two hours each way,
would have given Ono plenty of time to read.
In 1949, she advanced to Gakushūin Girls’
High School. Gakushūin was originally insti-
tuted under the auspice of the Ministry of the
Imperial Household to educate the members
of the imperial family. In post-war Japan, it was
first reconstituted as a private school and
then reformed into a high school under the
new education system. (Notably, this reform
did not mandate co-ed teaching, and private
high schools tended to continue the separate
schooling of male and female students.)
In 1949 a university was added to the
Gakushūin schools, and that autumn all the
branches of Gakushūin – the university along
with the boys’ and girls’ junior high and high
schools – collaborated to organise a joint
culture festival. All the culture-related clubs
were invited to participate, including the
Girls' High School drama club to which Ono
80 81 belonged. The drama club would also present
a play as part of a stage festival at the Girls’
High School in spring.
For the all-school culture festival on 13
November 1949, when Ono was in her first
year of high school, the drama club presented
Alice Gerstenberg’s one-act play Overtones
(1915). The school magazine reported that
the club’s performance, presented at a new
university lecture hall, was favourably re-
ceived, and news that the club would plan
panel discussions and many talented first
years join the club.7
A photograph shot in front of the univer-
sity lecture hall on the day of the festival shows
four performers and four staff members,
including Ono. The accompanying text iden-
tifies her as stage manager with Atsuko
Hanafusa as director, even though she was a
first-year student. Pupils at girls’ schools gen-
erally had a secure environment to exert their
leadership in the student council and various
clubs, depending on individual aptitudes and
drives; it would have been difficult then, as
possibly still now, for female students to take
leadership roles alongside male students in
a co-ed environment. Given this fact, Ono’s
experiences at a girls’ school and a girls-only
drama club might have prepared her to be-
come an organiser in the future.
At the same time, girls’ schools faced a
unique problem. As the drama club stated in
its activity report: ‘Whenever we try to select
a play, we are saddled with the paucity
of appropriate scripts with a female-only
cast. Today, we are not permitted to mount a
mixed-gender drama, but we hope that this
restraint will be lifted some day in the future
so that we can make healthy progress in our
study of drama.’8 Indeed, few plays existed
with female-only casts, and it should be noted
that Overtones requires four female perfor-
mers to represent the two aspects of two
persons – to contrast their surface appear-
ances and interior thoughts. First presented
in 1915 in a New York bookstore, it was then
translated into Japanese in 1930 in the 35th
volume of Modern Drama Anthology which
featured the US plays. 9 Not only had it been
created by a woman to portray women, but
it also made a mark in the history of small
theatres in the US.
The first play Ono directed herself was
Masatsune Sakakibara's Gaikō 168 (Extro-
Gakushūin Girls’ High School Drama Club,
presenting Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg,
at Gakushūin University’s lecture hall, on the
occasion of Gakkushūin Hojin Culture Festival
November 13, 1949. Cast and staff stand before
the lecture hall building, Yoko Ono second from
the left
vert 168), which was presented in 1951 .10 In
a brochure for the all-school culture festival
that autumn, the play is listed as the Girls
High School’s contribution. The drama club’s
activity report also informs us they had a hard
time finding Gaikō 168, but that its perfor-
mance went well thanks to the club members’
earnest effort. The play was also presented
in March 1951 at the culture festival of the
Girls’ High School.11
The Gakushūin Girls' High School drama
club staged Gaikō 168 within a year of its first
publication in the March 1950 issue of Higeki
kigeki (Tragedy and comedy), a post-war
magazine inaugurated to discuss the basic
issues concerning the future of drama.
Sakakibara wrote the play for the drama club
he supervised at a metropolitan girls’ high
school; the club won first prize in a high-
school drama contest in the previous autumn,
in which thirty-four schools competed, lead-
ing to its publication in the magazine.12
The play is a contemporary story set
in a Japanese sweet shop in Tokyo’s old town.
The protagonist is a young girl of the post-
war generation who wants to live a freer life.
Her outlook is contrasted with those of
her mother, who helps the family business,
and her elder sister, who will inherit it. Con-
versations within the family signal their
conflicted thinking. That the protagonist is a
seventeen-year-old high-schooler would
have made the situation close to the hearts
of the club members, but two other elements
of the play are also noteworthy. First, unlike
traditional theatres such as Kabuki, which
were grounded in the highly stylised expres-
sion of feudalist society, modern theatre
(shingeki) in Japan aspired to present the
real-life expressions and psychological dra-
mas of ordinary people – in this it followed
the model of Western modern dramas, many
of which were translated into Japanese.
Second, people in post-war Japan wanted to
see dramas that more closely reflected the
reality of Japanese society. For this reason,
it was expected that newly authored school
plays should be grounded in the lives of post-
war high-schoolers. To achieve this goal,
several drama contests were inaugurated
around this time, and drama magazines put
out open calls for new plays.
Another reason for focusing on characters
and situations that reflected the lives of the
audience lies in a shift in educational philo-
sophy, from the pre-war emphasis on the
memorisation of knowledge handed down
by the teacher to the post-war encourage-
ment of bilateral discussion and home-room
activities. The latter required a certain dra-
matic element and, accordingly, dramas by
high-schoolers were expected to innovate
Gakushūin Girls’ High School drama club,
presenting Gaikō 168 (Extrovert 168) by
Masatsune Sakakibara in 1951. Back row: cast;
front row: drama club members including Yoko
Ono in the centre.
contemporary drama (which was then still
tied to translated Western dramas). General
interest in theatre activities at high schools
was thus growing. These various changes –
discussed in a special feature on high-school
theatres in the March 1951 issue of Higeki
kigeki13 – meant that when Ono was part of
Gakushūin’s drama club, the world of high-
82 83 school theatre was animated by a potential
for change that could affect the whole of
theatre in Japan.
After advancing to Gakushūin University
in the spring of 1952, Ono played the role
of a landowner’s widow in Anton Chekhov’s
late nineteenth-century comedy The Bear,
in a joint presentation by the alumni of
Gakushūin’s boys' and girls' high schools.
This performance, which commemorated the
third anniversary of the drama club, had no
female-only restriction because it was staged
under the auspices of an alumni association
on 15 June, after the performers had gradu-
ated from high school. Ono also participated
in a reading of Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s play
Old Heidelberg (1901) jointly undertaken by
the club members and alumni.14
As a drama club member, then, Ono had
experience of direction and stage perfor-
mance. Drama, as a collective activity that
unfolds on stage in interrelationship with the
audience, marks the origin point of Ono’s
career as an organiser who would arrange
both her own and Fluxus events and music
performances whose roster varied from pro-
gramme to programme.
Toward Instructions
In the spring of 1952, Ono also authored a
Japanese text, ‘Muon no gakkyoku’ (Soundless
Music). She handwrote the entire work verti-
cally, with a fountain pen, on twenty Japanese
manuscript sheets. Dated 21 March 1952,
the text begins on page one with four lines:
A woman who doesn’t know language.
A woman with
an unbalanced glow, in which
yearning and despair meld together.
Placed in the middle of the page, these four
lines mimic the format of the playscript which
describes a protagonist in the very beginning.
Ono’s text – which consists of two parts, ‘1. At
a plaza’ and ‘2. Ascension’ – is narrated as an
event in a dream. In the first part, a woman (I)
stands in a square-shaped stone-paved plaza.
A hole is bored in the plaza and she is tied
with a rope and lowered through the hole into
the underground. When she returns to the
plaza, people are caught up in enthusiastic
ball-throwing. Soon, the ball is blackened and
Yoko Ono (right) and Shigehiro Okada playing
Popov and Smirnov in The Bear by Anton Chekhov,
a presentation by alumni of the drama club at
Gakushūin University’s lecture hall for the
third anniversary of the club’s founding,
on 15 June 1952.
burned by the sun. It vanishes, along with the
plaza, then the floating woman too, vanishes.
In the second part, the setting is a small
downtown theatre. Somehow, there are many
food container boxes ( jūbako) on stage, and
I, who appears on stage as an actor, is also
one such box. When the curtain is drawn in
the middle, all the boxes, including I, are
turned into beanpaste-filled buns (manjū)
and ascend into the sky to the accompaniment
of a subtle singing voice.
Both scenes are very abstract, but if we
replace the balls in the first with cannonballs
and the boxes and buns of the second with
houses and humans, the whole text may be
understood to allude to the memory of war.
Given the contexts of the time in which Ono
wrote it, the text – in which conversations are
inserted here and there – can be seen as a
rough draft for a play. Furthermore, from the
title ‘Soundless Music’ it can be understood
as a composition with words. Ono wanted
this text to be published in a school journal,
but it was rejected as too long for a poem
and too short for a novel.15
In the meantime the early 1950s saw Ono
compose such early instructions as A Floating
City, The Connection and Reincarnation, all
of which were included in the 1970 English
edition of Grapefruit. Derived from ‘Soundless
Music’, A Floating City takes place in a world
consisting of an upper and a lower tier. People
go back and forth aboard a boat among their
houses, which float in the air, while they gaze
at cloud gardens. Originally part of ‘Seven
Little Stories’ (dating to the spring of 1952),
Reincarnation is a two-line verse about
a mirror becoming razors when broken and
a stick becoming a flute when loved. The
Connection tells us that we had nothing when
we were fish swimming in the sea but, after
going onto the land, we retain the memory of
the sea while walking around in the city. The
instruction states: ‘Listen very carefully and
you will hear the sea in your body. You know,
our blood is seawater and we are seacarriers.’
These instructions, consisting of short
lines that concisely describe situations, are
akin to stage directions in a drama script.
They contain no emotional or adjectival des-
criptions; in other words, these instructions
are a drama script in which stage directions
alone are preserved and all the speech lines
eliminated. We may imagine how Ono’s
theatre activities prompted her instructions
to emerge as a new form of script. As attempts
were being made to encourage contemporary
scripts for high-school theatres in which the
creation was linked directly to the social
reality, Ono instead formulated instructions
as a new form of script, creating a univer-
salised fiction that linked her own memories
and outlook towards the future. Moreover,
her method of writing about situations and
acts alone minimised the author’s intention,
while making the instructions open to interpre-
tation by actors and audiences. What Ono’s
instructions offered was a completely new
conception of one’s creation.
It is possible, then, that Ono found it diffi-
84 85 cult to continue her drama activities while
working with scripts grounded in the classism
and sexism typical of modern Western society
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, as reflected in the plays selected for
the joint male-female drama presentations
in June 1952. Ono left Gakushūin University
during her first year and transferred to Sarah
Lawrence College near Manhattan to study
music. In the summer of 1953, she wrote
Secret Piece, which would become the first
work in the first chapter of Grapefruit, ‘Music’.
In this piece, her instruction is to select a
note one wants to play in the wood during the
summer from 5am to 8am; in Grapefruit the
instruction is accompanied by an earlier
version, with the five-line notations and the
handwritten addition ‘with the accompaniment
of the birds singing at dawn’. Here, ‘piece’
means a musical work. Ono thereby combined
words and music, entering the second stage
of her instructions.
Humour Permeates Ono’s Instructions
Ono’s instructions derived from the theatre
script would further evolve in a dry, concise
style, just like the sign-like universal notations
in music. At the same time, the conversations
with various emotional overtones flowed into
the songs she created and presented in the
form of concerts and records from the late
1960s onward. Unlike her sign-like instruc-
tions, the songs that she herself vocalised
had a bodily attribute, and they also became
another important direction, one contrasting
with her more cerebral expressive outputs.
Ono’s interest in the dramatic structure
would also surface when she tackled social
issues with biting humour. For example, her
1971 project, Museum of Modern [F]art,
exposes the institutional stricture within the
museum and the problematics of urban
space by setting up a fictional exhibition; its
protagonists are flies who travel in and out
of the museum and are documented in a
fictional exhibition catalogue.
Another example is her text ‘The Saga
of Japanese Men Sinking: A Social Parody’,
which she contributed to the September
1973 issue of the women’s magazine Fujin
kōron (Women’s public discourse). The title
is a mocking take on the then bestselling
science fiction novel Japan Sinks by Sakyō
Komatsu. Here, Ono’s object of critique is the
Japan of a high economic-growth era centred
on salarymen too busy to pay attention to
their families. In her text, she inverts the roles
of men and women, an extremely dramatic
conceit; in the opening scene, for example,
a woman coming home late at night is wel-
comed by her smiling househusband who
reheats her dinner. Three decades later, this
text was translated from Japanese into
English and presented in the ‘Tokyo 1969–73’
section of Tate Modern’s exhibition Century
City (2001).16 Here, I would like to underline
the significance of the tex t a s a vital
reflection of Ono’s continuing interest in
dramatic structures.
Ono’s drama activities have hitherto been
far less known and studied than her music.
However, drama played as important a role
as music in the formation and evolution of
the instructions that are the core of her oeuvre.
The light-hearted sense of humour that per-
meates her instructions first emerged as she
laughingly observed the established norms
of society from an alternative perspective – 86 87
that of a woman. Translated by Reiko Tomii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank those who helped my
research for this essay at Gakushūin Archives,
Gakushūin University Museum of History,
Gakushūin University Library, Gakushūin
Girls' Junior & High School Library, Dōshōkai,
and Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at
Waseda University.
Cover of ‘Soundless Music’ 1952
 89

Grapefruit 1964. Artist’s book (first edition,

Birth Announcement and Announcement for Tokyo). Publisher Yoko Ono, under the name
Grapefruit 1963, 5 offset sheets Wunternaum Press, Tokyo. Edition 500,
13.7 × 13.7 × 3
 90 91

Typescripts for Grapefruit 1963–4.

pp.90–94

Typewritten cards, with ink and graphite

92 93
94 95

Announcement for FLY, Naiqua Gallery,

above Announcement for touch poem no.3, Nigeria,
below

Tokyo, 25 April, 1964. Offset on paper Africa, March 33rd, 1964. Offset on paper
 96 97

Pieces for Orchestra to La Monte Young 1962,

realised 1965. Ink on card stock and transfer
lettering and graphite on 5 boards

topChiaki Nagano. Aru wakamono-tachi
(Some Young People) 1964. Featuring Yoko Ono,
Tomio Miki, Yoshihiro Katō, Shin’ichi Iwata,
Nakamura Hiroshi, Ushio Shinohara, Anthony
Cox and Tanaka Shintarō. Nippon Television
broadcast, 4 October 1964. Film still
98
Morning Piece (1964) to George Maciunas.
below
Announcement designed by George Maciunas, 1965
Offset lithograph, ink stamp on paper 21.6 × 28
99
Morning Piece 1964, photographed September
1965. Performed by Yoko Ono on the roof of
87 Christopher Street, New York. Photograph
by Peter Moore
101

Morning Piece 1964. Glass, paper,

opposite, above

ink, glue, dimensions variable

Mornings for Sale 1964. Ink on

opposite, below English notice for Morning Piece 1964.
above

paper, 25.4 × 36 Ink on paper, 29.5 × 21

 102 103

Piece for Nam June Paik no. 1 1964.

above Ono’s Sales List 1965. Offset lithograph,
right

Ink on paper, 28 × 21.7 ink, 35.6 × 21.7

 105

Soundtape of the Snow Falling at Dawn 1963,

first realised 1965. Audio tape, acetate reel, Touch Poem #5 c.1960. Human hair, glued paper,
ink on cardboard box, 1.9 × 18.4 × 18.4 ink on paper, 25 × 34.1
 106 107

George Brecht, Ay-O, Carolee

from left to right

Schneemann, George Maciunas Draw Circle Event

1964–5. Selection of 5 postcard responses.
Print on paper, ink, pigment, mixed media,
each 8.9 × 21.7
 108
Mieko Shiomi, Disappearing Music for Face /
Fluxfilm No. 4 1966. Starring Yoko Ono.
Produced by George Maciunas, published by
Fluxus. Included in the Fluxfilm Anthology
compiled by George Maciunas, 1966. Film, 16mm,
shown as video, black and white, 12min, 7sec
109
EYEBLINK / Fluxfilm No. 15 1966. Directed by
Yoko Ono. Included in the Fluxfilm Anthology
compiled by George Maciunas, 1966. Film,
16mm, shown as video, black and white,
2min, 40sec
Motoharu Jonouchi, Shelter Plan 1964. Event by
Hi-Red Center. Featuring Yoko Ono, Nam June
Paik, Yasunao Tone, Masao Adachi and Tadanori
Yokoo, among others. Film, 16mm, shown as
video, black and white, 25min
Andrew Wilson
Yoko Ono first came to London from New
York in September 1966, returning to the
United States in August 1971. In these five
years, she shifted from being an artist known
within an international coterie of avant-garde
practice to one whose wide reach would
previously have been unimaginable.
Ono had been invited to London by Gustav
Metzger, co-organiser with the poet John
Total Communication
Sharkey of the Destruction in Art Symposium
(DIAS). The symposium – a three-day confer-
ence within a month-long sequence of events
113 and happenings – was born of Metzger’s
vision for an art form that would have a public
Equals Peace 1 role, and his recognition of the common links
among happening-, intermedia- and activist-
artists working in Europe and the Americas. 2
Metzger had arrived in London in 1939 from
Germany and much of his family were killed
in the Holocaust. Studying and practising
as an artist throughout the 1940s and 1950s
in Britain and Europe, Metzger integrated a
social and moral responsibility into his work,
and was an early anti-nuclear activist and
campaigner (he had been a founding member
of the Committee of 100, which organised
mass acts of civil disobedience). By 1959 he
had started to formulate an evolving theory
and related practice of auto-destructive art
as an attack on the capitalist system. His in-
tention was to create art that harnessed the
resources and technology that might destroy
the planet to deliver, instead, a ‘Pharaonic
vision’ of monuments ‘to the power of man to
destroy life’. 3
Metzger had been encouraged to invite
Ono to DIAS by the US critic and art historian
Mario Amaya. The previous year, Amaya had
published one of the first surveys of pop
art, Pop as Art: A Survey of the New Super
Realism, and in spring 1966 he had become
founding editor of the London-based art
magazine Art and Artists. 4 Amaya was one of
eleven people on the organising committee
of DIAS, which helped Metzger shape the
symposium and its accompanying events.
The group constitutes a vivid slice of an evol-
ving countercultural community: in addition
to Metzger, it included John Sharkey, the
gallery manager at the Institute of Contem-
porary Art (ICA – one of the venues for DIAS,
and later for Ono); Ivor Davies, an art historian,
painter and creator of happenings using
explosives; Jim Haynes, who ran the Traverse
Theatre Company of the Jeanetta Cochrane
Theatre (another venue for DIAS events, and
later for Ono too), and who was on the editorial
board of London’s recently established under-
ground newspaper International Times (IT),
a publication Ono would make much use of
over the next five years, as she would also
of Art and Artists. Haynes was later to create
the multimedia Arts Lab in Drury Lane; this
too would become a venue for Ono. Also on
the committee were IT founder and editorial
board member Barry Miles, who had previously
run Better Books and had recently co-
founded the avant-garde Indica Gallery and
Bookshop with John Dunbar (Miles ran the
bookshop), and the concrete, visual sound
poet Bob Cobbing, who was the manager of
Better Books, another venue for DIAS. 5
On her arrival in London just before DIAS,
Ono found herself almost immediately amid
a vibrant and essentially collaborative
countercultural network of artists and writers.
The close associations between IT and Art
and Artists, Indica, Better Books and later
the Arts Lab would provide both cradle and
crucible. These networks, alongside what
Ono experienced as a result of DIAS, would
very quickly enhance her position and the
further development of her work.
To give an idea of these countercultural
interconnections of art, literature, politics
and popular music: throughout September,
Ono lived in the household of the artists
John and Barbara Steveni (Latham’s wife at
the time), and for much of DIAS she was
driven around London by the sculptor Barry
Flanagan, who would perform in her events
at the Africa Centre as well as act as a kind
of roadie – he sourced the dresses she would
Yoko Ono speaking (left John Sharkey, session
chair) at the Destruction in Art Symposium
(DIAS), Africa Centre, Covent Garden, London 11
September 1966. Photograph by Tom Picton
wear for Cut Piece from Biba. At some point
during DIAS Ono was introduced, probably
by Amaya, to John Dunbar who had set up
Indica Gallery and Bookshop with Miles and
Peter Asher. At that time, the gallery and
bookshop split premises, with the gallery
remaining in Mason’s Yard in St James’s and
the bookshop moving to Southampton Row
in Bloomsbury, which also housed the editorial
office for IT. Asher, who put up the majority
of the money for Indica, was one half of
pop duo Peter and Gordon, and his sister
Jane was then Paul McCartney’s girlfriend.
McCartney helped physically in the setting
up of Indica as well as providing printed
wrapping paper to his own design; during this
period, he was being introduced by Barry
Miles to avant-garde music and writing.
Indica’s gallery was next door to the pre-
ferred nightclub of the moment, the Scotch
of St James, which had recently opened (with
three Beatles at the launch party) and largely
attracted a clientele of pop musicians and
their associates. William Burroughs, a friend
of Miles, had been living for just over a year
in an adjacent block of flats, where film-
maker Antony Balch, writer Brion Gysin and
Eric Burdon of the Animals also lived. Down
a nearby alley was the studio of music pho-
tographer, Gered Mankowitz. Dunbar was
married to Marianne Faithfull (Asher had been
best man) and by the autumn of 1966 was
forging a friendship with John Lennon. As
Dunbar recalled: ‘The purpose of Indica was
to encourage people across disciplines / art
forms to exchange ideas, in order to create
new possibilities – the idea being that it should
be a place where art, literature, happenings
and music could all take place together.’6
Ono’s outlook reflected similar ambitions and
the stage was set for London to provide a
nurturing environment for her work over the
next five years.
114 115 DIAS itself provided codification and
confirmation to an emergent international
generation of artists who rejected the objec-
tified image in favour of a dynamics of the
event, and achieved this through the inter-
connection of art and life. This development,
as Guy Brett has made clear, was itself
‘inseparable from a challenge to all limiting
and ossifying structures: institutions founded
upon hierarchical ordering of practices
(painting and sculpture at the top); on
national chauvinism or economic power; on
product rather than process; on the “do not
touch” principle of the separation of artist
and spectator; on the commercial logic of
the art market, etc.’7 These principles could
be found in the work of those artists and
musicians orchestrated under the banner of
Fluxus by George Maciunas, and for which
Ono was recognised as a central and moti-
vating figure. By 1961 her work had become
score-based, similar to artists who had
encountered John Cage’s experimental com-
position class at the New School for Social
Research in New York. Use of the score, as
realised by Ono, was a key aspect of Fluxus
production, as in the formation of conceptual
art, given the intermedial space the score or
instruction occupies between music and art,
and in relation to the unfixed realisation of the
work. Ono’s poetic and simply written scores
invited readers / viewers to become partici-
pants – imagining, experiencing, making or
completing the work – thereby heightening
an awareness of otherwise simple everyday
gestures and freeing the imagination to
confront both the self and society.
By 1966, Fluxus and Ono were known quan-
tities in London and to Metzger in particular
– the Festival of Misfits at London’s Gallery
One, which had introduced London to Fluxus
in 1962, 8 was reinforced two years later by
Fluxus – A Little Festival of New Music at
Goldsmiths’ College. Both Better Books and
the Indica bookshop stocked Fluxus publica-
tions and editions, including Ono’s Grapefruit
(1964), which gathered together her scores
and instructions.
Even so, Ono’s work did not immediately
appear to be directly violent or engaged with
destruction or destructive forces. For this
reason, two of her fellow participants at DIAS
urged Metzger to remove her from the sym-
posium, something he refused to do. 9 As Ono
later explained, she was concerned more
with the working of the mind than the
destruction of an object amid theatricalised
ritual: ‘My work was conceptual. It was
certainly not about destroying pianos and
smashing cars.’10 Introducing her short talk
on the third day of the symposium, she
pointedly remarked, ‘I really don’t know what
destruction means and what it does to you,
except that there are many quiet destructions
that are taking place that I think is true
destruction, such as forgetting, dreaming, or
simply thinking, maybe.’ She then criticised
the New York happenings scene, in which
she felt participation shifted into exhibi-
tionism, in contrast to her own interest in
happenings that are more personal, happen-
ings that you experience for yourself.
And in my concerts, for instance, I try to
give something that is an experience that
is not so much for the whole, but for each
individual. And I consider my pieces to be
rehearsals … that should be finished in, in a
dream or something … I’m trying to give
something that is not the ultimate state
of mind, but something that leads you
into a different dimension of thought and
a state of mind.11
Ono’s presentation to the symposium
describes many of the fundamental aspects
of her participatory art at that time: event-
based; engaged with the everyday; personal;
partial, fragmentary or presented as unfin-
ished; a catalyst to creative transformation;
existing within the realm of the imagina-
tion or dream. She ended her presentation
by reading a work that she considered to
be ‘pretty destructive’, her Hide-and-Seek
Piece 1964:
Hide until everybody goes home.
Hide until everybody forgets about you.
Hide until everybody dies.12
Hide-and-Seek Piece provides a stark image
of separation of the reader from ‘everybody’.
Its pervading image seems at first to be the
antithesis of Ono’s social art of connection
and communication – and yet such an extreme
vision underscored the hope that a score like
this could ‘connect people to their own
reality’,13 in much the same way as the vis-
cerally polarising Cut Piece, which was also
performed at DIAS. Presented on two suc-
cessive evenings at the Africa Centre, Ono
sat impassively and submissively on the
Yoko Ono performing Wall Piece 1962 at DIAS,
London 1966. Photograph by Bill Habets
stage, the (mostly male) members of the
audience being invited to come up and cut
away her dress. Participation for a work such
as Cut Piece invites issues of intention and
agency to be questioned: Ono’s adoption of
the traditional seated pose of submission for
a Japanese woman is undercut both by the
defiant challenge that she presents to her
audience in terms of her race and gender, by
in effect willing them to make herself more
present, but also by the image of someone
becoming the victim of violence. Passivity or
116 117 a disinterested connection to the artwork as
a process became impossible, the work
instead expressing for historian Alexandra
Munroe ‘an anguished interiority while offering
a social commentary on the quiet violence
that binds individuals and society, the self
and gender, alienation and connectedness’.14
Munroe’s point comes even more into focus
through Ono’s conception of a second version
of Cut Piece, ‘for audience’, conceived earlier
in 1966 but not performed: ‘It is announced
that members of the audience may cut each
other’s clothing. The audience may cut as
long as they want.’15 As the art historian
Kristine Stiles has observed, the victimised
or wounded persona (in terms of body or
emotion) is a theme ‘that permeates Ono’s
work and is vivid in many scores that call
for variations of penetration, truncation,
Yoko Ono performing Cut Piece 1964 at DIAS,
London 1966. Photograph by Bill Habets
destruction, incineration, dismemberment,
disappearance, breakage, and laceration’.16
*
Two days after she made her presentation to
DIAS, Ono performed Shadow Piece 1963 at
the London Free School Playground, an
uncleared stretch of bombsite waste-
land in West London. Twenty participants lay
down on a long piece of cloth on which Ono
then traced their outlines, or shadows. The
resulting image and its effect, especially in
such a location, rendered the split or doubled
body as a remnant or trace, summoning up
the imprints of bodies left after the nuclear
blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Here, Ono’s work suggested a new under-
standing of the self, often achieved through
a dialogue between separation / splitting /
hiding / fragmenting and joining together /
unifying / revealing / making whole. The aim
is not to end with rupture but instead to
encourage a form of healing that might
accomplish a state of peace. Cut Piece may
for instance present a situation where violence
is done within a complex social exchange
of submission and domination, but for Ono
there were other narratives at play, including
one centred on ‘giving and taking’. This con-
tinued her criticism of the egocentricism of
many New York happenings artists (and by
extension some participants at DIAS) but
also expressed her engagement with the
Buddhist principle of giving that lies under
her own philosophy of peace. In an interview
in 1967 she explained that Cut Piece ‘was a
form of giving, giving and taking. It was a kind
of criticism against artists, who are always
giving what they want to give. I wanted people
to take whatever they wanted to, so it was
very important to say you can cut wherever
you want to.’17 Ono consistently counters vio-
lence or destruction with peace, just as for
Metzger the swing between destruction and
creation was bound up first with his anti-
nuclear and anti-capitalist activism, as later
it would his ecological activism and belief.
Ono’s childhood experiences of the Second
World War – the firebombing of Tokyo, which
led to her evacuation with her brother and
sister from the devastated city – tell of ex-
treme violence, separation and disjunction,
their effect inevitably echoed in such works
as Cut Piece or Shadow Piece. When Yoko and
her brother left central Tokyo for a farming
village, they were shunned both for being
from the city and for having lived in America
before 1942 – local children attacked them
for their Americanised ways and for being
from the city, for ‘smelling like butter’.18 With
her brother she lived an interior life: ‘Lying
on our backs, looking up at the sky through
an opening in the roof, we exchanged menus
in the air and used our powers of visualisation
to survive.’19
The Tokyo to which Ono returned to resume
school in 1946 was an occupied, devastated
city in a country where the inherent brutality
of its previous Imperial militarised nationalism
would be replaced by a new post-war pacifist
constitution. In 1952 she became the first
female philosophy student to study at the
Gakushūin University and gravitated towards
studying Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard and
Sartre.20 As in Europe, a sense of being and
the re-definition of the self in the face of
obliterating nothingness framed both lit-
erature and art, and for Ono this formed the
basis for her creation of a participatory con-
sciousness aimed at the attainment of peace
– both individually and socially.
The works that Ono presented at DIAS
engaged with dislocation of meaning and
presence as well as with the visualisation or
feeling of an event in the imagination of the
viewer. The word-of-mouth work Whisper
Piece 1961 entailed the whispering of a word
passed from Ono to a member of the audience
and then on from one individual to another
until it had been relayed to the whole audi-
ence.21 Disappearing Piece 1966 springs from
the instruction ‘Boil water’: at DIAS the act of
boiling the water, the amount of water, the
Lion Wrapping Event 3 August 1967, Trafalgar
Square, London. Unidentified photographer
size of the pot and the evaporation of all the
water were announced on stage, the actual
boiling being carried out by Noa Latham at
Barbara and John Latham’s Notting Hill flat.22
For Wind Piece 1962 the audience had to
‘make way for the wind’, though no wind was
created other than that placed in the minds
of the audience.23 These performance pieces,
alongside her solo exhibitions at the Indica
Gallery in November 1966 and the Lisson
Gallery in October 1967, and the events
she mounted in her first eighteen months in
118 119 Britain – such as her concert Music of the Mind
at the Jeanetta Cochrane / Traverse Theatre
in November 1966, a Be-In on Hampstead
Heath in June 1967, Lion Wrapping Event at
Trafalgar Square in August, the first screen-
ings of her Film No. 4 a few days later, or the
Perception Weekend in Birmingham in Octo-
ber following the opening of her Lisson show
– all reflect an outlook that ultimately focuses
on the healing of self and a sense of wellbeing
and peace, all achieved in the face of splitting,
hiding, effacement or the confronting of indi-
vidual trauma or societal taboos.
All her works at the Indica exhibition were
presented as unfinished, to be completed by
the viewer / participant, even though that acti-
vity could only be arrested, never finished
definitively. 24 More substantively, Ono’s aim
was to harness the imagination of the viewer
Half-A-Room installed at Half-A-Wind Show 11
October – 14 November 1967, Lisson Gallery,
London 1967. Photograph by Clay Perry
to engage with these objects, paintings and
ideas to heal and make whole their sense of
self and being within the world. These works
create a dialogue between agency, respon-
sibility and trust – assuring the audience that
they can do something and it can have an
effect, however prosaic the act: adding colour
to a painting or hammering a nail into it,
retreating from the world by getting into a
bag to remove your clothes before putting
them back on again and getting out of the
bag, playing chess (with white pieces on
a white board), climbing a ladder to look
through a magnifying glass at the word ‘YES’
written on a panel hanging against the ceiling,
wrapping a chair in bandages, or contem-
plating Object in Three Parts 1966 – a condom,
a diaphragm and a contraceptive pill, each
presented on a separate plinth. Ono’s Half-
a-Wind Show at the Lisson Gallery in 1967
adopted a simpler approach by concentrating
on four environments and a smaller selection
of objects. Half-A-Room 1967 presented fur-
niture and objects from a domestic setting,
each cut in half and painted white.25 The Blue
Room 1966 was a room painted white that
became blue by means of the beholder’s
contemplation (a text on one of the walls of
the room read ‘Stay until the room is blue’).
The Lisson exhibition continued Ono’s desire
to heal or make whole through the viewer’s
imagination; her aim was the unity, balance
and interconnection that might come about
through the recognition of loss and separation.
As she wrote in the exhibition catalogue,
‘Molecules are always at the verge of half
disappearing and half emerging.’ And: ‘It is
sad that the air is the only thing we share. No
matter how close we get to each other, there
is always air between us. It is also nice that
we share the air. No matter how far apart
we are, the air links us.’26 Such a heightened
sense of unified connection echoes the ver-
sion of Shadow Piece published in Grapefruit,
which creates a dialogue without the essence
of trauma or abjection the performed work
might otherwise suggest: ‘Put your shadows
together until they become one.’27 The pub-
lished version applies both to the individual
sense of identity established over a life lived
and to ‘shadows’ of an undefined social group.
In January 1966 Ono suggested: ‘If people
make it a habit to draw a somersault on every
other street as they commute to the office,
take off their pants before they fight, shake
hands with strangers whenever they feel like
… the world business may slow down a little
bit but we may have peace.’28 Eight months
later at DIAS she repeated this: ‘It would be
very helpful if people start to take off their
pants before they fight … that’s the sort of
destruction that I am interested in.’29
In January 1967, an advertisement in IT
announced not only a second presentation
of works from the Indica show but also that
Ono was ‘beginning production on a feature
length version of her prize winning film No. 4,
over 365 personnel will be needed’. 30 Filmed
in the home of the producer, art dealer and
poet Victor Musgrave, whose Gallery One
had staged the Fluxus Festival of Misfits five
years earlier, NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) strings toge-
ther fifteen-second sequences of 200 or so
buttocks that represent, for Ono, ‘the London
scene today’. 31 The film lists these partici-
pants, among them the writer George Andrews;
sculptor David Annesley; artist filmmaker Pip
and poet publisher Asa Benveniste; painter
Martin Bradley; photographer Michael Cooper;
film critic Raymond Durgnat; designer and
musician Michael English of the band
Hapshash and the Coloured Coat; artist
Richard Hamilton; photographer and activist
John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins; photographer Graham
Keen; ar tists John Latham and Barbara
Steveni; writer Michael Moorcock; poet Eric
Mottram; artist and performer Jeff Nuttall;
art critic Paul Overy; artist Robin Page;
musicians Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Mike
Ratledge and Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine;
artist Joe Tilson; bookseller Larry Wallrich;
and artist and critic Eddie Wolfram. While the
transgressive erotic humour of the original
Ceiling Painting, Add Colour and Object in Three
Parts installed in Unfinished Pantings & Objects
by Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery, 9–22 November 1966.
Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
silent short film No. 4 (or Fluxfilm 16) suited
the eschatological slapstick of Fluxus, trans-
forming it into a feature film with accompanying
soundtrack was not simply a matter of
increasing scale. The extended rhythm and
durational quality of the eventual eighty-
minute film is reinforced by its soundtrack
narrative, which takes the viewer beyond the
film space and back into their own world. The
sound – which is not synchronised with the
shifting images of buttocks on the screen –
ranges from Anthony Cox and Ono talking
120 121 through the ideas of the film to participants
explaining their reactions, both positive and
negative, to it. In one sense the film docu-
ments its own making. 32
In the film soundtrack and in interviews
even well before the film’s premiere in August
1967, Ono was clear about its purpose and
ambition corresponding to her presen-
tation at DIAS. About twenty minutes into the
film she declares how the bottom was for her
one of the ‘most vulnerable’ and ‘most defenc-
eless part of the body … It’s embarrassing to
show the most defenceless part of the body.’
Cox, repeating Ono’s words in an interview
about the film before it was released,
underlined that ‘if all the world leaders were
prepared to expose themselves like this
there wouldn’t be any war’. 33 The film was
explained along similar lines in a text by Ono
Eternal Time, White Chess Set and Pointedness
installed in Unfinished Pantings & Objects by
Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery, 9–22 November 1966.
Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
that was widely reprinted to publicise the
film and its ideas. The film was an anti-war
statement, analogous to the film she wished
to create that ‘includes a smiling face snap
of every single human being in the world …
This way, if [President] Johnson wants to see
what sort of people he killed in Vietnam that
day, he only has to turn the channel. Before
this you were just part of a figure in the
newspapers, but after this you become a
smiling face.’34 From this perspective, Ono
came to describe Bottoms as ‘like an aimless
petition signed by people with their anuses.
Next time we wish to make an appeal, we
should send this film as the signature list.’35
At the film’s screenings that September at
the Jacey Tatler Cinema, it was presented as
a double feature with Ono’s twenty-minute
film of her Lion Wrapping Event, which
had taken place in Trafalgar Square only
three weeks earlier. A phallic foil to NO. 4
(‘BOTTOMS’), this also communicated her
stance against imperialism, whether British
or American. The following year she pub-
lished the film score for NO. 4 to read simply
as ‘String bottoms together in place of signa-
tures for petition for peace.’36
The Lisson show had made public Ono’s
growing friendship with John Lennon, who
she had first met at the Indica Gallery. The
exhibition included their first collaborative
work, 37 and after they publicly celebrated
their love for each other with the recording
of Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins on 20
May 1968, much of Ono’s subsequent output
for the rest of her time in England was
effectively jointly authored.
The flowering of Ono and Lennon’s rela-
tionship at the end of May 1968 coincided
with political turmoil around the world, cen-
tring on what seemed to be the growing
revolution in France as striking workers and
students stood up to the regime of General
de Gaulle. Working together, the couple’s
actions in the period up to their marriage and
the months afterwards were consistent with
Ono’s conviction that peace and social healing
was best approached through enabling the
flowering of individual consciousness. Lennon
and Ono’s relationship and collaboration
meant that this message could have a global
reach with a corresponding potential for tan-
gible effect. However, their first two-person
exhibition Four Thoughts, which opened at
the Drury Lane Arts Lab on 28 May, was a low-
key start to this activity, comprising just three
artworks indicating the path their work was
to take over the next two years before their
departure for New York in 1971.38 Ono’s Mending
Piece 1966 was reflected by Lennon’s Build
Around It 1968 – a fragment of a drawer that
begged to be reincorporated into a new chest
– and a questionnaire already filled in by
Lennon. Pared back though Four Thoughts
was by comparison with the Lisson and Indica
exhibitions, it took place at a time when a
wider shift was taking place – between the
voyaging of inner space as a way to achieve
social and political change that had charac-
terised the 1967 Summer of Love, and an
outlook that recognised that such change
had to be organised for, willed and made to
happen. A revolution built on individual free-
doms was giving way to a revolution that
called for collective organised action.
The ensuing divisions between the under-
ground and a New Left radicalism are well
illustrated by the exchange between Lennon
and the writer John Hoyland in Black Dwarf
a few months after the Arts Lab show. Answer-
ing Hoyland’s charge that he was part of
a ‘polite revolution’39 that wasn’t going to
change anything, Lennon retorted: ‘You say,
“In order to change the world we’ve got to
understand what’s wrong with the world. And
then destroy it. Ruthlessly.” You’re obviously
on a destruction kick. I’ll tell you what’s wrong
with the world: people – so do you want to
destroy them? Until you / we change our heads
– there’s no chance … You smash it – and I’ll
build around it.’40
Less than a week after the ending of the
Arts Lab show, Ono and Lennon staged Acorn
Event 1968, a work for the First National
Sculpture Exhibition taking place in the ruins
of Coventry Cathedral. This location, con-
ceived as a place of reconciliation for the
violence and destruction of the Second World
War, and especially the indiscriminate bomb-
ing of cities in Britain, Germany and Japan,
was an apt place for Ono and Lennon’s cele-
bration of the beginning of their relationship
the previous month. The plaque accompanying
the work specifically references this, reading
‘“Yoko” by John Lennon / “John” by Yoko Ono /
122 123 Some time in May 1968’. The wider ambition
for the work was the planting of seeds for
peace, representing the possibility for differ-
ence to unite – for East and West to come
together. A decorative bench provided a place
for contemplation of the peaceful growth of
the acorns planted there. For the way it fused
their individual experience with their projec-
tion for world peace, the artists described
Acorn Event as ‘the most important thing we
did this year, creatively’. 41
The power of a work like Acorn Event was
in proportion to its reach. Like other artists
whose work is in the main ephemeral or
event-based, Ono had long understood the
dual importance of publicity: it creates an
audience, but it also provides documentation
of the work. Ono had been incredibly publicity-
conscious since her arrival in London, telling
DIAS secretary Ivor Davies that ‘she regarded
organising publicity through the press as part
of her art’42 – and each exhibition, film and
event was accompanied by press releases.
Advertisements and listings were also signifi-
cant: today a listing, like that in IT for her
kite-flying Be-In on Hampstead Heath, may
be the only remaining evidence for some of
her activities. 43
Ono also engaged directly with the
mechanics of the mass media by creating
advertisements as artworks in their own
right. A sequence of these were published in
the listing sections of three successive issues
of Art and Artists in autumn 1966 which con-
tinued an activity she had initiated the
previous year for two issues of New York Arts
Calendar 2. 44 Although many artists – pop
artists in particular – have used techniques
borrowed from mass media, very few have
successfully deployed those techniques back
within mass media. Ono’s critique of mass
media remains subtext, implicit in her single-
minded use of it to promote peace as she
additionally used Lennon’s celebrity and her
own as a tool. As she announced in an inter-
view for Penthouse: ‘We’re using our money
to advertise our ideas so that peace has equal
power with the meanies who spend their money
to promote war.’45 A focus on enlarging the
possibilities that mass media might provide
for their pursuit of peace through positive
action was at the heart of the works they
proceeded to make after they were married.
Following their wedding on 20 March
1969 in Gibraltar, Ono and Lennon flew to
Amsterdam for their week-long Bed-In for
Peace. Each day, from 9am to 9pm, journa-
lists, countercultural figures, artists and
activists were invited to their hotel suite.
Back in London in April the couple mailed an
acorn to ninety-six world leaders, asking
each recipient to plant their acorn for peace,
and at the end of May they flew to Montreal
and similarly staged their Bed-In at the
Queen Elizabeth Hotel (they had intended
this event to take place in the US, but were
denied entry on account of Lennon’s recent
drug con-viction). Ono and Lennon’s art and
politics, fused by love, became an object of
fascination to the mass media that fed off
each week-long Bed-In and communicated
these events to a global audience. In
Montreal, they were accompanied by a film
crew whose documenting of the events and
conversations that ensued later became the
film Bed Peace, and on the penultimate day
of the Bed-In Ono and Lennon recorded ‘Give
Peace a Chance’ in their suite, along with
some of their visitors that day, including
Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory,
Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Smothers, Lennon’s
Sky Piece 1965, performed during Two Evenings
with Yoko Ono, presented by Destruction in Art
Symposium (DIAS), Africa Centre, London 28–29
September 1966. Photograph by Nigel Hartnup.
press officer Derek Taylor and the Canadian
chapter of Radha Krishna Temple. When it
wa s relea sed the following month a s
Lennon’s first solo single release with the
Plastic Ono Band (a portmanteau band that
could include anybody and ever y-
body), it reached number two on the British
singles chart, peaked at number fourteen on
the US Billboard Hot 100 and was quickly ad-
opted by the anti-Vietnam War movement. The
single’s B-side was Ono’s ballad ‘Remember
Love’, underscoring their joint ambition to
spread peace and love hand in hand.
The Bed-Ins and the release of ‘Give Peace
a Chance’ – impactful and far-reaching – were
a prelude to a multimedia, multi-platform
advertising campaign that has now run for
over fifty years with posters initially de-
claring ‘WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT. Love
and Peace from John & Yoko’. At the Plastic
Ono Supergroup’s Peace for Christmas con-
cert at the Lyceum Ballroom on 15 December,
the stage and the band were festooned with
posters that declared ‘WAR IS OVER! IF YOU
WANT IT. Happy Christmas from John & Yoko’.
The concert coincided with the launch of the
international campaign in twelve cities around
the world – Athens, Berlin, Hong Kong, London,
Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Paris, Port
of Spain, Rome, Tokyo and Toronto – with bill-
boards and posters put up in the dominant
languages of each city. In addition, ads were
placed in newspapers and magazines, there
was a skywriting event, radio phone-ins,
postcards and handbills and, two years later,
the release in the US in December 1971 of
the single ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’, which
reached number three in the Billboard Christ-
mas Chart. (Released in the UK in November
1972, it peaked at number four.) Though pri-
marily referring to the Vietnam War, the song’s
lyrics also addressed other colonial struggles
such as civil rights in Northern Ireland and
124 125 issues of racism and sexism that would be-
come the focus of Ono and Lennon’s recorded
output with the Plastic Ono Band. From ‘Power
to the People’ / ‘Open Your Box’ 1971 to ‘The
Luck of the Irish’ and ‘Woman is the N****r of
the World’ /‘Sisters, O Sisters’ 1972, the di-
rected intensity of these songs was spawned
by the couple’s belief that dedicating their
art to revolutionary peace and equality –
against sexism, racism, imperialism and war
– could create change. 46 As Ono explained to
the political activist Tariq Ali and sociologist
Robin Blackburn: ‘We are very lucky really,
because we can create our own reality, John
and me, but we know the important thing is to
communicate with other people … We should
surprise people by saying new things in an
entirely new way. Communication of that sort
can have a fantastic power so long as you
don’t do only what they expect you to do.’47
The essence of the WAR IS OVER! IF YOU
WANT IT campaign was the harnessing of the
mass communication to which Ono now had
access, to spread the message that the
potential for change existed in the hands of
each individual who, in acting out that peace
was possible, could make it so. If this seemed
light-headed and divorced from reality, Ono
was clear in her belief – that the role of the
artist was not to destroy or even to create, but
instead to transform consciousness. She had
made this clear in her January 1966 statement
‘To The Wesleyan People’, repeated it at DIAS
and underlined her purpose and ambition
again, a few months after the launch of WAR
IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT, in a text written for the
Cannes Film Festival:
I like to fight the establishment by using
methods that are so far removed from
establishment-type thinking that the
establishment doesn’t know how to fight
back … The job of an artist is not to destroy
but to change the value of things. And by
doing that, artists can change the world
into a Utopia where there is total freedom
for everybody. That can be achieved only
when there is total communication in the
world. Total communication equals peace.
That is our aim. That is what artists can do
for the world! 48
 126
Poster for Two Evenings with Yoko Ono, Africa
Centre, London, presented by Destruction in
Art Symposium (DIAS), 28–29 September 1966.
Print on paper, 59.7 × 45.7
127
Voice Piece for Soprano 1961, photographed
September 1966. Performed by Yoko Ono in
Two Evenings with Yoko Ono, Africa Centre,
London, 28–29 September 1966, presented
by Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS).
Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
 Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), Africa
Centre, Covent Garden, London, 11 September
1966, afternoon session showing on the stage
(left to right) Gustav Metzger (chair); Wolf
Vostell; Al Hansen; Juan Hiadalgo. Audience
includes Yoko Ono; Anthony Cox (both top, left)
and Ralph Ortiz. Photograph by Tom Picton

128 129

Yoko Ono speaking at the Destruction in

Art Symposium (DIAS), Africa Centre, London,
11 September 1966. Photograph by Hanns Sohm
 130 131

Shadow Piece 1963, first performed 1966,

photographed 13 September 1966. Performed Programme for Two Evenings with Yoko
overleaf

by Yoko Ono and Barbara Steveni and others Ono, Africa Centre, London, presented by the
at the London Free School Playground as part Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), 28–29
of the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS). September 1966. Facsimile, ink on paper,
Photographs by Tom Picton 23 × 33.5
132 133
Art and Artists, Vol. 1, No. 7, October 1966
 136

Poster for Unfinished Paintings & Objects

above Painting to Hammer a Nail 1961, first
opposite

by Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery, London, 9–22 realised 1966. Painted wood panel, nails,
November 1966. Designed by James Dwyer chain and painted hammer, 34.9 × 26.6 × 11.4
Ivor Turnbull, ‘The Strange Arts of Yoko Ono’,
London Look, 18 March 1967. Cover photograph
by John Prosser
SKY TV 1966, installed at Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, Washington DC 2014. Closed
circuit video installation, dimensions variable
 Eternal Time 1965. Clock, stethoscope, acrylic
box, acrylic pedestal. Engraved: Happy Birthday
Julius, love Sylvia / ETERNAL TIME By Yoko Ono
3/15/65. Overall: 101.6 × 20.3 × 22.9; clock:
4.8 × 11 × 12.7; bonnet: 7.6 × 15.2 × 16.5;
stethoscope: 62.2 × 11.4 × 2.5. Photograph by
Iain Macmillan

142 143

Yoko Ono during installation of her

exhibition Unfinished Paintings & Objects,
Indica Gallery, London, 9–22 November 1966.
Photograph by Iain Macmillan
Pointedness 1964, first realised 1966. Crystal
sphere, acrylic pedestal. Engraved: POINTEDNESS
YOKO ONO 1964 / THIS SPHERE WILL BE A SHARP
POINT WHEN IT GETS TO THE FAR CORNERS OF THE
ROOM IN YOUR MIND. 143 × 26.6 × 25.4

144 145

Forget It 1966. Stainless steel needle, acrylic

pedestal. Engraved: FORGET IT YOKO ONO 1966.
126.5 × 30.5 × 30.5
 Apple 1966. Apple, acrylic pedestal with brass
plaque. Engraved: APPLE. 114.3 × 17 × 17.6.
Photograph by Iain Macmillan

146 147

Photographer unidentified?
Yoko Ono with Apple 1966
White Chess Set 1966, installed in Unfinished
Paintings & Objects, Indica Gallery, London,
9–22 November 1966. White chess set, table,
dimensions variable. Photograph Iain Macmilllan
 150

Ceiling Painting 1966, photographed November

1966. From Unfinished Paintings & Objects by
Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery, London, 9–22 November
1966. Photographs by Graham Keen
 152

Mending Piece 1966, photographed November 1966.

Yoko Ono preparing the pieces for Unfinished
Mending Piece 1966, from This Is Not Here,
Paintings & Objects by Yoko Ono, Indica
Everson Museum of Art, New York 1971.
Gallery, London, 9–22 November 1966.
Photograph by Iain Macmillan
Photograph by Graham Keen
 John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Air Bottles 1967,
installed at Half-A-Wind Show, Lisson Gallery,
London 11 October–14 November 1967. Glass jars,
artist’s handwritten paper labels, dimensions
variable. Photograph Clay Perry

155
 157

Yoko Ono with Half-A-Room 1967, installed Glass Hammer 1967, photographed 1967. Yoko
at Half-A-Wind Show, Lisson Gallery, London, Ono holding the work during Half-A-Wind Show,
11 October–14 November 1967. Photograph by Lisson Gallery, London, 11 October–14 November Lion Wrapping Event 3 August 1967.
overleaf

Clay Perry 1967. Photograph by Clay Perry Photographer unidentified

 160

Peek Piece 1961, photographed 26 September

right

Poster for Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,

above 1967. Performed by Yoko Ono in Yoko Ono: Music
Bluecoat, Liverpool, 26 September 1967. of the Mind, Bluecoat, Liverpool. Photograph
Print on paper, 44.3 × 34.3 by Sheridon Davies
 162 163

Wrapping Piece 1961, photographed 26 September

1967. Performed by Yoko Ono in Yoko Ono: Music
of the Mind, Bluecoat, Liverpool. Photographs
by Sheridon Davies
Sweep Piece 1962, photographed 26 September
1967. Performed by Yoko Ono in Yoko Ono: Music
of the Mind, Bluecoat, Liverpool. Photograph
by Sheridon Davies

164

Fly Piece 1964, photographed 26 September 1967

from Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Bluecoat,
Liverpool. Photograph by Gwyn Richards
 166 167

FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7. Directed by Yoko

Ono. Film, 16mm, shown as video, black and
white, and sound (mono), 1hour, 19min
 leftYoko Ono protesting ban on FILM NO. 4 Yoko Ono leading a protest at the British
below

(‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7, photographed 1967 Board of Film Censors’ office against the
banning of FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7,
photographed 1967. Photograph by Dennis Hart

169
171

Poster for world premiere screening of FILM

NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7, Jacey Tatler, London,
8 August 1967. Drawing by Yoko Ono. Offset on
paper, 30 × 20.5
 172 173

On FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’)

 174 175

A Box of Smile 1967. Sterling silver box,

mirror. Engraved: A BOX OF SMILE Y.O.’67. A Box of Smile, various versions.
6.4 × 6.4 × 6.4 Dimenions and materials variable
Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Acorn Event,
National Sculpture Exhibition, Coventry
Cathedral, Coventry, 15 June 1968.
Photographs by Keith McMillan

176 177
Cover for catalogue of Acorn Event.
Photograph by Keith McMillan
181

leftWAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT 1969. WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT 1969.
above

Lithograph on paper, 76 × 50.8 Billboard on Shaftesbury Avenue, London.

 182 183

Yoko Ono performing ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s

Yoko Ono performing Bag Piece and John Lennon
Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)’ with
performing ‘Cold Turkey’ with Plastic Ono
Plastic Ono Supergroup, Peace for Christmas,
Supergroup, Peace for Christmas, UNICEF event,
UNICEF event, Lyceum Ballroom, London, 15 Bed-In for Peace 1969. Amsterdam.
overleaf
Lyceum Ballroom, London, 15 December 1969.
December 1969. Photograph by Ruud Hoff
PEACE is POWER
‫السالم قوة‬ ‫‪和平就 是力量‬‬
‫صلح قوت است‬ RAUHA ON VOIMAA
LA PAIX, C’EST
FRIEDEN IST STÄRKE
LE POUVOIR
ΕΙΡΗΝΗ ΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙ
ΔΥΝΑΜΗ
‫שלום הוא כוח‬
शान्ति ही शक्ति है A BÉKE HATALOM
FRIÐUR ER MÁTTUR ᓴᐃᒪᓂᖅ ᓴᙱᓂᐅᕗᖅ
LA PACE È POTERE 平和は力
PAZ É PODER
МИР – ЭТО СИЛА LA PAZ ES PODER
 KAPANGYARIHAN
AMANI NI NGUVU
ANG KAPAYAPAAN
ཞི
ི ་བདེ
ེ ་ནི
ི ་སྟོ
ོ བས་ཤུགས་ཡི
ི ན།
BARIŞ GÜÇTÜR
David Toop
As Marcel Proust wrote in The Guermantes
Way, ‘Now she even made silence the object
of her painful scrutiny’.1 Readers of the August
1966 edition of Art and Artists magazine
might have discovered some echoing tem-
poral trace of this contradictory condition in
the work of Yoko Ono, described in the title
of Anthony Cox’s article as ‘Instructive Auto-
Destruction’. There was fragile, personal
YOKO ONO
poetry in Painting To Be Stepped On 1961 or
Piece for the Wind 1962 – ‘Cut a painting up
and let them be lost in the wind’ – yet also the
self-inflicted pain of an apostate who dese-
crates their own faith object. Cutting, drilling,
Silence the Object of 213
burning are the predominant forces at work.
Ono’s 1965 Carnegie Recital Hall performance
of Cut Piece was illustrated in the magazine
by three photographs, disturbing in their me-
Her Painful Scrutiny
ditative stoicism and latent violence. Though
Cut Piece’s event score specified that the
central performer need not be a woman, the
question remains: how could a man step up
on stage in full view of others and cut the
clothes from a woman without awareness of
what was taking place? ‘In contrast to the rest
of the concert which is usually filled with rest-
lessness in the audience’, Cox wrote, ‘this piece
always takes place in complete silence, with
periods of several minutes elapsing before
the next performer (member of the audience)
gets enough courage to come up on stage.’2
To cut is to break open a silent space,
make absence through which other realities
can emerge. In an ancestral pre-echo of Yoko
Ono’s windows to the sky, the haiku poet
Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828) wrote: ‘Beautiful,
seen through holes / Made in a paper screen:
The Milky Way.’3 Like Ono, Issa returned to
this theme with variations throughout his life,
as in ‘autumn evening – wind in the window’s
little hole / plays flute’ (1811), and ‘old wall –
from whichever hole / autumn moon’ (1826)
– all these works reminiscent of the instruc-
tion pieces collected together in Ono’s
Grapefruit. 4 First published in 1964 by her
own Wunternaum Press in Tokyo, in a limited
edition of five hundred copies, Grapefruit
established Yoko Ono as a visionary in this
new field of conceptual works in which imagi-
nation was the primary material.
Significantly, the first section of the book
was entitled ‘MUSIC’. The instruction for
Secret Piece, composed in summer 1953 and
the earliest piece in the collection, was as
follows: ‘Decide on one note that you want to
play. Play it with the following accompani-
ment: The woods from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. in
summer’ – then, over a treble clef, handwrit-
ten, the instruction continues – ‘with the
accompaniment of the birds singing at dawn.’
Given its severe reductionism contrasted
with the aleatoric unknown of a dawn chorus,
Secret Piece invites inevitable comparison
with John Cage’s development of a composi-
tional philosophy centred on listening and
opening, rather than construction and closure.
Though Cage’s name may have been known
to Ono in the vaguest sense at that time in
1953, thanks to her music composition teacher
at Sarah Lawrence College, her ideas evolved
free from his influence. School assignments
at a much younger age were far more signifi-
cant. As Edward M. Gomez writes: ‘Her parents
sent her to Jiyū Gakuen, a prestigious Tokyo
school, where she began piano lessons at
the age of four. Known for its music-centered
curriculum, the school gave early starts to
several notable Japanese composers. In a
typical – and, for Ono, prescient – assignment,
pupils were told to listen for and notate
everyday sounds and noises.’5
This early focus on music, sound and
listening through classical vocal training,
piano lessons and exposure to Japanese and
European music cultures has been a core
element in Yoko Ono’s all-encompassing
practice throughout her life. Early examples
can be heard of sound made for experimen-
tal films in Japan, including a voice recording
made in the early 1960s, with Toshi Ichiyanagi
on piano and Kenji Kobayashi on violin. This
was later used for Yōji Kuri’s 1969 film Tragedy
on a G String. For Takahiko Iimura’s film of
Yōji Kuri, Aos 1964. Music and vocals by Yoko Ono;
title taken from Ono's AOS – to David Tudor 1961.
Film, 16mm, animation, shown as video, black and
white, sound (stereo), 9min, 9sec
entwined bodies in extreme close up, Ai
1962, Ono hung the tape recorder micro-
phone out of a window to record muffled
street sounds and for another Yōji Kuri ani-
mation, Aos 1964, she mirrored the film’s
images with sharp screams, intimate saliva
and swallow sounds inside the mouth, sus-
tained pitches, sighs and emotive vocal
sounds close to and yet eluding legible
speech – a vocal style for which she became
famous later in the decade.
For a British audience in 1966, none of
these radical approaches to vocal music were
familiar. Some authors have alluded to its
paradoxical nature – material or imaginary?
‘In the West’, Cox noted, ‘Ono relates to that
area referred to by Gene Swenson as “The
Other Tradition”: Duchamp, Ernst, Cage,
Rauschenberg, Johns etc., and it is interest-
ing that these men were attracted to her and
attended her concerts and events’. 6 Ono was
always close to Cage, securing an apartment
next to his in 1971 and performing at his
memorial service, but it has been noted that
her music, a ‘music of the mind’, is ‘diametri-
cally opposed to his in philosophy and has
no audible sound in the conventional sense.’7
As her early 1960s environmental sound
and vocal recordings demonstrate, this latter
point was not strictly true. Despite perfor-
mances at Chambers Street, the Village Gate,
Carnegie Recital Hall and the Living Theatre,
a feeling of being excluded rankled. At her
invitation, a group of artists – La Monte Young,
Simone Morris (née Forti), Terry Jennings and
Richard Maxfield among them – began a per-
formance series in her Chambers Street loft.
‘But there was no mention that I should have
a concert there,’ she told Jonathan Cott for a
profile in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971,
‘and I wasn’t going to be the one to mention
it. Somehow my work was still suffering. The
idea had been to stop my suffering to get a
place to present my work and at last letting
everybody know what I was doing. But it just
went on like that.’8 In the same profile an
antagonism arises: a conflict between con-
214 215 ceptual and visceral sound. In performances,
she told Cott, she threw peas from a bag at
the audience, circled her long hair so that
hair made the sound, or performed Wall Piece,
an instruction to hit the wall with your head.
‘But I felt stifled even with that’, she revealed.
‘I was dying to scream, to go back to my
voice.’9
After returning to Japan between 1962
and 1964, Ono was invited to London in 1966
to participate in the Destruction in Art
Symposium (DIAS). According to Gustav
Metzger, Mario Amaya, the founding editor
of Art and Artists, visited New York that sum-
mer, met Ono in her loft and was (in Metzger’s
words) bowled over. ‘Yoko Ono was given two
evenings towards the end of the month-long
event,’ Metzger wrote. ‘Her keenness to pub-
licise her ideas and work meshed well with
DIAS’ need for ongoing publicity, and the
articles on her in the British press assured a
complete sell-out of tickets.’ By the end of
DIAS the contributing artists and writers
from abroad had returned home. ‘Only Yoko
Ono stayed on’, Metzger wrote. ‘It was diffi-
cult to understand why. The rest is history.’10
Ono’s contributions to DIAS in September
1966 included a talk at the Africa Centre that
could have been interpreted as quiet and
self-deprecating in style but was actually
devastatingly critical of the symposium’s
focus on destruction; a performance of
Whisper Piece 1961 at Carnegie Recital Hall;
and two evenings of her works performed at
the Africa Centre, including Bag Piece 1961 /
1964, Clock Piece 1965, Wind Piece 1962 and
Cut Piece 1964, the latter enacted without
incident though in an atmosphere of great
tension, according to Metzger.11 For the dura-
tion of DIAS, Ono stayed with John Latham
and Barbara Steveni (Latham's wife at the
time), both key figures in the London
avant-garde, and so Shadow Piece 1963
(the instruction here to ‘Put your shadows
together until they become one’) was per-
formed with Steveni at London Free School
Shadow Piece 1963, first performed 1966,
photographed 13 September 1966. Performed
by Yoko Ono and Barbara Steveni at the Free
School Playground, London, in conjunction
with the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS).
Photograph by Tom Picton
Playground; Noa Latham, their eldest son,
boiled water at home as the remote compo-
nent of Disappearing Piece 1966, ‘performed’
at the Mercury Theatre as a piece that had
already occurred in another location.
Gustav Metzger’s question resonates:
why stay in London when New York was the
centre of the art world? Perhaps the oppor-
tunity to present so many pieces in a short
time, to capacity audiences and a strong
press reaction, persuaded Ono that London
was a more hospitable environment – a
smaller scene with fewer dominant charac-
ters. This proved to be the case. Her solo
show Unfinished Paintings & Objects was
exhibited at Indica Gallery 9–22 November
1966 (as Metzger said, the rest is history
since this was where she met John Lennon),
and in the same month her Music Of the Mind
was presented at Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre
in Holborn. One of the pieces performed was
Fly Piece 1964, in which members of the
audience jumped from stepladders of varying
heights. In the transition from one life to
another, both the title – Fly – and the step-
ladders (which Ono had used previously in
Japan and at the Carnegie Recital Hall) were
to become highly significant.
Another factor for Ono’s decision to stay
in London may have been the fluid exchanges
between pop culture and the art avant-garde
that typified the city in 1966. This crosstalk
provided opportunity but also exposed a ten-
sion between raw commercialism and the
esoteric. As an example, in 1966 I saw
the second version of Ono’s FILM NO. 4
(‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7 (more commonly known
as Bottoms) at the Jacey Tatler Cinema in
Charing Cross Road, adjacent to Saint Martin’s
School of Art. Programming at the cinema
negotiated a peri-lous line between soft porn
and arthouse, and in an era when censorship
was still strin-gent, pornography hunters
were lured in by posters emphasising the
frank sexual content of films such as Kaneto
Shindo’s O nib ab a (1 9 6 4) and Hiroshi
Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964),
then presumably left unsat-isfied. (Ono’s
Bottoms had negligible sexual content,
though may have promised it.) In the London
music scene, the dialogue was even more
fervid: Pink Floyd attempted a collabo-
ration with John Latham and borrowed from
the radicalism of improvising group AMM;
Mark Boyle and Joan Hills created light shows
for Soft Machine; the Spontaneous Music
Ensemble (SME) performed at UFO, the
club at the apex of psychedelic culture; and
The Who (specifically Pete Townshend)
incorporated Gustav Metzger’s ideas into the
destructive climax of their shows.
Ono’s expressed desire to scream, to
Clock Piece 1965, performed during Two Evenings
with Yoko Ono, presented by Destruction in Art
Symposium (DIAS), Africa Centre, London 28–29
September 1966. Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
return to her voice, also had a peculiarly local
context in London. On 17 December 1966,
I saw Little Richard – apotheosis of the rock
n’ roll scream and a major influence on The
Beatles – perform at the Flamingo Club on
Wardour Street. Then on 30 December I heard
AMM for the first time, playing on the same
all-night bill as Cream at the Roundhouse;
this was one month after AMM’s performance
in Ono’s Indica exhibition, four months after
their performance at DIAS. For one incan-
descent moment, as classical mod style
metamorphosed into its peacock opposite,
there was an entanglement between the
emotional fire of soul tracks such as Lorraine
Ellison’s ‘Stay With Me Baby’, Ike and Tina
216 217 Turner’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ and
James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s
World’ (all released in 1966), the free jazz vo-
calising of Patty Waters and Linda Sharrock,
the howling guitar feedback from the Jimi
Hendrix Experience, The Who and the
Yardbirds, and the first steps into free impro-
visation of AMM and SME.
Ono’s relationship to this convergence
was as complex and contradictory as the
convergence itself. Famously, on 9 November
1966, John Lennon climbed to the top of a
stepladder during a private preview of her
Indica show to see a framed painting with the
word ‘YES’ attached to the ceiling – and the
Programme cover for Ornette Coleman with
David Izenzon, Charles Haden, Edward Blackwell
and Yoko Ono, Royal Albert Hall, London,
29 February 1968. Print on paper, 21 × 29.8
most unexpected entwinement of mega-pop
and extreme avant-garde was set in motion.
As the first phase of the ballad of John and
Yoko slowly unfolded through 1967, Ono
made a trip to Paris. Alto saxophonist Ornette
Coleman, one of the pioneers of the free jazz
movement that began in the late 1950s, visi-
ted her after her performance of Bag Piece
at a cabaret at the Place de la Contrescarpe
and invited her to participate in his Emotion
Modulation concert scheduled for 29 February
1968 at London’s Royal Albert Hall. An after-
noon rehearsal was recorded with Coleman’s
quartet (comprising Coleman, bassists David
Izenzon and Charles Haden and drummer
Edward Blackwell), an extract of which ap-
peared as ‘AOS’ on Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band
in 1970. With Coleman playing trumpet, both
bassists using bows and Blackwell silent,
Ono’s voice confidently floats within a fluid,
ruminative conversation of sustained cries.
Then there is a pause, followed by sensual,
breathy moans, a feeling of withholding
intensified by Ono’s barely enunciated words
– ‘not yet’ – then suddenly, out of a crescen-
do comes a series of terrifying, short screams,
more fox bark than human. Blackwell and the
other musicians erupt in response, then
quickly subside into delicate, fragile lines
resolving into sighs and coughs. Was this
Lennon on the sidelines, taking it upon him-
self to perform Ono’s Cough Piece 1961?
Dates and stories fail to quite match, but
on a day close to the Royal Albert Hall con-
cert, the doorbell rang at Olympic Studios in
Barnes, where engineer Eddie Kramer was
recording the Spontaneous Music Ensemble’s
second LP, Karyobin, one of the landmark
documents of free improvisation in the UK.
Due to faulty wiring the bell can be heard on
the record as a momentary glitch. The finger
that pressed the bell belonged to Yoko Ono,
at that moment hoping to pick up tapes of
the Ornette Coleman rehearsal. According
to SME saxophonist Evan Parker she stayed
to listen to a part of the Karyobin session,
after which they resolved to perform toge-
ther. Two concerts by a quartet of Ono, Parker,
drummer John Stevens and guitarist Derek
Bailey took place at the Arts Lab in Drury
Lane, preceded by a ‘rehearsal’ at the flat
Ono was renting close to Baker Street. As
Evan Parker notes, this was the first time he
had sampled umeboshi.12
In 1969, poet and musician Anthony Barnett
began work on organising a concert, Natural
Music, to be held at Lady Mitchell Hall,
Cambridge, on 2 March of that year. Among
Barnett’s invitees were saxophonist John
Tchicai, drummer John Stevens and other
prominent members of the international im-
provisation scene, including vocalist Maggie
Poster for Royal Albert Hall concert, London,
29 February, 1968, with Ornette Coleman,
David Izenzon, Charles Haden, Edward Blackwell,
Yoko Ono. 74 × 99
Nicols, saxophonist Trevor Watts, bassist
Barre Phillips and the South African trum-
peter Mongezi Feza. Barnett had previous
contact with Ono, having published her On
Paper 1967 in a loose-leaf folio review, Nothing
Doing in London Two 1968, and, at Tchicai’s
suggestion, invited her to play. Lennon
arrived, with guitar, as an unexpected guest.
In his published account of the event, Barnett
is scathing about Ono and Lennon’s partici-
pation and the ensuing exchanges they had
regarding the release of ‘Cambridge 1969’,
excerpted from the concert for the second
John Lennon and Yoko Ono album, Unfinished
Music No. 2: Life With the Lions 1969. The
improvising musicians were unhappy with the
Ono / Lennon approach (voice and guitar
feedback at the edge), while Lennon, in par-
ticular, was later contemptuous of what he
described (in a Melody Maker interview
quoted by Barnett) as ‘intellectual crap’
in jazz.13
With hindsight we can appreciate how
prescient their performance turned out to be
as a page in the history of noise music. Critics
sympathetic to the improvisers were under-
standably appalled by it. Sympathetic myself
to the improvisers, my take is rather differ-
ent: as I have written of ‘Cambridge 1969’,
‘What takes place in the first fifteen minutes
is extraordinary: two agonised cries wreathed
in a statement that is free in the sense of
being free of music (no slight is intended
here). In To The Wesleyan People 1966 and
later in Grapefruit, Ono described her music
as more of a practice (gyo) than a music. Her
singing, possessed here by a frankness and
raw pain, speaks directly to the guitar’s howl-
inground unstable flux, blaring thickness
and screeching hysteria. The aesthetic qual-
ity of Japanese butoh, dance of darkness and
trauma, is invoked, renouncing refinement
or fixity.’14
The flurry of taped innovative music, frag-
ile songs and autobiographical field record-
ings released by Ono and Lennon in 1968–9
– Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins;
218 219 Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions;
Wedding Album – flickers between private
Yoko Ono and John Lennon performing at
Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge University,
UK, 2 March 1969. Photograph Val Wilmer
and public, their eerie, diaristic quality indel-
ibly imprinted with the era of their making. As
the reference to the 1950s British radio and
television sitcom Life With the Lyons
suggested, Ono and Lennon embraced the
concept of art as a window into personal
space. Ono’s solo albums – Yoko Ono / Plastic
Ono Band (1970) and Fly (1971) – are a differ-
ent story, through which all the struggles of
conceptual versus visceral are resolved into
a locomotive ferocity. Listening to ‘Why’,
the opening track of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono
Band, is still a shock, exploding at a peak
of intensity, cutting a hole in the sky by crush-
ing together the scream of electric rock n’
roll with the silent scream of Cut Piece or
Wall Piece. As if consumed by fire, London
was over.
220 221
 222 223

Album covers

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Unfinished

pp.220–221

Music No. 1: Two Virgins 1968, censored and

uncensored version; John Lennon and Yoko
Ono, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the
Lions 1969; John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Wedding
Album 1969

Plastic Ono Band, Live Peace in Toronto

above

1969 1969

Yoko Ono with Plastic Ono Band,

opposite, top

Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band 1970

opposite, below Yoko Ono, Fly 1971

Patrizia Dander
In July 1961, Yoko Ono showed a series of
Instruction Paintings in her first solo exhibi-
tion. Held at New York’s short-lived AG Gallery,
run by artist George Maciunas and gallery
owner, Almus Salcius, the exhibition was de-
dicated to paintings based on brief instructions
for their manufacture and/or use. The paint-
ings were to be executed and completed or
A Shadow is a Memory 1
imagined by visitors according to Ono’s spe-
cifications. Pieces included Painting To Be
Stepped On 1961, featuring the traces of those
present, and Smoke Painting 1961, its surface
Visibility and Reception
intended to be scorched with a cigarette and
literally go up in smoke.2 Other paintings were
conceived as the product of external influ-
ences: Painting to Let the Evening Light Go
of Ono’s Work in Germany
Through 1961 was designed to capture the
evening light, while Shadow Painting 1961
assumed its intended form only when the
shadows of objects were cast onto its surface
225 by the light around it. These works, which
1962–72
subverted the artist’s role as the executive
agent, would come to be seen as paradig-
matic of Ono’s art.
While the instructions for these works
were mainly provided orally by the artist to
the (few) visitors to the New York exhibi-
tion, Ono later decided to put them down in
writing. 3 Barely a year later – she had since
returned to Japan – she exhibited the now
significantly expanded group as Instructions
for Paintings 1962 at the Sogetsu Art Center
in Tokyo. This time, however, there were no
paintings on view; she simply presented the
instructions, handwritten in Japanese by her
then husband Toshi Ichiyanagi.4 In retrospect,
this exhibition can be considered an early
milestone in conceptual art. The instructions
did not need to be materialised as paintings
for Ono to deem them fully fledged works of
art. 5 She thus chose an approach that can be
traced back to her musical upbringing: the
separation of score and performance, and of
composer and performer. 6 The preoccupa-
tion with these alternative yet equivalent
modes of existence of her artworks, and the
explicit severing of the tight bond between
the artist and the execution of the work,
testify to Ono’s radical notion of art.7 At the
same time, her approach allowed for her
works to circulate around the world without
the need for the artist to be present, which
is not to say that this invariably happened.
The Emergence of Fluxus in Germany
In late 1961, George Maciunas moved to
Wiesbaden, Germany, where he worked as a
graphic designer for the US Army. Inspired
and influenced by Ono’s practice, he had
developed his concept for Fluxus while still
in the United States. 8 Now he channelled
considerable effort into putting it into prac-
tice in Europe. As the founder and driving
force of this transnational movement, from
Wiesbaden Maciunas initiated and coordi-
nated countless Fluxus concerts and events,
including in Copenhagen, Amsterdam,
London, Nice and Paris. Notably, he also
organised various festivals in Germany in
cooperation with (and with decisive support
from) such artists as Nam June Paik, Wolf
Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Tomas Schmit,
along with gallery owners and curators such
as Mary Bauermeister, Rolf Jährling, Jean-
Pierre Wilhelm9 and Johannes Cladders. Initial
events included the Kleines Sommerfest:
Après John Cage at the Galerie Parnass in
Wuppertal and Neo-Dada in der Musik at the
Düsseldorfer Kammerspiele, both taking
place in the summer of 1962. Among the early
major festivals held in Germany were the
Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester
Musik (Wiesbaden Municipal Museum, run-
ning over four weekends from 1–23 September
1962), and the Festum Fluxorum. Fluxus.
Musik und Antimusik. Das Instrumentale
Theater (Düsseldorf Art Academy, 2–3 Feb-
ruary 1963). A little later, on 20 July 1964, came
the Fluxus-Festival der Neuen Kunst at the
Aachen University of Technology; this was
organised by Valdis Āboliņš, then cultural
advisor for the General Students’ Committee
at the university, and the Cologne-based
artist Tomas Schmit, Maciunas having by this
time returned to the United States.10
Although Maciunas named Ono as a
member of the planning committee for the
Wiesbaden Festival in his News Policy Letter
No.2 (Fluxus Festival Only), dated 12 July
1962,11 and he highlighted her importance in
other contexts, 12 she had a relatively low
profile in these early festivals in Germany.
According to the poster, Yoko Ono had two
pieces performed in Wiesbaden – A Piano
Piece to See the Skies 1962 was on the pro-
gramme for 1 September 1962, while The
Pulse 1962 was scheduled for 9 September.
For Düsseldorf, however, her name only
appears on the poster, while none of her
work was performed. The same is true of the
other early Fluxus events in Europe – a ‘sur-
prising’ discovery, as curator Jon Hendricks
notes.13 After all, Ono’s exhibition at the AG
Gallery, and the earlier series of concerts
and performances that she had organised
with La Monte Young in her loft on Chambers
Street, had been a key influence on Maci-
unas’s concept of Fluxus. Ono was in Japan
at this time, having returned to Tokyo on
3 March 1962. She remained there until 23
September 1964, focused on her own perfor-
mances and those of other artists like John
Cage and Hi-Red Center – two intense and
busy years spent working on exhibitions,
events and concerts, and preparing her art-
ist book, Grapefruit 1964 for publication.
Making the long and expensive journey to
Europe was well out of the question – a
conceivable (yet not imperative, given her
understanding of the work) reason why her
work was scarcely visible within the early
European Fluxus movement.
Only from the mid-1960s, when Ono had
returned to live in the United States, were her
works shown in Germany again. Ono’s FILM
NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) / Fluxfilm 1966, featuring
shots of bare buttocks while walking and con-
sidered highly provocative at the time, was
included in the Fluxfilm collection compiled
by Maciunas, which was shown in a few
selected places; in addition, cellist Charlotte
Moorman incorporated one of Ono’s most
radical works, Cut Piece 1964, into her 1966
226 227 tour with Nam June Paik and performed it
regularly thereafter.14 Cut Piece had first been
presented by Ono in July 1964 as part of
Insound/Instructure: Contemporary American
Music at Yamaichi Hall, in Kyoto. The audi-
ence was invited to use a pair of scissors to
cut the clothes off the artist, who sat motion-
less on the stage. 1 5 Ono described her
motivation for Cut Piece as follows: ‘I had
always wanted to produce work without ego
in it. I was thinking of this motif more and
Shadow Painting 1961 from Painting & Drawings by
Yoko Ono, AG Gallery, New York, 17–30 July 1961,
printed 1963. Photograph by George Maciunas
more, and the result of this was Cut Piece.
Instead of giving the audience what the artist
chooses to give, the artist gives what the
audience chooses to take.’16 From the very
outset, this performance, which literally
brought the audience up close with the artist,
allowed for the possibility of her being per-
formed by another person, male or female.
Moorman embraced that assignment with
dedication,17 as though Ono’s shadow were
casting itself onto a new body.
The Canonisation of Fluxus
and Conceptual Art
Ono appeared as a prominent representa-
tive of the early Fluxus movement in Japan,
the United States and, from 1966, the UK.
In Germany, however, her importance only
began to be acknowledged – albeit on a
rather small scale – in the early 1970s. This
was due to two exhibitions that contributed
greatly towards the canonisation of Fluxus
and conceptual art – two movements in
which Ono’s work in the early 1960s was of
significant relevance.18 Both exhibitions were
organised by Harald Szeemann, former di-
rector of the Kunsthalle Bern.
The happening & fluxus exhibition, held
between 6 November 1970 and 6 January
1971 at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, was based
on research by the curator and the Fluxus
collector and archivist Hanns Sohm.19 They
invited artists associated with happenings
and Fluxus to send them information about
key events as well as biographical details;
this collection of material was published in a
remarkably comprehensive volume that in-
cluded a detailed chronology of Fluxus events
and happenings in many parts of the world,
including early precursors from 1959 on-
wards. 20 The exhibition, in turn, was divided
into different sections: besides booths
where individual artists like Tomas Schmit,
Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik and Charlotte
Moorman were invited to present their
works, there were designated areas for film
screenings and books, and the so-called
‘Dokumentationsstrasse 1959–1970’ (‘docu-
mentation street’). Like the publication, this
contained information about the concerts
held at Ono’s loft on Chambers Street. The
book also lists a number of her international
appearances, publications and texts, while
within the exhibition Ono’s work was repre-
sented in the form of documentary material
on her evenings at Carnegie Recital Hall, New
York in 1961 and 1965, and her Morning Piece
(1964) to George Maciunas 1965, among
other works. 21 (Ono’s 1961 solo exhibition at
the AG Gallery, discussed above, remained
unmentioned in both the publication and the
exhibition, possibly because the perfor-
mative nature of the works presented there
was not evident to the same extent as at her
concerts or events.)
As significant as happening & fluxus was
in retrospect – especially in terms of the
breadth and transnationality of the under-
lying research – it was received at the time
in a one-sided way, with attention largely
focused on the performances of the Viennese
actionists, which provoked scandal, and Wolf
Vostell’s plan for a calf to be born at the
Kunstverein.22 ‘Work without ego’23 like Ono’s,
which did not depend on spectacular self-
dramatisation, could not cut through in the
same way.
This only changed to some extent with
documenta 5 in 1972. Szeemann selected
five works by Ono for the rotunda on the
ground floor of the Fridericianum. Three of
them can be attributed to the series of
Instruction Paintings and Instructions for
Paintings: Painting to Let the Evening Light
Go Through, Painting To Be Stepped On and
Painting to Hammer a Nail 1961. 24
Poster for the FESTUM FLUXORUM FLUXUS,
Düsseldorf State Art Academy, 2nd and 3rd
February 1963. Designed by George Maciunas
Ono’s presence at documenta 5, which
has gone down in exhibition history as a key
moment for the canonisation of conceptual
art, seems only natural. However, her works
were not assigned to the Idea + Idea sec-
tion, alongside artists like Lawrence Weiner,
Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin, nor to the
Processes section, which would have em-
phasised the genesis of Ono’s paintings.
Instead, they were allocated to the somewhat
unfortunately titled section Selbstdarstel-
lung (self-representation), 25 which included
the subcategories Performance and Film, 26
and brought together artists such as Vito
Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Joan Jonas and
Giuseppe Penone. This classification of Ono’s
work is rather bewildering, not least in view
of the five works selected for the exhibition.
Ono’s paintings were not designed to be exe-
cuted by the artist herself, nor were they
228 229 conceived as a way for her to ‘present herself’
before an audience. To the contrary, she has
always emphasised the introspective cha-
racter of her works. 27 It is widely known that
from the early 1970s, following her marriage
to John Lennon in 1969, she was primarily
perceived as an activist, musician and public
figure. Whether this led to a shift in the
reception of her art as self-centred and self-
expressive – which it decidedly was not – is
anyone’s guess.
Me and My Shadows postcard selection 1991.
Each 12.4 × 17.4. Published by The Reykjavik
Municipal Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
Following the Shadow
A little card from 1991 entitled Shadow Piece
No. 1 – ‘Me and my shadows’ shows a drawing
of a conical object with three distinct sha-
dows: a small dot behind the pointed right
end, a conical shadow beneath the depicted
shape, and a circular shadow to the left,
opposite the wide end of the funnel. While
the object itself remains always the same, its
appearance varies depending on how the
light falls on it. This humble sketch is a telling
indication of Ono’s way of seeing herself and
her works – as events that can leave traces
in all sorts of ways, without necessarily re-
quiring a physical presence.
In a brief note to George Maciunas, pub-
lished in the first edition of her now iconic
artist’s book Grapefruit, Yoko Ono wrote:
‘Most of my pieces are meant to be spread
by word of mouth … This means is very impor-
tant since the gradual change which occurs
in the piece by word spreading is also part of
the piece.’28 This kind of self-dispersal, the
relinquishment of control over the form and
materialisation of her works, had conse-
quences for the ‘tangibility’ of Ono’s artistic
work. It could be argued that this, too, con-
tributed to her work receiving the attention
it deserved only after a long delay – at least
in Germany. 29
 230 231

Shadow Piece 1963, performed by John Lennon

and Yoko Ono at the 8th Avant Garde Festival, Freedom 1970. Directed by Yoko Ono.
overleaf

69th Regiment Armory, NYC, 19 November 1971. Soundtrack by John Lennon. Film, 16mm, shown
Photographs by Fred. W. McDarrah as video, colour and sound (mono), 1min, 5sec
 236 237

FLY 1970–1. Directed by Yoko Ono and

pp.234–5
Advertisement for Museum of Modern [F]art,
above
John Lennon. Score and concept by Yoko Ono. The Museum of Modern Art Show 2 December
below
Yoko Ono – One Woman Show, in Village Voice,
Soundtrack by Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Film, Page from self-published exhibition
above 1971 Directed by Yoko Ono. Film, 16mm, colour
2 December 1971
16mm, colour and sound (mono), 25min catalogue for Museum of Modern [F]art 1971 and sound (stereo), 6min, 43sec
 239

Two images of MoMA sculpture garden

right

Advertisement for Museum of Modern

above depicting the releasing of flies from the
[F]art in MoMA ticket window. From artist's self published exhibition catalogue for
book/exhibition catalogue, 1971. Photograph Museum of Modern [F]art 1971. Photograph
by Iain Macmillan by Iain Macmillan
Helen Molesworth,
Helen Molesworth
Recording Artists is a podcast from the Getty
dedicated to exploring art and artists through
the archives of the Getty Research Institute.1
Barbara Rose, Yoko Ono,
In 2019 we focused on interviews with six
women artists whose lives span the twenti-
eth century. These recordings were made by
the New York-based art critic Cindy Nemser
Catherine Lord and
and art historian Barbara Rose. Most of these
interviews come from the 1960s and 1970s,
in the midst of the civil rights movement and
the feminist revolution.
Sanford Biggers
Barbara Rose interviewed Yoko Ono in 1990
when Ono was fity-seven years old and twen-
ty-nine years later I invited the ar tists
Catherine Lord and Sanford Biggers to listen
to these tapes with me. Catherine once per-
formed Ono’s famous work Cut Piece 2, and
Sanford has always been interested in incor-
porating music and performance into his
work with his band Moon Medicin.
In 1953, after completing two semesters of
Yoko Ono
study in one of Tokyo’s most prestigious
241 universities, Ono left Japan to continue her
studies at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Interested in music from a young age, she was
A Kind of Meeting Point
soon introduced to the work of avant-garde
composers Arnold Schoenberg and Anton
Webern. Ono was already avant-garde as a
student. Her professor Andre Singer under-
stood that New York’s experimental compos-
ers, and John Cage in particular, would help
her grow. She met Cage not long af ter,
through her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi.
Barbara Rose
What effect did he have on you?
Yoko Ono
There was a Zen Buddhist, a very advanced
Zen Buddhist called Dr. Suzuki. And he
was doing a lecture in Columbia University,
and we went to that. And of course, Cage
was there, too, and we were sort of talk-
ing about things. And then I started to
understand Cage’s music theory, and I was
very startled. Because I was a philosophy
student in a Japanese university before
This transcript is an excerpt and has been edited from the original podcast I went to Sarah Lawrence. So just from a
for printed publication for the sake of concision and clarity.
logical, philosophical point of view, I
thought his philosophy underneath it was
very interesting.
HM
Ono’s status as a Japanese national, com-
bined with the popularity of Zen Buddhism
among her avant-garde friends in New York
– many of whom were processing Dr Suzuki’s
teachings – meant that her work was fre-
quently understood within the framework
of Buddhism, although Ono tended to
complicate such an easy narrative of cause
and effect.
BR
Do you feel that your perceptions or your
point of view and your art is still very
influenced by Japanese culture?
YO
Oh, definitely. Well, but I mean, the
same thing goes for when I’m interviewed
in Japan – they naturally assume that I’m
influenced by Western culture. So it’s
a happy medium, I think. The world is
getting smaller and smaller and I really
think that we’re all influenced by each
other, in that sense.
HM
I asked Catherine Lord about this clip – and
why she laughed when she heard Barbara
Rose’s question.
Catherine Lord
Oh, boy. It’s as if the whole burden of global
conflict and structural racism just descends
on the conversation. Like, why would Ono
have to choose?
HM
Ono’s notion that everyone was being ‘influ-
enced by each other’ was born of her peripatetic
life. She had been moving back and forth
between Japan and the United States since
she was a child. When she joined up with the
avant-garde music and performance scene in
New York, she connected with a group of art-
ists who were moving somewhat effortlessly
around the globe. Indeed, Ono’s cosmopolitan
outlook was highly regarded, because the van-
guardism of these artists meant they wanted
to be citizens of the world.
One reason Ono’s loft became such a focal
point of the downtown New York scene was
her early embrace of ideas that could later
be identified with Fluxus. These artists were
interested in the process of making an event
rather than the production of a discrete art
object, and Ono was one of the first artists to
use an instruction-based method of making
art. These works troubled the boundary be-
tween artist and viewer by offering prompts
for viewers to perform various activities,
essentially asking the viewer to perform some
of the labour typically reserved for the artist.
Her two most important forays into this realm
occurred in 1964 with her book Grapefruit
and her performance Cut Piece.
Grapefruit was published first in Japan
1964, and then again in a radically different
form, with a mainstream press in the United
States and England in 1970. The book is filled
with short haiku-like instructions, called
‘event scores’. Borrowing from musical com-
position, where notes are arranged as part
of a score and then played by members of the
orchestra, an event score is a set of instruc-
tions designed to be read and ultimately per-
formed by anyone. I find Ono’s instructions
tend towards the deeply lyrical and largely
impossible. I asked artist Sanford Biggers to
select some of his favourites:
Sanford Biggers
Two that stuck out to me were the tape pieces.
I was particularly interested in Tape Piece 1
and Tape Piece 3. Tape Piece 1, very simple.
‘Stone piece. Take the sound of a stone aging.’
And then Tape Piece 3, ‘Snow piece. Take
a tape of the sound of the snow falling. This
should be done in the evening. Do not listen to
the tape. Cut it and use it as strings to tie gifts
with. Make a gift wrapper, if you wish, using
the same process with a phono sheet.’
All these are about stillness and percep-
tion and being in the moment. And we’re not
going to hear or perceive the same thing.
We’re not gonna receive the same thing. Par-
ticularly in Tape Piece 3, it’s about the person
who is recording the sound never even really
listening to it, and then giving it to someone
else who can’t listen to it, and not even ex-
plaining what that transaction is about. So
it leaves nothing but possibilities. There’s
action, there’s inaction, there’s receiving,
there’s giving; but there’s no desired goal
from that. And something about that, to me,
resonates as deeply profound.
HM
The instructions in Grapefruit have a relation
to Zen kōans, which are typically a statement
or question designed to foil linear or rational
thought and aid meditation – the most famous
asks us to imagine the sound of one hand
clapping. Such exercises are not meant to
fortify the impossibility of the activity, but
rather to cast the thinker into a state of
intense self-doubt designed to question the
almighty confidence of the ego.
If Grapefruit’s instructions happened large-
ly privately in the mind of the reader, then Cut
Piece was explicitly designed to engage a
public audience. In one of performance art’s
most infamous pieces, Ono, dressed in a very
beautiful and conservative ensemble, sat
silently on the stage with a pair of scissors
next to her. The instructions were that any
member of the audience could cut off a piece
of her clothing. In the film of the 1965 perfor-
mance at Carnegie Recital Hall, we watch as
audience members begin by taking small,
memento-like pieces. Others become aggres-
sive, cutting deeply into her garment. One
member slices her bra straps, causing Ono
to raise her hands and cover her bare chest.
SB
I definitely feel that Cut Piece is a feminist
statement, but it’s also a pacifist statement.
We have to remember this was 1964. So the
civil rights movement is already happening
in the West. So for her to do that in Carnegie
Recital Hall, as a pacifist gesture, is actually
echoed culturally when you think about Martin
Luther King and the civil rights movement,
which under his direction, was largely sort of
a pacifist venture. Which also is a tradition
from Gandhi, from the earlier part of the
twentieth century. So I think it also plugs into
a much larger zeitgeist of the moment.
HM
It’s significant, with that link in mind, that
one of the most consistent qualities of Ono’s
thought is her ongoing desire for world peace.
When I talked with Catherine Lord about
Cut Piece we ultimately ended up talking
about the long shadow of the Second World
War and its resonances in Ono’s work.
CL
To me, it gets projected upon by American and
European critics as a piece that has some-
thing to do with passive femininity, violence
against that femininity and a disempower-
ment of the figure of The Woman. I find it a
very generous piece that forefronts the audi-
ence, that gives them a private space between
them and her, in front of a whole lot of other
people. I think it’s Julia Bryan-Wilson who’s
made this argument really powerfully. It’s a
piece that bears the traces, memories and
the images of war and refugees, and people
wandering about gravely injured, with shred-
ded clothes, in a state of poverty.
HM
For all of Ono’s bravery on stage, she remained
242 243 completely silent.
CL
I think that what her silence does is foreground
the audience’s perception of themselves. You
see them creating this kind of animal, which
is an audience. And her silence foregrounds
not only their few verbal remarks, but the cho-
reography of their anxiety and their fluttering
and whether they walk on or off the stage
very quickly or not. I’m really fascinated by
audiences being a sort of live creature, a col-
lective creature that invents itself before your
eyes, by the fact of their own desires to be in
this collective, and to be an individual in this
collective. That’s what disconcerts me watch-
ing that footage.
HM
The relationship between artists and their
publics was one of the central concerns of
conceptual art. More than any other artist,
Ono was interested in bringing conceptual
art into mainstream culture. She was ultima-
tely able to do this because of her relationship
with John Lennon. Lennon certainly needed
no introduction when he and Ono met in
1966. As a member of the Beatles, he was one
of the most prominent people on the planet.
Ono’s proximity to Lennon thrust her into
the public eye. In retrospect, I think it’s fair
to say that Ono decided to use the spotlight
of her newfound celebrity to highlight her
avant-garde and conceptual art gestures –
and she did so consistently in the name of
peace. While Grapefruit and Cut Piece are
largely known to art world insiders, Lennon
and Ono’s 1969 Bed-In for Peace was expli-
citly made for the mass media of the late
1960s. Understanding that their honeymoon
would make them targets for reporters and
paparazzi, the couple decided to use the
media attention as an opportunity to stage a
‘bed-in’ (meant to riff on the then popular
activist strategy of sit-ins). At the height of the
Vietnam War, they spent a week of their honey-
moon in bed in a hotel room in Amsterdam,
and then again in Montreal. During this time,
they agreed to answer all media requests for
interviews and photos. Lennon and Ono chal-
lenged the reporters, and by extension their
audience, to commit to the power of their
own imagination as intrinsic to societal rev-
olution. They believed a revolution of the
mind could bring about peace.
SB
The same year as Yoko and John did the bed
piece, there was the assassination of Fred
Hampton, from the Black Panther Party. And
all the pictures of that literally still exist
online, of the bloodied mat tre s s. Lit-
erally, that’s all happening at the same time.
That’s sorta crazy.
HM
Biggers' associations allow us to think
about Ono as a fellow-traveller of the civil
rights movement, rather than the more
popular misogynistic account of her as ‘the
woman who broke up The Beatles’. In this
narrative she uses her relationship with
Lennon, and the new reality that it gives her,
as a force for good. However, her attempt
to marry the avant-garde event score to a
full-on publicity machine was not without
its pitfalls.
CL
She has two things to manage there. One
is to understand what a global audience
might be, and the other is not to vanish into
Lennon’s fame.
HM
When Ono started to perform with Lennon
on stage as part of the Plastic Ono Band,
she frequently performed a work called Bag
Piece in which she writhed around on stage
in a large cloth bag, essentially disappear-
ing herself from view. I used to think it was a
gesture of complete nonsense, but Lord’s
admonition that Ono had to protect herself
from Lennon’s fame made me rethink that.
CL
She is interested in nonsense and in with-
holding herself from the spectacle that she
appears to be offering.
HM
Biggers sees Ono’s Bag Piece from the per-
spective of being in his own rock band.
SB
I call it a Black boyband, even though we’re
not always all men. It’s sometimes women.
And one day I might call it an all-women’s
band. But we’re in masks, so you’ll never know.
The point is just sort of to rest in that space
of mystery and ephemerality, which I think is
something that is very akin to Ono’s practice.
Right now, in contemporary times, the real
form of rebelliousness or the avant-garde
is actually anonymity, and not to claim your
name and not to project yourself and present
yourself and, quote / unquote, ‘brand’ your-
self. And I think to be contrarian to that, at
least in a musical sense, in a band sense, is
that you are part of a whole; you are not the
whole itself.
HM
Both Biggers and Lord see Ono as introduc-
ing avant-garde strategies to a popular audi-
ence. In many instances, Ono was derided
for them, both by the art world and the
broader public.
In her interview with Ono, Barbara Rose
is sceptical about the shift from a small
audience of mostly artists to a large audi-
ence, a reading Ono gently refutes.
BR
The point is, [the large audience] became
sort of voyeurs. And once the audience
was separated from the creators, who used
to be just their own audience, it began
to change.
YO
Yeah, but also, the other side is that I
think that the world is definitely going
in a different direction. Or maybe it’s
a kind of unification that’s happening,
a unity that’s happening. People like
The Beatles were doing something that was
to sort of communicate a simple message
directly. You know, it was totally dif-
ferent from messages that were so far out
that it could not communicate with a wide
audience, etc. So from both directions,
something started to happen and there
was a kind of meeting point.
HM
Ono’s equanimity here – her nearly constant
refusal to be negative – is a hallmark of this
interview. Even as Rose laments the increas-
ing commercialisation of the art world, and
the voyeurism of the popular audience, Ono re-
directs the conversation toward the positive.
SB
To me, honestly, I mean, as feminist as these
things are, this is sort of beyond feminism.
It’s sort of like uber-humanitarianism that
she was expressing. It’s huge. Because I
mean, she had to have been the only one in
the room for so many times. Not just woman,
but Asian woman, but Asian person. I mean,
she had to be that solitary figure for so many
times. And it must’ve been, you know, to her
credit that she never thought of herself – I
mean, I don’t know her, so I can’t speak for
her. But it seems to me that she is an exam-
ple of someone who already had transcend-
ed her physical existence and was sort of
like, ‘I’m a spirit in the world. I have agency, I
have a voice, I have ideas. And I don’t give a
fuck. I’m talking to everyone in the room. I’m
making myself known. I’m here with the
avant-garde. I am the avant-garde.’
HM
I find Biggers' sense of Ono’s complex agen-
cy thrilling. And her tacit ‘I am the avant-garde’
was in total effect in the early 1970s, during
which time Ono felt there was a ‘meeting point’
between her different audiences. I’m referring
specifically to the release of John Lennon’s
album Imagine.
Like innumerable female artists before her,
however, Ono did not receive the credit owed
to her for her participation in this work. Even
though Ono was an avowed feminist – going
so far as to write an op-ed for the New York
Times calling for ‘the feminization of society’
as a way to reduce violence – Lennon’s per-
sonal evolution as a feminist was not yet then
complete. This would change shortly before
his untimely death, when Lennon said of the
album’s title song: ‘A lot of it – the lyric and the
concept – came from Yoko. But those days
I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and
I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.
But it was right out of Grapefruit, her book.
There’s a whole pile of pieces about “Imagine
244 245 this” and “Imagine that.”’
Even though Lennon did eventually ack-
nowledge Ono’s effect on his work, it’s fair to
say that her artistic career suffered as a result
of their marriage. In 1990, when Rose was
interviewing her, Ono was in the process of
being reinstated as an artist by an art world
in the throes of rewriting the history of global
conceptualism. Ono, ever gracious, offered
her understanding of the art world’s fickle
relationship to her work:
YO
When I was doing these things in the early
days, very few people understood it and
it was a dialogue between me and a few
friends who appreciated it or something.
And I’m just amazed that it’s interest-
ing to a different kind of audience. It’s
very interesting.
BR
Let’s hope it’s the art that they’re
interested in.
YO
I don’t think that’s a problem. I really
think that would have been a problem if
John was alive now. And some people
thinking maybe John is going to appear or
whatever. But the art world is a pretty
sort of — They have their own standards
and own pride and all that. And they were
not very accepting of John or me, at the
time that we were together. And one of
the reasons why I think I lost that thread
that I had in the art world was because
I teamed up with somebody that was. And
it just sort of made the art world feel
like they didn’t want to know about it,
because of that sort of confused feeling
about it, you know.
HM
For years, Ono’s celebrity, followed by her
tragedy, overshadowed her primary identity
as an artist. But when Rose implies in 1990
that the crowds might only be interested
in Ono for her connections to fame and tra-
gedy, Ono brushes it off.
It is this quality of optimism that makes
Ono so remarkable– particularly how her joie
de vivre leads her to question herself. Her
consistent drive toward the word ‘Yes’ means
that she was able to rethink her own preju-
dices. In the 1960s she turned the logic of
art’s permanence into impermanence, and
as time worked its cyclical magic, she turned
her immaterial ideas into lasting objects. I like
to think that this capacity for change is
shared by the world at large.
In June 2017, the National Music Publishers'
Association awarded ‘Imagine’ a Centennial
Song Award and when they did so they also
recognised Lennon’s desire to add Yoko Ono
as a co-author of the song 47 years after it first
appeared. Not too long ago I heard a street
performer singing ‘Imagine’, and when I did I
turned to my companion and said ‘Did you
know that Yoko Ono co-wrote those lyrics?’
Imagine all the people, sharing all the
world. You may say I’m a dreamer. I’m not
the only one. I hope someday you’ll join
us, and the world will be as one.
 246 247
Franklin Summer 1994 (ongoing). Ink on paper,
each: 11.3 × 17
 Yoko Ono creating YES 1999.
below Instruction Paintings series 1999. YES;
right

Photograph by Karla Merrifield TOUCH; FLY; REMEMBER; IMAGINE. Acrylic paint

on canvas, each 100 × 100

248 249
 Helmets (Pieces of Sky) 2001 installed
pp.150–1
at Yoko Ono Between The Sky And
My Head, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art,
Gateshead, UK, 13 December 2008–15 March 2009.
Military helmets, puzzle pieces, audio, and
instruction, dimensions variable
A HOLE 2009 installed at Yoko Ono From My
Window, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo,
Japan, 8 November 2015–14 February 2016.
Engraved glass, metal frame. Engraved: A HOLE
/ GO TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLASS AND SEE
THROUGH THE HOLE. 152.4 × 74.9 × 2.2
252 253
 Add Colour (Refugee Boat) concept
above and overleaf

1960, first realised 2016 installed at Yoko

Ono Learning Garden of Freedom, Fondacao
de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporanea,
Porto, Portugal, 30 May–15 November 2020.
Wooden boat, paint, brushes, instruction,
dimensions variable
258

leftMy Mommy Is Beautiful 1997 installed at

Have You Seen The Horizon Lately?, Museum My Mommy Is Beautiful 2004, installed
and overleaf

Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany, 18 June– at Yoko Ono Four Works For Washington and
20 September 1998, inkjet print on canvas, the World, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC.
each 101.6 × 101.6 × 4.4 17 June–17 September 2017
Kira Wainstein
born: bird year
early childhood: collected skys
adolescence: collected sea-weeds
late adolescence: gave birth to a grapefruit
collected snails, clouds, garbage
cans, etc. Have graduated many
schools specialising in these subjects
at present: travelling as a private lecturer of the above
subjects and others 2
All quotes by Yoko Ono
‘Hello? This is Yoko’ 1933–40
A narrative chronology
Yoko Ono is born, 18 February 1933, in Tokyo.
Her father, Eisuke, is a high-ranking bank
executive; her mother, Isoko Yasuda, is the
granddaughter of renowned entrepreneur
and philanthropist, Zenjirō Yasuda. Ono
spends most of her childhood in Japan, living
in America for two short periods while her
father is based there for work. She grows
up in a musical family: her father is a skilled
concert pianist, her mother plays multiple
traditional Japanese instruments, and her
261 Russian aunt, Anna Bubnova, is a celebrated
violinist. Ono’s early education includes
German Lieder and Italian opera; she later
describes her music-focused preschool,
Jiyū Gakuen:
We learnt perfect pitch, harmony,
playing the piano, and composing
simple songs. Some very famous
Japanese composers came out of
this school ... We received homework
in which you were supposed to listen
to the sound of the day, and
translate each sound into musical
notes. This made me into a person
who constantly translated the
sounds around her into musical
notes as a habit.3
1941–5
7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese
Naval Air Service bombs Pearl Harbor, the
US naval base in Hawaii. The next day, the US
declares war on Japan, entering the Second
World War. During the following years, Japan
occupies much of the Pacific region. In spring
1945, Ono is evacuated to the countryside
after the US Army Air Forces bombs Tokyo.
In the middle of the night, we
were woken up to go down into the
shelter while the B29s firebombed
our city. It was frightening to
see fire burning down the houses
around us. Eventually, we, the
children, were evacuated to the
country ... There was a shortage
of everything, even toilet paper.
So we managed with what we had
and became rather inventive.
Those experiences of the early
days cast a long shadow in
my life.4
6 August 1945, the US Army Air Forces drops
an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
Three days later, a second atomic bomb is
dropped on Nagasaki. 15 August 1945, Japan
surrenders, ending the war.
1946–55
Following the war, Ono returns to Tokyo in
1945, attending the elite school, Gakushūin,
in 1946. In 1951, Ono joins Gakushūin Univer-
sity as the first female philosophy student.
After two semesters, Ono moves to Scarsdale,
New York, following her family who had moved
the previous year. In 1953, Ono enrols at
Sarah Lawrence, studying poetry and musical
composition. She writes some of her earli-
est instruction works, including Lighting
Piece 1955.
I got very upset about the poems
I was writing ... also I wasn’t
composing anything that I thought
was great ... And just to prevent
from going insane – and this sounds
sort of dramatic but I really meant
it – I used to do silly things like
lighting a match and just watch
it until it goes off ... these acts
became very necessary for me.5
1956–61
After dropping out of Sarah Lawrence, Ono
moves to Manhattan, eloping with Toshi
Ichiyanagi, Japanese composer and pianist,
in 1956.
The pressure of becoming a
Yasuda / Ono was so tremendous –
intellectual, social, academic,
and bourgeois pressure. Unless
I rebelled against it I wouldn’t
have survived.6
Ono becomes embedded within New York’s
avant-garde circles, supporting herself by
teaching traditional arts at the Japan Society.
I met John Cage towards the end
of the ’50s, through Stefan Wolpe.
What Cage gave me was confidence
that the direction I was going
in was not crazy. It was accepted
in the world called “the avant-
garde” ... I met all of them: com-
posers and artists. It was a great
feeling to know that there was
a whole school of artists and
musicians who gathered in New York
at the time, who were each in his
or her own way revolutionary.7
Ono rents a loft at 112 Chambers Street,
where she runs the Chambers Street Loft
Series with La Monte Young, December 1960
– June 1961, providing a stage for avant-
garde performances.
The first concert was held in
December of 1960 ... It was a snowy
day, and it was amazing that
John Cage, David Tudor and all
the “beautiful people” came from
Stony Point, New York in that
weather ... This concert series
started to be a very famous and
successful series very fast, just
by word of mouth. So in one of
these concerts, Duchamp and Max
Ernst were there. I thought maybe
Marcel might notice my Painting
To Be Stepped On.8
Painting To Be Stepped On is one of several
Instruction Paintings exhibited by Ono during
the series. These works each comprise a
canvas and an instruction inviting the viewer
to complete the painting, either through
physical action or in their mind. They are in-
cluded in Ono’s first solo exhibition, July 1961,
at AG Gallery, owned by George Maciunas
who later founds Fluxus.
The works on display all had some
function ... when people came, I took
them around to each painting, and
explained what the function of each
piece was ... I remember explaining
the Smoke Painting to John Cage,
and actually made thin smoke come
out of the canvas ... I remember
Isamu Noguchi, stepping on Painting
To Be Stepped On with a pair of
elegant Zohri slippers.9
24 November 1961, Ono has her first major
per formance, Works by Yoko Ono, at
Carnegie Recital Hall. Contributors include
Ay-O, George Brecht, Trisha Brown, Philip
Corner, Jackson Mac Low, Richard Maxfield,
Jonas Mekas, Charlotte Moorman, Yvonne
Rainer and La Monte Young. Works include
poetry piece, A Grapefruit in the World of
Park, and AOS – To David Tudor, a multi-part
‘opera’ including performers bound together
with hanging bottles and cans attempting to
walk silently across stage, bodies of per-
formers piled up on stage, the sound of
a flushing toilet, and multiple audio tapes
played simultaneously.
1962–4
Ono returns to Japan, 3 March 1962, joining
her husband Ichiyanagi. 24 May, she has a
concert, Sogetsu Contemporary Series 15:
Works of Yoko Ono, at Sogetsu Art Center,
Tokyo. Prominent members of Tokyo’s avant-
garde perform in her works, including Genpei
Akasegawa, Kuniharu Akiyama, Tatsumi
Hijikata, Kenji Kobayashi, Yūji Takahashi and
Yasunao Tone. These include The Pulse, in
which mathematical problems are solved
while making sounds into a microphone;
Lighting Piece, in which a match is lit and
watched until it burns out; and A Grapefruit
in the World of Park. Ono’s Instructions for
Paintings, a progression from works shown
at AG Gallery, are displayed outside the con-
cert hall. These works, each comprising only
a written instruction, mark a key moment in
the history of conceptual art.
Among my instruction paintings,
my interest is mainly in “painting
to construct in your head”.
In your head, for instance, it
is possible for a straight line
to exist – not as a segment of
262 263 a curve but as a straight line.
Also, a line can be straight,
curved and something else at
the same time ... A sunset can go
on for days. You can eat up all
the clouds in the sky. You can
assemble a painting with a person
in the North Pole over a phone,
like playing chess. This painting
method derives from as far back
as the time of the Second World
War when we had no food to eat,
and my brother and I exchanged
menus in the air.0
The press reaction to Ono’s concert is mixed.
I had hopes of being accepted
and understood in Japan, as far
as my work is concerned ... And
there were so many tensions that
I was in the middle of – complex
human relationships and so on,
and I don’t know what the reason
but I tried to commit suicide,
and after, partly from my
own will, I was in the mental
hospital for about a month.11
John Cage tours Japan with David Tudor,
October 1962. Ono performs with them.
I don’t really feel close to John
Cage’s music ... he’s interested
in this loud sound, you know, in
a concert. I don’t understand why
because that distracts me from
hearing the mind sound.12
Ono meets American filmmaker Anthony Cox.
The following year, Ono and Ichiyanagi are
divorced, Ono and Cox are married, and their
daughter Kyoko Ono Cox is born, 3 August
1963. Ono collaborates with artists in Japan,
providing music for two short films, Takahiko
Iimura’s Ai (Love) 1962 and Yōji Kuri’s anima-
ted film Aos 1964, taking part in Hi Red
Centre’s event Shelter Plan in January 1964,
and featuring in Some Young People, for
Nippon Television Broadcasting.
In 1964, Ono shows her work at solo
events at Naiqua Gallery, Tokyo, including
Fly in April, where participants are instruct-
ed to ‘fly’, and Morning Piece in May, where
Ono sells ‘future mornings’, their dates writ-
ten on pieces of paper attached to shards of
glass. She performs Morning Piece on the
roof of her apartment and in a park.
Event, to me, is not an
assimilation of all the other
arts as Happening seems to be,
but an extrication from the
various sensory perceptions.
It is not “a get togetherness”
as most happenings are, but a
dealing with oneself. Also, it
has no script as happenings do,
though it has something that
starts it moving – the closest
word for it may be a “wish”
or “hope”.13
In July, she self-publishes Grapefruit, her
foundational book of instructions. It includes
instructions relating to works shown at AG
Gallery and outside her 1962 Sogetsu con-
cert, scores for events performed at Naiqua
Gallery, and pieces written during her time
at Sarah Lawrence.
ideas came to me like I was tuning
into some radio from the sky.
So I was always frustrated that
I couldn’t realise most of my
ideas. But by instructionalising
my artwork I was, in effect,
delegating the final outcome of
it to others ... The instructions
became more and more conceptual as
well. In the conceptual world, you
did not have to think about how an
idea could be realised physically.
I could be totally daring.14
A few weeks later, Ono debuts one of her most
important performance works, Cut Piece, at
Contemporary American Avant-Garde Music
Concert: Insound and Instructure, Yamaichi
Hall, Kyoto, 20 July 1964. Ono sits silently
onstage while the audience cuts away pieces
of her clothing.
It was a form of giving, giving
and taking. It was a kind of
criticism against artists, who
are always giving what they want
to give. I wanted people to take
whatever they wanted to, so it
was very important to say you
can cut wherever you want to.15
During this event, Ono performs Bag Piece,
in which the performer enters a black bag
onstage. Ono has one final concert in Japan
before moving back to New York: Yoko Ono
Farewell Concert: Strip Tease Show, Sogetsu,
11 August 1964. Works include Bag Piece, Cut
Piece, and Strip Tease for Three, in which
three empty chairs are placed on stage.
1965–7
Ono has two major solo performances in
New York in 1965, New Works of Yoko Ono at
C arnegie Recit al Hall, 2 1 March, and
Perpetual Flux Fest Presents Yoko Ono at
Cinematheque, 27 June. 2 September, she
participates in the 3rd Annual New York Avant
Garde Festival, organised by cellist and
artist Charlotte Moorman, returning in sub-
sequent years. Throughout September, Ono
performs Morning Piece several times on
her apartment’s roof.
Ono’s involvement with Fluxus grows, per-
forming in Fluxorchestra at Carnegie Recital
Hall, 25 September 1965. In 1966, Maciunas
invites Ono to use a high-speed scientific
film camera. FILM NO. 1 (‘MATCH’) / Fluxfilm
No. 14 and EYEBLINK / Fluxfilm No. 15 depict
the slow-motion lighting of a match and blink
of an eye, respectively. Early that year,
Ono also films the naked bottoms of people
associated with Fluxus for FILM NO. 4
(‘BOTTOMS’) / Fluxfilm No. 16. The Fluxfilms
anthology is screened in Europe, including
Cologne, Wuppertal, and Venice.
Ono performs in Avant Garde in Japan,
Davison Art Center Gallery, Wesleyan Uni-
versity, 13 January 1966; she writes ‘To The
Wesleyan People’ shortly after. In March, The
Stone is staged at Judson Gallery, New York,
a collaborative environmental performance
by Ono, Cox, Jon Hendricks, Michael Mason
and Jeff Perkins. As part of the event, visitors
are invited to perform Bag Piece. Ono and
Cox stage The Stone again at The Paradox,
a restaurant in the East Village, July – August.
Moorman performs Cut Piece during a concert
with artist Nam June Paik, 25 July, hosted by
Galerie Aachen, West Germany. She regularly
performs this work until her death in 1991.
In September 1966, Ono takes part in
the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in
London, which brings together an interna-
tional group of artists. Led by artist Gustav
Metzger, other organisers include Mario
Amaya, editor of Art and Artists, a magazine
regularly featuring Ono’s work. Ono gives a
talk during the symposium, and is the only
woman with a solo event (Two Evenings with
Yoko Ono, Africa Centre, 28–29 September).
Ono remains in London, eventually divorcing
Cox. In November, she has a solo exhibition,
Unfinished Paintings & Objects by Yoko Ono,
at Indica Gallery, London, displaying the new
conceptual object-based direction of her
practice. Works include Painting to Hammer
a Nail, which visitors are invited to hammer
a nail into; White Chess Set, an entirely white
chess set visitors can play; and SKY TV,
a television showing a live feed of the sky.
At a preview of her exhibition, Ono meets
John Lennon.
at Indica Gallery, 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 for him to hammer an
imaginary nail in. That was John
Lennon. I thought, so I met a guy
who plays the same game I played.16
Ono stages a series of performances, Music
of the Mind, at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre,
London, 17 November 1966; The Bluecoat
Society of Arts, Liverpool, 26 September
1967, where a segment is filmed for Granada
TV; and The Saville Theatre, London, 8 Dec-
ember 1967. Between 1966–7, she creates a
feature-length version of FILM NO. 4, depict-
ing 200 bottoms as a ‘petition for peace’.17
It is banned by the British Board of Film
Censors. Ono protests by sending flowers to
the Board’s offices and handing out flowers
264 265 to passers-by.
In 50 years or so, which is like
10 centuries from now, people
will look at the film of the
60’s ... they would come to the
No. 4 film and see a sudden swarm
of exposed bottoms, that these
bottoms, in fact belonged to
people who represented the London
scene. And I hope that they would
see that the 60’s was not only
the age of achievements, but of
laughter. This film, in fact, is
like an aimless petition signed
by people with their anuses. Next
time we wish to make an appeal,
we should send this film as the
signature list.18
3 August 1967, Ono wraps a lion statue in
Trafalgar Square with tarpaulin and films the
event. Ono’s solo exhibition, Half-A-Wind
Show, opens at Lisson Gallery, London, in
October. Works include Half-A-Room, an in-
stallation of household objects cut in half
and painted white; related work Air Bottles,
a collaboration between Ono and Lennon of
glass bottles filled with conceptual objects,
some labelled as if containing the other
halves of the Half-A-Room objects; and The
Blue Room Event, instructions written on
walls, ceiling, and floor, debuted in her New
York apartment in 1966.
I think of this show as an elephant’s
tail. Life is only half a game.
Molecules are always at the verge
of half disappearing and half
emerging. Somebody said I should
also put half-a-person in the
show. But we are halves already.19
1968–74
29 February 1968, Ono performs with jazz
musician Ornette Coleman at the Royal
Albert Hall, London. In May, Lennon invites
Ono to his home in Surrey where they record
the first of many musical collaborations.
Their experimental and controversial album,
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, is re-
leased in November.
At home, he was making little
cassette tapes of crazy music
and feeling like a lonely artist
because he was being told by
people around him, “That is not
good; it’s a bit too crazy.”
When he met me he asked, “Is this
all right?” and he brought out
these cassettes. I’d say, “Are
you kidding? This is beautiful.”
Not because I was intentionally
flattering him, but it was really
hitting my soul.0
US involvement in the Vietnam War (1955–
75) peaks in 1969 with over 500, 000 troops.
The US is polarised by the war, with the
anti-Vietnam War movement growing in tan-
dem with student activism, the civil rights
movement, and second wave feminism.
Ono and Lennon make their first public
appearance together with Acorn Event,
15 June 1968, planting two acorns outside
Coventry Cathedral as an act of peace,
beginning years of activism for the couple.
20 March 1969, Ono and Lennon are married.
For their honeymoon, they stage Bed-In for
Peace, an anti-war event in their hotel room
at the Amsterdam Hilton, 25 – 31 March. Bed-
In is staged again in Montreal at the Queen
Elizabeth Hotel, 26 May – 2 June, where they
write and record ‘Give Peace a Chance’. They
invite press and high-profile guests, gaining
widespread media attention.
Bed-In was theatre. It was a
statement on a very theatrical
level ... I think what we did had
an effect. For instance, the song,
‘Give Peace a Chance’ ... opened
possibilities to change the world
through songs.21
13 September 1969, Plastic Ono Band, a col-
laboration between Ono and Lennon with
a rotating line-up, this time including Eric
Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Alan White, play
their first live performance at Toronto Rock
and Roll Revival festival as part of their
campaign for peace. A recording of the per-
formance is released as Live Peace in Toronto
1969, Plastic Ono Band’s first album. 15
December 1969, an expanded Plastic Ono
Supergroup play a benefit concert for UNICEF,
Peace for Christmas, Lyceum Ballroom,
London. During the show, Ono and Lennon
launch their campaign WAR IS OVER! IF YOU
WANT IT, placing the phrase on posters and
billboards across the world.
I like to fight the establishment
by using methods that are so far
removed from establishment-type
thinking that the establishment
doesn’t know how to fight back.22
After years of rising tensions, The Beatles
break up, with many of their fans and press
blaming Ono.
That was like being somebody who
is in prison without having done
anything wrong ... I finally came to
the conclusion to use that big
energy of hatred that was coming
to me and turn it around into love.23
Ono produces the bulk of her films during
this period, many in collaboration with Lennon.
They are screened in venues across New
York and London, and at Cannes Film Festival
in 1971 where Apotheosis 1969, depicting the
ascent of a hot air balloon, and FLY 1970–1
are shown. The music for FLY, which sound-
tracks the journey of a fly over a woman’s
naked body, becomes part of her studio album
of the same name, released 1971.
It was made in our bedroom in the
Regency Hotel in New York on Xmas
1970 on a Nagra operated by John.
I was thinking that I must make
a soundtrack for my film FLY which
was just near completion. Then
John suggested maybe we should
knock it off before the 10 o’clock
news that night. It was that casual.
We did it in one take, as most of
my things are done.24
Between 1968–73, Ono’s musical output is
prolific, releasing music as a solo artist and
collaboratively with Lennon, including as
Plastic Ono Band, and providing vocals on
The Beatles (White Album) 1968. While Ono’s
music is rooted in the avant-garde, most
evidently in her collaborations with Lennon
in the late 1960s, she also spans popular
genres. Critics have compared her music to
styles ranging from funk and krautrock to
glam and pop. Other releases during this
period include Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band
1970, Approximately Infinite Universe 1973
and Feeling the Space 1973. Plastic Ono
Band’s album, Some Time in New York City
1972, includes feminist anthem, ‘Sisters,
O Sisters’, a theme which remains central to
Ono’s practice.
Sisters, O sisters
Let’s give up no more
It’s never too late
To build a new world25
Ono and Lennon straddle the worlds of pop
culture and the avant-garde, exemplified
by appearances on popular television. They
perform Bag Piece on The Eamonn Andrews
Show (ITV, 3 April 1969), Ono crochets with
a sanitary pad over her eyes on Top of the
Pops (BBC1, 12 and 19 February 1970); Ono,
Lennon, and filmmaker Jonas Mekas perform
Ono’s works such a s Fly Pie ce for a
programme titled Free Time (WNET TV, 14
October 1971); and Ono performs Touch Piece
and Mend Piece while she and Lennon are
guest hosts on The Mike Douglas Show (CBS,
14 – 18 February 1972).
we crossed over into each other’s
fields, like people do from country
music to pop. We did it from
avant-garde left field to rock
’n’ roll left field. We tried to
find a ground that was interesting
to both of us. And we both got
excited and stimulated by each
other’s experiences.26
An expanded edition of Grapefruit is released
in 1970. In 1971, Ono and Lennon move to
New York. Ono’s exhibition, This Is Not Here,
opens in October at the Everson Museum of
Art, Syracuse, involving Water Event, where
266 267 over 100 participants, including John Cage,
Ornette Coleman, John Dunbar, Richard
Hamilton, George Harrison, Dennis Hopper,
Alison Knowles, Gordon Matta-Clark, and
Andy Warhol, contribute containers which
Ono fills with conceptual water. Later that
year, Museum of Modern [F]art, Ono’s unoffi-
cial conceptual exhibition, is advertised in
the Village Voice in December and docu-
mented in a film The Museum of Modern
Art Show 1971.
In 1972, Ono’s work, including Painting to
Hammer a Nail and White Chess Set, is in-
cluded in documenta 5, Kassel. 1 April 1973,
in response to personal immigration issues,
Ono and Lennon declare the formation of a
conceptual country, Nutopia, which anyone
can become a citizen of. By October 1973,
Ono and Lennon have separated.
I really needed some space because
I was used to being an artist and
free and all that, and when I got
together with John, because we’re
always in the public eye, I lost
the freedom.27
In 1974, Ono tours Japan, starting at One
Step Festival, Kōriyama, the country’s first
major rock festival. At the 11th Annual New
York Avant Garde Festival: At Shea Stadium,
she presents 46 Reflections – From Dawn
to Knight, installing mirrored crosses in the
stadium’s upper tier.
1975–99
Ono and Lennon reunite, January 1975. Their
son, Sean Ono Lennon, is born 9 October.
They take a hiatus from work in the following
five years; Lennon cares for their son while
Ono handles their business affairs. In August
1980, Ono and Lennon return to the studio to
record their first album together since 1972.
Double Fantasy is released in November. Less
than a month later, 8 December 1980, John
Lennon is assassinated.
it was as if the car we had been
driving together was still going
full speed. The wheels are still
turning, and instead of trying
to brake, I have to let them go
on spinning for a while.28
Double Fantasy wins the 1981 Grammy Award
for Album of the Year. Ono continues releasing
music, with albums Season of Glass 1981 and
It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) 1982. In 1984,
she releases Milk and Honey, a collaborative
album with Lennon largely recorded during
sessions for Double Fantasy. Ono’s third solo
album of the decade, Starpeace 1985, is fol-
lowed by an international tour in 1986.
that was the reason I survived,
I think – it was the music that
made me survive.29
1985 marks the beginning of the end of the
Cold War; Soviet and US leaders, Mikhail
Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, meet for the
first time. Disarmament treaties are signed
over subsequent years. The Berlin Wall falls,
9 November 1989, followed shortly by the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.
 Ono is involved in anti-nuclear activism,
attending an international forum in Moscow
in 1987. During this period, Ono begins work-
ing in bronze, making new versions of works
from the 1960s. These are shown at Yoko
Ono: Objects, Films, at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, New York, 1989. That year,
Yoko Ono: The Bronze Age, tours the US
and Paris.
I had an absolute fear of bronze.
But why? Then the thought of the
sixties flashed in my mind ... We
were breathless from the pride and
joy of being alive. I remembered
carrying a glass key to open
the sky. I thought I had moved
forward right into the eighties
and further. But part of me was
still holding onto the sixties
sky. The eighties is an age of
commodity and solidity. We don’t
hug strangers on the street, and
we are also not breathless. When
the two big boys shake hands at
the summit, maybe it’s better that
they exchange bronze keys rather
than glass ones. In my mind,
bronze started to have a warm
shimmer instead of the dead weight
I had associated it with.30
The Whitney exhibition signals a renewed
interest in Ono’s practice; aided by curator
and archivist Jon Hendricks, her work is shown
extensively across the world. Ono embarks
on a wealth of new artworks, including Franklin
Summer, an ongoing series of drawings
started in 1994, and Wish Tree, first shown in
1996 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, California.
As a child in Japan, I used to go
to a temple and write out a wish
on a piece of thin paper and tie
it in a knot around the branch of
a tree. Trees in temple courtyards
were always filled with people’s
wish knots, which looked like white
flowers blossoming from afar.31
ONOBOX, a six-disc boxset of music span-
ning Ono’s career, comes out in 1992. It
includes the first release of ‘Yes, I’m a Witch’,
a song written during the 1970s:
Yes, I’m a witch, I’m a bitch
I don’t care what you say
My voice is real, my voice
speaks truth
I don’t fit in your ways32
Ono’s back catalogue, having received mixed
reviews on its initial release, is celebrated by
a new generation of musicians and fans.
Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano 1961, perfor-
med by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s
five-year-old daughter, Coco Gordon Moore,
is included on Sonic Youth’s experimental
album SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century 1999.
Ono continues making new music, including
studio album Rising 1995. A survey exhibi-
tion, Yoko Ono: Have you seen the horizon
lately?, opens at Museum of Modern Art Oxford
in 1997, touring Europe and Israel.
2000–23
Ono’s largest exhibition to date, Yes Yoko
Ono, opens in 2000 at the Japan Society,
New York, and tours twelve venues across
North America and East Asia. Ono has had
over thirty major solo exhibitions across
the globe since.
I don’t wish to look back. When
they were going to do a retro-
spective show of mine, I asked
“Why? Isn’t that what you do
when the artist is dead or
something?” ... So they decided not
to call it a retrospective. But
the Japan Society show is, in
reality, a retrospective show.33
Ono establishes the LennonOno Grant for
Peace in 2002. In 2003, her work is shown in
Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennale,
including Wish Tree, Declaration of Nutopia,
signed by Ono and Lennon in 1973, and
Imagine Map Piece, where viewers are invit-
ed to stamp ‘IMAGINE PEACE’ on largescale
maps. 15 September, Ono performs Cut
Piece for the first time since the 1960s at the
Théâtre le Ranelagh, Paris, in conjunction
with the exhibition Yoko Ono: Women’s Room
at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.
Ono creates My Mummy Was Beautiful for
the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, with images of
a woman’s ‘breast and vagina’ (as noted by
Ono to reference the first things a child sees
after birth), distributed throughout the city,
and an invitation for visitors to share messages
about their mothers at Tate Liverpool. In 2007,
Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER opens on the
Isle of Viðey, Iceland. The public artwork,
projecting a column of light, is dedicated
to John Lennon and unveiled on his birthday,
9 October.
In 2009 Ono is awarded the Golden Lion
for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd Venice
Biennale, and establishes her own award, the
Courage Award for the Arts. That same year,
Ono releases Between My Head and the Sky,
her first studio album as Plastic Ono Band
since 1973, to widespread critical acclaim. Her
son, Sean Ono Lennon, produces the album
and is band leader. In 2011, Ono is awarded
the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize, recognising art-
ist’s contributions to peace. Ono is increas-
ingly present online, sharing her message of
world peace through social media.
268 269 The computer is my favourite
invention. I feel lucky to be part
of the global village.34
In 2012 Ono and her son, Sean, form the
group Artists Against Fracking, successfully
campaigning to ban fracking in New York
state. In June, her exhibition, Yoko Ono:
To the Light, opens at Serpentine Gallery,
London. Ono’s next studio album is released
in September, Yokokimthurston, a collabo-
ration with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore.
The following year, Ono curates Meltdown
festival at Southbank Centre, London. The
line-up includes Plastic Ono Band, Iggy Pop,
Patti Smith, and a performance of Ono’s
Cut Piece by musician Peaches. ARISING,
a cumulative work of women’s written testa-
ments of harm, is shown at the 55th Venice
Biennale. Yoko Ono: Half-A-Wind Show –
A Retrospective, organised on the occasion
of Ono’s eightieth birthday, tours four major
venues in Europe. In 2014, Plastic Ono Band
plays Glastonbury Festival.
Let me be free. Let me be me!
Don’t make me old, with your
thinking and words about how
I should be ... I am covering my
ears not to listen to you guys!
Because dancing in the middle
of an ageism society is a
lonely trip.35
In 2015, Ono has her first official exhibition
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971,
after her unofficial Museum of Modern [F]art
exhibition in 1971. That same year, Yoko Ono:
From My Window opens at the Museum
of Contemporary Art Tokyo. In 2016, Ono’s
first retrospective in France, Yoko Ono:
Lumière de L’aube, takes place at Musée d’Art
Contemporain de Lyon. Her first permanent
public artwork in America, SKYLANDING, is
unveiled in Jackson Park, Chicago. Ono’s
album Warzone is released in 2018, fifty
years after her first album with Lennon.
In 2019, Ono opens the Manchester Inter-
national Festival with Yoko Ono’s Bells for
Peace, with thousands gathering to create
an orchestra of bells. The following year,
Yoko Ono: The Learning Garden of Freedom,
takes place at Serralves, Porto.
Ono carries out multiple public cam-
paigns, including DREAM TOGETHER 2020,
with banners displayed on the façade of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; eco-
logically minded YOKO ONO: I LOVE YOU
EARTH 2021, with billboards across the UK
for the Serpentine’s Back to Earth pro-
gramme; and humanitarian project IMAGINE
PEACE 2022, presented by CIRCA and the
Serpentine on screens worldwide. In 2022
Yoko Ono: This Room Moves at the Same
Speed as the Clouds, opens at Kunsthaus
Zürich. The Yoko Ono Lennon Centre,
providing space for performance and teach-
ing, is unveiled at the University of Liverpool.
Ono continues donating to charitable
causes, building on years of support since
setting up the Spirit Foundations with John
Lennon in 1978.
18 February 2023, Sean Ono Lennon cre-
ates a virtual ‘wish tree’ to mark Ono’s nine-
tieth birthday, encouraging people to make
a wish or plant a tree in her honour. In
December, YOKO ONO – PEACE is POWER
opens at the Nobel Peace Center, their first
exhibition dedicated to an artist’s work. Ono
continues living and working in New York.

We are not waiting for any moment,

we are just living this moment as
fully as we can.36

270 271

For The Wesleyan People 1966. Insert

overleaf

from the exhibition catalogue for The Stone,

New York 1966. Offset on paper, 4 sheets
272 273
274 275
Yoko Ono
The following lyrics have been chosen
to represent Yoko Ono’s engagement with
feminist ideas, an important and prominent
strand that runs through her practice.

Lyrics ‘Sisters, O Sisters’ from the album

Some Time in New York City, 1972
Plastic Ono Band

We lost our green land Freedom, O Freedom

We lost our clean air That’s what we fight for
We lost our true wisdom And yes my dear sisters
And we live in despair We must learn to fight

Sisters, O Sisters Freedom, O Freedom

Let’s stand up right now That’s what we ask for
It’s never too late That’s what we live for now
To start from the start
Sisters, O Sisters
Wisdom, O Wisdom Let’s give up no more
That’s what we ask for It’s never too late
And yes, my dear sisters To build a new world
We must learn to ask
276 277 New world, O New world
Wisdom, O Wisdom That’s what we live for
That’s what we ask for And yes, my dear sisters
That’s what we live for now We must learn to live

Sisters, O Sisters New world, O New world

Let’s wake up right on That’s what we live for
It’s never too late That’s what we must learn to build
To shout from our hearts
‘What a Mess’ from the album ‘Woman Power’ from the album
Approximately Infinite Universe 1973 Feeling the Space 1973

If you keep hammering anti-abortion You’ve heard of woman nation Woman Power!
We’ll tell you no more masturbation for men Well, that's coming, baby Woman Power!
Every day you’re killing living sperms in billions What we need is the power of trust
So how do you feel about that, brother That it’s coming You may be the president now
You’ve heard of the law of You may still be a man
What a waste, what a waste selection But you must also be human
What a waste, what a waste Well, that’s how we’re gonna do So open up and join us in living
To have to talk to a phony like you it, baby
We allow men who wanna join us Woman Power!
If you keep telling us we’re more than equal But the rest can just stay by Woman Power!
We’ll tell you equal is not equal enough themselves
For centuries we’ve been taking your double ass deal In the coming age of feminine
So what do you say to that, brother Woman Power! society
Woman Power! We’ll regain our human dignity
What a drag, what a drag We’ll lay some truth and clarity
What a drag, what a drag Two thousand years of male society And bring back nature’s beauty
To have to cope with a crazy like you Laying fear and tyranny
Seeking grades and money Woman Power!
If you keep laying on money and power Clinging to values vain and phony Woman Power!
We’ll tell you meanwhile your sprinkler is out of soda
So keep off our grass till you’re in some kinda order Woman Power! Every woman has a song to sing
What do you say to that, brother Woman Power! Every woman has a story to tell
And make no mistake about it,
What a mess, what a mess Do you know that one day you brothers
What a mess, what a mess lost your way, man We women have the power to move
To have to put it up with a fuzzy like you 278 279 Do you know that some day you the mountains
have to pay, man
Have you anything to say, man, Women Power!
except Women Power!
“Make no mistake about it
I’m the president, you hear!” Teach you how to cook
“I wanna make one thing clear Teach you how to knit
I’m the president, you hear!” Teach you how to care for life,
Instead of killing
Woman Power! Make no mistake about it, sisters
Woman Power! We women have to power to change
the world
You don’t hear them singing songs
You don’t see them living life Women Power!
’Cause they've got nothing to Women Power!
say, but
“Make no mistake about it
I’m the president, you hear!”
“I wanna make one thing clear
I’m the president, you hear!”
‘Cheers to Women on Top’ 1973 ‘Rising’ from the album Rising 1995

One thousand years of male society Listen to your heart

Smog covers the land of Japan Respect your intuition
History shows how incompetent they are Make your manifestation
Time has come for all men to resign There’s no limitation
Have courage
It’s time to show women’s true nature Have rage
Let us open a new age We’re all together
With women’s soul and women’s power
With women’s soul and women’s power Follow your heart
Use your intuition
One thousand years of male society Make your manifestation
Mahjong rattles in the land of Japan There’s no confusion
History shows how powerless they are Have courage
Time has come for women on top Have rage
We’re rising
It’s time to exercise women’s gift
Let us build a new age
With women’s soul and women’s power
With women’s soul and women’s power

One thousand years of male society

Corrupt politics in the land of Japan
History shows how reckless they are
Time has come for women’s solidarity

It’s time to sing women’s mind

Let us create a new age 280 281
With women’s soul and women’s power
With women’s soul and women’s power

Cheers to women on top!

Cheers to women on top!
Cheers to women on top!
Cheers to women on top!

(translated by Reiko Tomii)

Notes
Introduction
Juliet Bingham
1 Instruction titled WISH PIECE V, in Yoko Ono, Acorn,
Chapel Hill, NC 2013, unpaginated.
2 YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat., Japan Society Gallery, New York
2000, p. 274.
3 Toshi Ichiyanagi, ‘Voice of the Most Avant-Garde: Objection
to Donald Richie’ (1962), trans. Midori Yoshimoto, in Yoko
Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971, exh. cat., The Museum
of Modern Art, New York 2015, pp.124–5.
4 PAINTINGS TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN YOUR HEAD, Yoko
Ono, 20 March 1995, New York Cit y, in Yoko Ono,
Instruction Paintings, New York 1995
5 Yoko Ono, ‘To the Wesleyan People’, 23 January 1966, re-
printed in YES YOKO ONO, pp. 288–91.
6 Yoko Ono, ‘Some Notes on the Lisson Gallery Show y.o.
October ’67 London’, in Yoko Ono Half-A-Wind Show, exh,
cat., Lisson Gallery, London 1967, reprinted in Yoko Ono:
One Woman Show, pp. 180–1
7 Yoko Ono, ‘What is the Relationship Between the World
and the Artist?’, Cannes Film Festival, May 1971, in Yoko
Ono: One Woman Show, p. 215.
8 Plastic Ono Band, Yoko Ono, ‘To My Sisters, With Love’,
1971, in ibid.
9 Yoko Ono, ‘The Feminization of Our Society’ 1971, pub-
lished in Sundance magazine 1972. Also included in the
liner notes for her third solo album Approximately Infinite
Universe 1973. Ono performed at Harvard University’s
First International Feminist Conference in 1973.
10 Kevin Concannon,‘Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”: From Text to
Performance and Back Again’. PAJ: A Journal of Perfor-
mance and Art, vol. 30, no .3, (2008), pp. 81–93.
11 Yoko Ono, Wish Piece 1996, self-published in New York
1996, reprinted in YES YOKO ONO, p. 294.
Kindred Spirits: Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi
Yasufumi Nakamori
1 Toshi Ichiyanagi, ‘Voice of the Most Avant-Garde: Objection
to Donald Richie’ (1962), trans. Midori Yoshimoto, in Yoko
Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971, exh. cat., The Museum
of Modern Art, New York 2015, pp. 120–1.
2 Donald Richie, ‘Stumbling Front Line: Yoko Ono’s Avant-
Garde Show’ (1962), trans. Midori Yoshimoto, in Yoko Ono:
One Woman Show, pp. 118–19.
3 Ichiyanagi, ‘Voice of the Most Avant-Garde: Objection to
Donald Richie’.
4 Yoko Ono, ‘Painting Constructed in Your Head’, in Instruction
Paintings, Texas 1995, p. 6.
5 Barbara Rose interview with Yoko Ono, 1990, box 11, C104,
Barbara Rose papers, 930100, Getty Research Institute.
6 Alexandra Munroe, ‘Spirit of Yes: The Art and Life of Yoko
Ono’, YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat., Japan Society Gallery, New
York 2000, p. 17.
7 In 1960, two such events are documented: on 23 March at
Memorial Hall, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, co-sponsored by
the Department of Graphic Arts and Illustration; and on 26
May at the Pi Eta Theater of Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA, sponsored by the Japan Society of Boston. At both
events, Ono also performed the ‘unfolding’ of origami.
8 ‘Chronology 1959–1962’ in YES YOKO ONO, p. 308.
9 Ibid.
10 Eric Salzman, ‘Music: Modern Stirrings; Works in Avant-
Garde Idioms Heard on Piano Program by Toshi Ichiyanagi’,
New York Times, 15 May 1971, https://www.nytimes.com/
1961/05/15/archives/music-modern-stirrings-works-in-
avantgarde-idioms-heard-on-piano.html, last accessed
21 September 2023.
11 Before the invention of the floppy disk, computerised data
was stored using punched cards – small rectangular pieces
of smooth card with series of holes in regular lines and
columns. IBM’s cards, introduced in 1928, were the most
sophisticated, capable of holding up to eighty bytes of data.
12 YES YOKO ONO, p. 308
13 For Ono, Ichiyanagi’s controlled writing style was almost
as good as typeset text, while her own was ‘too emotional’
Instruction Paintings, pp.8–9
14 The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the
United States and Japan, commonly known as the U.S.-Japan
Security Treaty in English and as the Anpo jōyaku or just
Anpo in Japanese, is a treaty that permits the presence of
U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, and commits the two
nations to defend each other if one or the other is attacked
‘in the territories under the administration of Japan’. Over
time, it has had the effect of establishing a military alliance
282
between the United States and Japan. The current treaty
took effect on June 23, 1960, and has been renewed every
ten years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_
Cooperation_and_Security_between_the_United_States_
and_Japan, last accessed 6 November 2023.
15 YES YOKO ONO, p. 26.
16 In her 1995 essay, Ono recalls that she sensed Ichiyanagi’s
detachment during his visit to her in a (psychiatric) clinic.
She volunteered to enter such facility for rest for an
unspecified amount of time after her Sogetsu Hall concert
in 1962, Instruction Paintings, pp. 7–9.
17 YES YOKO ONO, p. 309.
18 ‘Cage’s vision of life and music – his embrace of indetermi-
nacy and chance; his use of and trust in silence – was shaped
by Japanese philosophy, religion and aesthetics. And the
influence of his 1962 visit on Japanese composers was
such that it came to be referred to as “Jon Keji shokku:
John Cage Shock.”’ Zachary Woolfe John Cage Shock:
When Japan Fell for Cage and Vice Versa New York
T im e s S e p te mb e r 23 , 20 23 h t tp s://w w w. ny tim e s .
com/2023/09/23/arts/music/john-cage-japan-society.
html, last accessed 23 November 2023.
19 The programme was printed in SAC Journal, no. 27,
October 1962.
20 YES YOKO ONO, p. 309.
21 Ichiyanagi, ‘Voice of the Most Avant-Garde: Objection to
Donald Richie’.
22 Toshi Ichiyanagi, ‘4: Nani nimo zokusanainoga Ono Yoko’,
Asahi Shimbun 22 June, 2017, p. 27 .
23 Ibid.
Yoko Ono in Tokyo: From Drama to Instructions
Naoko Seki
1 See, among others, Alexandra Munroe, ‘Spirit of YES: The
Art and Life of Yoko Ono’, in YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat.,
Japan Society Gallery, New York 2000, pp. 11–37; Jon
Hendricks, ‘Yoko Ono and Fluxus’, in ibid., pp. 39–50;
Christophe Cherix, ‘Yoko Ono’s Lightning Years’, in Yoko
Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971, exh. cat., The Museum
of Modern Art, New York 2015, pp. 11–20; Thierry Raspail,
‘Yoko Ono’, in Yoko Ono: Lumière de L’aube, exh. cat.,
Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon 2016, pp. 11–14.
2 It was Ono’s uncle and her father who translated Bubnova’s
text on Russian constructivism for the magazine Shisō in
1922. Bubnova, who became active in Tokyo as a painter
and printmaker, also taught Russian literature at Waseda
University (located close to Gakushūin Girls’ High School)
until 1958, while providing book designs and illustrations
for works by Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Turgenev and Gogol.
3 For Ono’s early activities in Tokyo, see Naoko Seki, ‘Postcard:
Sharing a Piece of Time’, in Yoko Ono: From My Window, exh.
cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo 2015, pp. 215–24.
4 Yoko Ono and Nagisa Ōshima, ‘Dialogue’, Life, October
1974, pp. 112–13.
5 Setsuko Ono, Onna hitori sekai ni tobu (A woman flew to
the world alone), Tokyo, 2005, p. 36.
6 Jonathan Cott, ‘Yoko Ono and Her Sixteen-Track Voice’,
Rolling Stone, 18 March 1971, reprinted in Kerry O’Brien
and William Robin (eds.), On Minimalism: Documenting a
Musical Movement, Oakland, CA 2023. See https://www.
rollingstone.com/music/music-news/yoko-ono-and-her-
sixteen-track-voice-237782, last accessed 30 August
2023.
7 See ‘Buhō’ (Club news), Hojin-kai zasshi (Hojin Society
Journal), no. 172, 1950, p. 76. The high acclaim and exten-
sive attention given to this performance can be gleaned
from reviews, not only by Gakushūin’s drama club mem-
bers and alumni but also by drama club students at other
283
universities, archived at the Girls’ High School Library.
8 Ibid.
9 Overtones was translated into Japanese in 1930, appear-
ing in the 35th volume of Modern Drama Anthology, which
featured US plays. See Ipusen tanjō 100-nen sai kinen
shuppann kindaigeki zenshu 35-kan: Beikoku-hen (Modern
drama anthology in commemoration of the 100th anniver-
sary of Ibsen’s birth, vol. 35: US), Tokyo 1930, pp. 475–509.
This book contains portraits of the featured playwrights, as
well as a text by the translator Suzuki Zentarō that explains
the significance of this play’s expressing interiority before
Eugene O’Neill, and its success in New York. Overtones
was anthologised in Butai bunko 9-kan (Stage texts, vol. 9),
Tokyo 1957, which included five one-act plays featuring
female-only casts, along with Naoya Uchimura's anno-
tated directions.
10 Nagai Kazuko, junior to Ono by one year at the drama club
of Gakushūin Girls High School (and who went on to be
known for her study of Tales of Genji) wrote on the perfor-
mance of Gaikō 168, in which she too had appeared, in
Kazuko Nagai, ‘Ono Yoko-san no chikara’ (Power of Yoko
Ono) in Ono Yōko: Bell of Peace / Heiwa no kane, exh. cat.,
Gakushūin Women’s College, Tokyo 2011, p. 8.
11 ‘Buhō’ (Club news), Hojin-kai zasshi (Hojin Society journal),
no. 174, 1953, p. 215.
12 Masatsune Sakakibara, ‘Gaikō 168’ (Extrovert 168), Higeki
kigeki (Tragedy and comedy), March 1950, pp. 87–104.
Around this time, high school plays were published in
theatre magazines, and in January 1951, Gaikō 168 became
one of four plays anthologised in Gakkō engeki kyakuhon-
shū 1 (School drama scripts, vol.1), published by Kokudo
Shuppansha.
13 Shingo Endō, ‘Gakusei engeki ni tsuite’ (On student theaters),
Higeki kigeki (March 1951), pp. 2–3.
14 This joint presentation was reported as an activity of the
boys’ high school. Kuma (The Bear) was first translated
into Japanese in 1926 for Chehofu gikyoku zenshū jō-kan
(Compilation of Chekhov’s plays, vol.1); thereafter, a few
Japanese translations were made for an anthology of one-
act plays, among others. Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s Old
Heidelberg was first staged in Japan in 1912.
15 Seki, in ibid., p. 216.
16 Reiko Tomii, ‘Tokyo 1967–1973’, in Iwona Blazwick, ed.,
Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis,
London 2001, pp.198–221.
Total Communication Equals Peace
Andrew Wilson
1 Yoko Ono, ‘What is the Relationship Between the World
and the Artist?’ (May 1971), in This Is Not Here, exh. cat.,
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY 1971, n.p.
2 For more on Metzger’s activist art see Gustav Metzger:
History History, exh. cat., Generali Foundation, Vienna 2005.
3 Gustav Metzger, untitled statement in Art and Artists,
August 1966, p. 22.
4 According to Barry Miles, Amaya paid for Yoko Ono to
attend. See Barry Miles, In the Sixties, London 2002, p. 144.
Amaya’s planning of a ‘Auto-Destructive’ special issue of
Art and Artists for August 1966 encouraged Metzger to
plan DIAS.
5 Also on the committee providing advice to Metzger were
the cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, the German happenings
artist Wolf Vostell; Enrico Baj of the Gruppo Nucleare
in Milan; the Paris-based historian of kinetic art Frank
Popper; and the poet and Benedictine monk, Dom Sylvester
H o u é d a r d , w h o w a s b a s e d a t P r i n k n a s h A b b ey,
Gloucestershire.
6 John Dunbar, ‘Indica: Remembering 1966’, in War is Over!
(if you want it): Yoko Ono, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney 2013, p. 51.
7 Guy Brett, ‘Life Strategies: Overview and Selection, Buenos
Aires / London / Rio de Janeiro / Santiago de Chile 1960–
1980’, in Out of Actions: Between Performance and the
Object 1949–1979, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles 1998, p. 197.
8 For more on the Festival of Misfits see Heike Roms, ‘Festival
of Misfits’, in ‘The Lunatics Are On The Loose…’: European
Fluxus Festivals 1962–197 7, exh. cat., Akademie der
Künste, Berlin 2012, pp. 109–21.
9 Opposition to Ono’s work focused on the perceived lack of
destruction, but, as through the rest of her career, it was also
often motivated by the racism and sexism which she came
to address head-on in her work with John Lennon. At DIAS
it should be noted that the majority of artists were white
and male. The only women participating were Ono and the
dancer Barbara Gladstone. It is understood that Metzger
had also invited Carolee Schneemann, but that she was
unable raise the money to travel; she did however partici-
pate in and perform as part of the Dialectics of Liberation
conference at the Roundhouse in London in July 1967.
10 Yoko Ono, ‘London 66’, in ‘Is that an apple?: Yoko Ono in
London’, Art Monthly, no. 212, Dec. 1997 – Jan. 1998, p. 2.
11 Yoko Ono, ‘Talk Delivered at the Destruction in Ar t
Symposium (DIAS) in London September 1966’, in Damage
Control Ar t and De s truction Since 1950, exh. c at .,
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
DC, 2014, pp.80–1. The recordings of the DIAS symposium
days, including Ono’s talk, were made by Frederic Hunter
 with Helen and John Cassidy and are now in the Tate
Archive (TGA 201617). Much of Ono’s presentation at DIAS
recasts her ‘To the Wesleyan People (who attended the
meeting) – a footnote to my lecture of January 13th, 1966’,
self-published in The Stone, exh. cat., Judson Gallery New
York 1966 and reprinted in Yoko at Indica, exh. cat., Indica
Gallery, London 1966 and YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat., Japan
Society Gallery, New York 2000, p. 289.
12 Ono 2014, p.81. HIDE-AND-SEEK PIECE was published in
Yoko Ono, Grapefruit, Tokyo 1964, reprinted New York and
London 1970.
13 Yoko Ono, ‘The Connection’, course notes in the third Anti-
University Prospectus, London, July 1968: ‘To attempt to
connect people to their own reality by means of brain ses-
sions and ritual. An irregular course.’ A note intended for
publication in International Times, written in March 1968
describes the course in more detail and titles it ‘Yoko Ono’s
ORIENTAL PSYCHIATRY SESSION, called CONNECTION’.
These were individual sessions in which ‘Yoko Ono will
observe astronomical, numerological and other aspects
of the individual by listening to his or her problems and will
help connect them to their own reality. Also, will give Zen
instructions, some physical thing for them to do, for the next
day.’ Yoko Ono, letter to Bill Levy, c. March 1968. Private
collection, https://www.beatbooks.com/pages/books/
39796/yoko-ono/holograph-manuscript-relating-to-the-
connection-the-title-of-the-course-given-by-yoko-ono-at-
the-anti-university, last accessed 22 September 2023.
14 Alexandra Munroe, ‘Spirit of YES: The Art and Life of Yoko
Ono’, in YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat., Japan Society Gallery,
New York 2000, p. 28.
15 Yoko Ono, Strip Tease Show 1966, collected in Jon Hendricks
(ed.), ‘Anthology: Writings by Yoko Ono’, in ibid., p. 277.
16 Kristine Stiles, ‘Being Undyed: The Meeting of Mind and
Matter in Yoko Ono’s Events’, ibid., p. 158.
17 Roger Perry and Tony Elliott, ‘Yoko Ono: edited from
an interview with Roger Perry and Tony Elliott, Unit,
December 1967, pp. 26–7.
18 YES YOKO ONO, p.13.
19 Ibid.
20 The Gakushūin, or School of the Free Spirit, was an exclusive
school where Ono studied from 1939, when she entered
its kindergarten. She returned to the school in 1946, grad-
uating in 1951, and in 1952 enrolled in its associated
university. After two semesters she dropped out and moved
to New York to join her father and the rest of her family, enrol-
ling at Sarah Lawrence College to study contemporary
poetry and composition. In 1956 she dropped out of Sarah
Lawrence, eloping with the composer Toshi Ichiyanagi.
21 WHISPER PIECE was performed at a concert on 12 Sep-
tember 1966, the day after the three-day DIAS symposium
concluded, alongside works by AMM Group, Henri Chopin,
Günter Brus and Otto Muehl, Raphael Montañez Ortiz and
Al Hansen. The Spring 1961 version of WHISPER PIECE
published in Grapefruit is made up of seven instructions.
The first is ‘Whisper. Ask the wind to take it to the end of
the world.’ The last is ‘Whisper the first word that came to
you to a person next to you.’
22 DISAPPEARING PIECE was performed as part of the final
evening event for DIAS on 30 September 1966 at the
Mercury Theatre. Its presentation in London for DIAS was
related in the ‘Information’ section of the revised reprinted
publication of Yoko Ono, Grapefruit, London and New
York 1971.
23 WIND PIECE took place as part of the second ‘Evening with
Yoko Ono’ at the Africa Centre on 29 September 1966.
24 The catalogue for the Indica Gallery exhibition is titled
Yoko at Indica, whereas the invitation poster is titled
Unf inishe d Paintings & O bje c t s by Yoko O no. An
advertisement for a re-display of the exhibition in January
1967 titles the exhibition as Unfinished Paintings & Objects
from November Indica Show: see International Times,
no. 6, 16 – 29 Jan 1967, p. 13.
25 This work was originally titled Half-A-Spring Room at the
Lisson Gallery.
26 Yoko Ono, ‘Some notes on the Lisson Gallery Show’, Half-
a-Wind Show, exh. cat., Lisson Gallery, London 1967, n.p.
27 Shadow Piece 1963, as published in Grapefruit 1970. This
was included in the ‘Painting’ section 2 of the book and so
could also be understood in terms of painting.
28 Yoko Ono, ‘To the Wesleyan People (who attended the
meeting) – a footnote to my lecture of January 13th, 1966’,
(1966). Printed in YES YOKO ONO, pp. 288–91.
29 Yoko Ono, ‘Talk Delivered at the Destruction in Art
Symposium (DIAS) in London September 1966’, in Damage
Control Ar t and De s truction Since 1950, exh. c at .,
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
DC, 2014, p. 81.
30 International Times, no. 6, 16 – 29 Jan. 1967, p. 13: while this
was aimed at the London countercultural community, a
similar ad was placed in The Stage and attracted a wide
range of actors, as is clear from the film soundtrack.
31 Yoko Ono, quoted in John Neville Cohen, ‘New in Town’,
Continental Film Review, August 1967, p. 5. https://www.
jncohen.net/JaceyGroup/Yoko_Ono.html, last accessed
4 September 2023.
32 In 1969, Ono took this approach a stage further with her
now lost film Self-Portrait, which was intended to be com-
pleted by footage of an audience reacting to a screening
of a film depicting John Lennon’s penis becoming erect.
However when this was screened at the Evening with John
& Yoko at the ICA’s New Cinema Club on 10 September
1969, the infra-red film equipment failed to work. For an
account of this event, see Philip French, ‘John Lennon’s Rise
and Fall’, Observer, 5 July 2009, https://www.theguardian.
com/music/2009/jul/05/john-lennon-yoko-ono-film, last
accessed 3 September 2023.
33 Anthony Cox quoted in Ivor Turnbull, ‘The Strange Arts of
Yoko Ono’, London Look, 18 March 1967, p. 32. The article
reveals that the plan was to release the film with a premier
at the Royal Albert Hall in April. In the event this did not
happen because of the refusal to grant the film certifica-
tion for general release, and the premier was subsequently
delayed until August.
34 Yoko Ono, ‘On Film No. 4 (in taking the bottoms of 365
saints of our time)’, Yoko Ono, Film No. 4, self-published
programme, London 1967, n.p. This was reprinted (oppo-
site an ad for the premiere which was a benefit for the ICA)
as ‘I Wonder Why by Yoko Ono’, ICA Bulletin, Aug. – Sept.
1967, n.p.; and also as ‘Yoko Ononism & her hairy arse-
holes’, International Times, no.17, 28 July – 13 Aug. 1967,
n.p. It is reprinted in YES YOKO ONO, p. 297. The film was
premiered at the Jacey Tatler Cinema on Charing Cross
Road on 8 August, with a preview screening on 3 August
1967 at the Hammer Theatre on Wardour Street.
35 Ibid.
36 Yoko Ono, Thirteen Film Scores by Yoko Ono, self-published,
London 1968.
37 The exhibition was also supported by John Lennon, though
this was not announced.
38 Kevin Concannon’s retrieval and analysis of this exhibition
is crucial. See Kevin Concannon, ‘Lost in the Archive: Yoko
Ono and John Lennon’s Four Thoughts’, Review of Japanese
Culture and Society, vol. 28, 2016, pp. 261–74.
39 John Hoyland, ‘An Open Letter to John Lennon’, Black Dwarf,
vol. 13, no. 7, 27 Oct. 1968.
40 John Lennon, ‘A very open Letter to John Hoyland from John
Lennon’, Black Dwarf, vol. 13, no. 9, 10 Jan. 1969.
41 Yoko Ono quoted in partial transcript of an interview with
Maurice Hindle, 2 December 1968, https://www.johnlen-
non.com/news/revolution-build-around-it-you-better-free-
your-mind-instead, last accessed 5 August 2023. After a
week, the cathedral organisers – unhappy about the per-
ceived sculptural value of the work and also that both Ono
and Lennon were still married to other people – moved the
work to the unconsecrated cathedral gardens and refused
to allow a booklet Ono and Lennon had printed to be dis-
tributed. Lennon subsequently wrote to Canon Stephen
Verney on 28 June 1968 to dispute the decision but soon
afterwards Lennon and Ono removed the work. On 14
October 2005 Ono dedicated two Japanese Oak trees in
St Michael’s Avenue as part of the Coventry Peace Trail.
42 Ivor Davies, contribution to ‘Is that an apple?: Yoko Ono in
London’, Art Monthly, no. 212, Dec. 1997 – Jan. 1998, p. 2.
Close attention to the production of publicity was also
a concern for Gustav Metzger as can be seen from the
sequence of manifestos of Auto-Destructive Art from
1959, and especially for DIAS itself, for which he produced
a large number of press releases and press events, includ-
ing those for Yoko Ono.
43 ‘What’s Happening’, International Times, no. 14, 2 June
1967, p. 15: ‘Sunday 4th June: Be-in with Yoko Ono on a kite
flying hill in Hampstead Heath / How to keep the moon in
the sky during the day / How to make the trees laugh / How
to roll and slide / How to count hands / How to colour the
clouds / How to become a giant / How to find and imagi-
nary snail / How to get out of the park / How to / (British
Museum if it rains).’
44 Fountain Piece appeared in Art and Artists, vol. 1, no. 7, Oct.
1966, p. 44; Mouthpiece in Art and Artists, vol. 1, no. 8, Nov.
1966, p. 39; Do It Yourself Dance Piece (Swim in Your Sleep)
in Art and Artists, vol. 1, no. 9, Dec. 1966, p. 73. The previous
year, two advertisement pieces for Ono’s conceptual IsReal
Gallery were published in the New York Arts Calendar 2:
Circle Event 1964 in no. 6, March 1965, p. 64, and Hole Event
284 285 1964 in no.7, April-May 1965, p.74. See Kevin Concannon,
‘Nothing IsReal: Yoko Ono’s Advertising Art’, in YES YOKO
ONO, pp. 177–181, 184–5, 188–9.
45 Charles Childs, ‘Penthouse Interview: John and Yoko
Lennon’, Penthouse, Oct. 1969, p. 34.
46 ‘Power to the People’ was written following an interview,
‘“Power to the People!”: John Lennon and Yoko Ono talk to
Robin Blackburn & Tariq Ali’, Red Mole, 8 – 22 March 1971,
pp. 7–9. In the interview, Ono and Lennon stood by their
nonviolent belief: as Ono declared, ‘All I’m saying is that
perhaps we can make a revolution without violence’ (p. 9).
On 11 August 1971, the couple took part in a demonstration
and march in support of the defendants in the OZ trial
which became a broader demonstration for civil rights in
Northern Ireland and Bangladesh. Lennon and Ono were
photographed pointedly carrying a copy of the current
issue of Red Mole that declared ‘For the IRA / Against
British Imperialism.’ Later that autumn Lennon wrote the
song ‘Luck of the Irish’ and, in a letter published in
International Times, no. 127, 6 April 1972, p. 4, Ono and
Lennon wrote: ‘The real cause of the problem is British
Imperialism and, as the song says: “Why the hell are the
English there anyway?”’ ‘Woman is the N****r of the World’
drew its (uncensored) title from a December 1968 inter-
view with Ono by Irma Kurtz, ‘In the Bag … Yoko Ono’, Nova,
March 1969, pp. 52–7. In the Red Mole interview two years
later, Ono exclaimed: ‘You can’t love someone unless you
are in an equal position with them… if you have a slave
around the house how can you expect to make a revolution
outside it?’ Red Mole, 8 – 22 March 1971, p. 9.
47 Ibid., p. 9.
48 Yoko Ono, ‘What is the Relationship Between the World
and the Artist?’ (May 1971), in This Is Not Here, exh. cat.,
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY 1971, n.p.
YOKO ONO: Silence the Object of Her Painful Scrutiny
David Toop
1 Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. Mark Treharne,
London 2003, p. 7.
2 Anthony Cox, ‘Instructive Auto-Destruction’, Art and
Artists, vol. 1, no. 5, August 1966, pp. 16–20.
3 ‘Kobayashi Issa’, in Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite
(eds.), The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, London
1964, p. 123.
4 Kobayashi Issa, A Taste of Issa, trans. David G. Lanoue,
New Orleans 2019, p. 306.
5 Edward M. Gomez, ‘Music of the Mind from the Voice of Raw
Soul’, in YES YOKO ONO, exh. cat., Japan Society Gallery,
New York 2000, p. 231.
6 Cox 1966, p. 19. This is in reference to Ono’s Chamber
Street Loft, and although she didn’t perform a solo concert
there, there were a number of events.
7 Ibid.
8 Jonathan Cott, ‘Yoko Ono and Her Sixteen-Track Voice’,
Rolling Stone, 18 March 1971, reprinted in Kerry O’Brien
and William Robin (eds.), On Minimalism: Documenting a
Musical Movement, Oakland, CA 2023. See https://www.
rollingstone.com/music/music-news/yoko-ono-and-her-
sixteen-track-voice-237782, last accessed 30 August
2023.
9 Ibid.
10 Gustav Metzger, ‘On Yoko Ono’, in Gustav Metzger: Writings,
ed. Mathieu Copeland, Geneva 2019, pp. 602–3.
11 Ibid., p. 603.
12 Evan Parker, personal communication, July 2023. Umeboshi
are a traditional and popular Japanese dish made from
pickled plums.
13 John Lennon quoted in Anthony Barnett, UnNatural Music:
John Lennon & Yoko Ono In Cambridge, Lewes 2016, p. 54.
14 David Toop, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and
the Dream of Freedom, New York 2016, p. 291.
A Shadow is a Memory
Visibility and Reception of Ono’s Work in Germany 1962–72
Patrizia Dander
1 Title from the limited edition, Yoko Ono, The Room Without
a Shadow, 2012, to accompany To The Light, Serpentine
Galleries, 19 June – 9 September 2012.
2 Jon Hendricks, ‘Gemälde und Zeichnungen von Yoko Ono’
(1993), in Yoko Ono: Gemälde/Paintings, 1960–1964 / 2007,
exh. cat., Kunsthalle Bremen 2007.
3 Ono considered this to be the ‘more practical’ solution, as
Hendricks relates, in ibid.
4 Ono had intended to have these instructions typewritten
in order to avoid the emotionality of her own handwriting.
Not being able to access a Japanese typewriter, she finally
opted for her husband’s meticulous handwriting. Bruce
Altshuler, ‘Instructions for a World of Stickiness: The Early
Conceptual Works of Yoko Ono’, in YES YOKO ONO, exh.
cat., Japan Society Gallery, New York 2000, p. 68.
5 See Altshuler, p. 67. The ‘social’ aspect is what distinguishes
Ono’s approach from conceptual art in the strict sense:
while the latter focuses on the suspension of materiali-
sation as a form of institutional critique, in Ono’s case the
desire for exchange with others speaks from her instruc-
tions, whether literally – as in the requested handshake in
Painting to Shake Hands (1961) – or conceptually in con-
 signing the execution of artworks to others, in ibid., p. 69.
6 Frank L auköt ter, ‘ Kur znotizen zum s tundenlangen
Ausmalen und Vorstellen, zum lebenslangen Üben des
Denkens und Handelns: Yoko Onos Anleitungen für Gemälde
(1960–64 / 2007)’, in Yoko Ono: Gemälde/Paintings, 1960–
1964 / 2007, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Bremen 2007. Many of the
(proto-) Fluxus actors had their roots in music, most prom-
inently John Cage, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman.
7 Alexandra Munroe, ‘Spirit of YES: The art and life of Yoko
Ono’, in YES YOKO ONO, p. 22.
8 Jon Hendricks, ‘Yoko Ono and Fluxus’, in ibid., p. 40.
9 Jean-Pierre Wilhelm’s importance for Fluxus has been
studied by Susanne Rennert. See Susanne Rennert, Sylvia
Martin und Erika Wilton (eds.), ‘Le hasard fait bien les cho-
ses’: Jean-Pierre Wilhelm, Informel, Fluxus und die / and
Galerie 22, Cologne 2013. I am grateful to Susanne Rennert
for the exchange and important research and literary refer-
ences in preparation of this essay.
10 For a detailed overview see FLUXUS. Eine lange Geschichte
mit vielen Knoten. Fluxus in Deutschland 1962–1994, exh.
cat., Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart 1995.
11 Jon Hendricks (ed.), Fluxus etc. / Addenda I: The Gilbert
and Lila Silverman Collection, New York 1983, p. 154. News
Policy Letter No.1, dated 15 June 1962, mentions an as yet
unspecified contribution by Yoko Ono, but Toshi Ichiyanagi
is listed as the only Japanese member of the organising
committee at that time, in ibid., p. 146.
12 Thomas Kellein, Der Traum von Fluxus. George Maciunas
– Eine Künstlerbiografie, Cologne 2007, p. 53.
13 YES YOKO ONO, p. 41.
14 Joan Rothfuss, Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of
Charlotte Moorman, Cambridge, MA 2014, p. 156.
15 Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women
Artists in New York, New York 2005, p. 98.
16 Yoko Ono, cited in Kevin Conconnan, ‘Yoko Ono’s “Cut
Piece”: From Text to Performance and Back Again’, PAJ:
A Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 30, no. 3, Sept. 2008,
pp. 81–93 (p. 89).
17 Yoko Ono, ‘Foreword’, in Rothfuss 2014, p.x.
18 Unlike her direct influence on the development of Fluxus,
Ono’s importance in conceptual art was only understood
in hindsight.
19 The Sohm archive is preserved at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
I would like to thank Ilona Lütken and Elke Allgaier for the
opportunity to conduct research there.
20 Hanns Sohm (Hg.), happening & fluxus. materialien, Ausst.-
Kat. Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln 1970 / 71.
21 Morning Piece was performed twice in 1964 but it was not
until 1965 that it was dedicated to George Maciunas. The
happening & fluxus catalogue lists this later version.
22 Tobia Bezzola and Roman Kurzmeyer (eds.), Harald
Szeemann: With by through because towards despite –
Catalogue of all Exhibitions 1957–2005, Vienna andNew
York 2007, pp. 284–303.
23 Yoko Ono cited in Conconnan 2008.
24 Although they are dated to 1961 in the documenta 5
catalogue – i.e. to the time of their conception – these are
presumably later versions, probably from the Indica
Gallery exhibition in London in 1966. This is suggested by
the material information in the documenta 5 catalogue; the
documenta loan agreements for these works also refer to
the Indica catalogue. I would like to thank Lena Kühnel
from the documenta archive for this information. The few
surviving photographs of Ono’s work at documenta 5
support the theory about these being later versions. See
Bezzola and Kurzmeyer 2007, p. 343, and Roland Nachtigäller,
Friedhelm Scharf and Karin Stengel (eds.), Wiedervorlage
d5. Eine Befragung des Archivs zur documenta 1972,
Ostfildern-Ruit 2001, p. 142.
25 At happening & fluxus, Szeemann chose Selbstdarstellung
(self-representation) as the label for the ‘solo booths’ area
of the exhibition in which the artists could decide how and
with which works they wanted to present themselves. See
Bezzola and Kurzmeyer 2007, p.286. In this case, however,
the term suggests a shortcut between performative approa-
ches and an alleged penchant for self-dramatisation.
26 Ono also featured in the Film section, with Fly 1970. See
documenta 5. Befragung der Realität. Bildwelten heute,
supplement to the exhibition catalogue, documenta
GmbH, Kassel, Gütersloh 1972, p. 39.
27 YES YOKO ONO, p. 19.
28 I wish to thank Jon Hendricks for pointing this out. Corres-
pondence with the author, 25 July, 2023.
29 I would like to thank Catherine Frèrejean, assistant curator
at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf,
for her support in researching this essay.
Yoko Ono: A Kind of Meeting Point
1 https://www.getty.edu/recordingartists/, last accessed 12
December 2023.
2 Ono first performed Cut Piece in Kyoto.
Hello? This is Yoko: A Narrative Chronology
Kira Wainstein
1 Yoko Ono, ‘Telephone Piece’, track 13 on Fly, 1971.
2 Yoko Ono, ‘Biography/Statement’, 1966, in Alexandra
Munroe with Jon Hendricks (eds.), YES YOKO ONO, exh.
cat., Japan Society, New York 2000, p. 301.
3 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009, pp. 7–8.
4 Yoko Ono, ‘Write On: Yoko Ono’, Clash Magazine, 3 Jan. 2009.
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/write-on-yoko-ono/
5 John Jones and Nicolette Jones (eds.), American Art Tapes:
286
Voices of Twentieth-Century Art, London 2021, p. 244.
6 Yoko Ono, interview with author, August 1997, quoted in
Alexandra Munroe, ‘Spirit of YES: The Art and Life of Yoko
Ono’, in YES YOKO ONO, p. 16.
7 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009,
pp. 12–13.
8 Ibid., p.16.
9 Yoko Ono, ‘Summer of 1961’, 2008, in Klaus Biesenbach
and Christophe Cherix (eds.), Yoko Ono: One Woman Show,
1960–1971, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York
2015, pp. 72–3.
10 Yoko Ono, ‘To the Wesleyan People’, 1966, in YES YOKO
ONO, p. 288.
11 American Art Tapes: Voices of Twentieth-Century Art,
2021, p. 260.
12 Ibid., p. 256.
13 Yoko Ono, ‘To the Wesleyan People’, 1966, in YES YOKO
ONO, 2000, p.289.
14 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009, p. 10.
15 Roger Perry and Tony Elliott, ‘Yoko Ono’, Unit, no. 9, Dec.
1967, p.26.
16 Yoko Ono, ‘Some Notes on the Lisson Gallery Show’, 1967,
in YES YOKO ONO, p. 292.
17 Yoko Ono, ‘Thirteen Film Scores by Yoko Ono’, 1968, in
ibid., p. 210.
18 Yoko Ono, ‘On Film No. 4’, 1967, in ibid., p. 297.
19 Yoko Ono, ‘Some Notes on the Lisson Gallery Show’, 1967,
in ibid., p. 292.
20 Barbara Graustark, ‘The Lost 1981 Yoko Ono Interview’,
Rolling Stone, 1 Oct. 1981. https://www.rollingstone.com/
music/music-features/yoko-ono-cover-story-john-lennon-
death-1234681088/, last accessed 12 December 2023.
21 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009, p. 26.
22 Yoko Ono, ‘What Is the Relationship Between the World and
the Artist?’, 1971, in YES YOKO ONO, p. 293.
23 Elvis Mitchell, ‘Yoko Ono’, Interview Magazine, 26 Nov. 2013.
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/yoko-ono-1,
last accessed 12 December 2023.
24 Yoko Ono, ‘Fly – A Double Album’, 1971, in YES YOKO ONO,
p. 282.
25 Yoko Ono, ‘Sisters, O Sisters’, track 2 on John & Yoko /
Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory, Some Time
in New York City, 1972.
26 David Sheff, Last Interview: All We Are Saying – John
Lennon & Yoko Ono, revised edn, London 2001, p. 7.
27 Ibid., p. 21.
28 Barbara Graustark, ‘The Lost 1981 Yoko Ono Interview’,
Rolling Stone, 1 Oct. 1981. https://www.rollingstone.com/
music/music-features/yoko-ono-cover-story-john-lennon-
death-1234681088/, last accessed 12 December 2023.
29 Simon Harper, ‘Yoko Ono Interview’, Clash Magazine, 11
Sep. 2009. https://www.clashmusic.com/features/yoko-
ono-interview/, last accessed 12 December 2023.
30 Yoko Ono, ‘Bronze Age’, 1988, in YES YOKO ONO, p. 294.
31 Yoko Ono, ‘All My Works Are a Form of Wishing. Keep
Wishing While You Participate.’, text written for IN FACING:
Painting-to-hammer-a-nail-in No. 4, exh., Judson Memorial
Church, New York 1990.
32 Yoko Ono, ‘Yes, I’m A Witch’, recorded 1974, disc 6 track
9 on Onobox, 1992.
33 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009, p. 29.
34 Alice Fischer, ‘This much I know: Yoko Ono’, Guardian, 20
Sep. 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/
2009/sep/20/yoko-ono-this-much-know , last accessed
12 December 2023.
287 35 Yoko Ono, ‘Don’t Stop Me’, 2014, in Isabelle Bertolotti,
Jon Hendricks and Thierry Raspail (eds.), Yoko Ono: Lumière
de L’aube, exh. cat., Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon
2016, p. 456.
36 Yoko Ono and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono – Hans Ulrich
Obrist, The Conversation Series, vol. 17, Cologne 2009, p. 67.
List of Works
WORKS BY YOKO ONO (BORN 1933)
All works by Yoko Ono are
courtesy the artist unless
otherwise stated.
Works are given in cm, height
before width.
An asterisk (*) is used to
indicate works that are only
shown at Tate.
Two asterisks (**) are used to
indicate works that are only
shown at K20.
The works here are listed
chronologically and then
alphabetically.
Japanese names use the western
format of first name, then
surname and macrons have been
retained unless otherwise
requested. The western spelling
of Yoko Ono is used throughout.
Yoko Ono’s works often exist in
a variety of formats including
instructions, performances,
events, films, sculptures,
sound and painting. Some works
were realised and performed
multiple times, sometimes in
different formats over several
years. The first date given
in this list of works refers
to when the work was first
conceptualised or created. The
second date refers to the first
time the work was realised in
this particular format, or the
date the work was photographed.
And, subsequently, the third
date refers to this particular
exhibition realisation or when
the photograph was printed.
Touch Poem #5 c.1960
Human hair, glued paper,
ink on paper
25 × 34.1
(p.105)
Part Painting or Painting
Until It Becomes Marble
‘To Richard’ 1961
Sumi ink on paper
15.9 × 284
(pp.40–1)
Painting To Be Stepped On 1961,
exhibition realisation 2024
Sumi ink on canvas, ink
on paper
77 × 72
(see p.38 below, left)
Waterdrop Painting
(Version 1) 1961, exhibition
realisation 2024
Sumi ink on canvas,
glass bottle with stopper,
cotton cord
Dimensions variable
(see p.38 top, left)
Cough Piece 1961, recorded 1963
Audio, stereo 30min, 18sec
(not illustrated)
Toilet Piece 1961,
recorded 1971
Released on the album
Fly 1971, Apple Records
Audio, mono
30sec
(not illustrated)
Paintings & Drawings by Yoko
Ono, AG Gallery, New York,
17–30 July 1961, all printed
1993 other than Painting
in Three Stanzas and Shadow
Painting, printed 2023
Photographs by George Maciunas
(1931–78)
12 photographs, gelatin
silver print
39.2 × 39.3
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
Painting to Be Stepped
On 1961
(p.38 below, left)
Painting to See In The
Dark (Version 1) 1961
(p.39 below, right)
Smoke Painting 1961
(p.38 middle, left)
Painting for the Wind 1961
(p.38 top, right)
Painting in Three
Stanzas 1961
(p.38 middle, left)
Waterdrop Painting
(Version 1) 1961
(p.38 top, left)
Painting to Let the Evening
Light Go Through 1961
(p.38 below, right)
A Plus B Painting 1961
(p.39 top, left)
Painting to See In The
Dark (Version 2) 1961
(p.39 top, right)
Shadow Painting 1961
(p.39 middle, left)
Waterdrop Painting
(Version 1 and 2) 1961
(p.39 middle, right)
Time Painting 1961
(p.39 below, left)
Instructions for Paintings 1962*
Handwritten by Toshi Ichiyanagi
(1933–2022)
22 works, ink on paper
Each 25.1 × 35.9
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, gift of the Gilbert B.
and Lila Silverman Instruction
Drawing Collection, Detroit
288
Painting for a Broken
Sewing Machine 1961 winter
(p.25)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Look through
a phone book from the...’)
1961 winter
(p.45, above)
Painting to Hammer
a Nail 1961 winter
(p.45, below)
Painting for the Buriel
1961 summer
(not illustrated)
Painting for the Wind
1961 summer
(not illustrated)
Painting In Three
Stanzas 1961 summer
(p.44, above)
Painting to Enlarge
and See 1961 summer
(not illustrated)
Painting to Let the Evening
Light Go Through 1961 summer
(not illustrated)
Painting to See the Sky
1961 summer
(p.44, below)
Painting Until It Becomes
Marble 1961 summer
(not illustrated)
Smoke Painting 1961 summer
(not illustrated)
A Plus B Painting (‘Let
somebody other than yourself
cut out...’) 1961 autumn
(not illustrated)
A Plus B Painting (‘Cut
a circle on canvas A...’)
1961 autumn
(not illustrated)
Painting to See the
Room 1961 autumn
(not illustrated)
Painting to Shake Hands
1961 autumn
(not illustrated)
Waterdrop Painting
1961 autumn
(not illustrated)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Hammer
a nail in the centre of
a piece...’) 1962 spring
(not illustrated)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Imagine
dividing the canvas into
289 twenty...’) 1962 spring
(p.47, above)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Observe three
paintings carefully...’)
1962 spring
(p.46, below)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Go on
transforming a square canvas
...’) 1962 spring
(p.47, below)
Portrait of Mary (‘Send a
canvas to a Mary ...)1962
spring
(p.46, above)
Painting to See the Sky 1962
(not illustrated)
Instructions for Paintings,
Photostats Positive
and Negative 1962 **
39 photostats positive
and negative
18.1 × 25.6 cm
Courtesy of the artist
(not illustrated)
Pieces for Orchestra to
La Monte Young 1962,
realised 1965
Transfer lettering and
graphite on 5 boards
TEAR: 8.1 × 9.1; RUB: 7.9 × 8.3;
PEEL: 8.4 × 9.6; PEEK:
8.3 × 9.2; TAKE OFF: 8 × 13.3
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(pp.96–7)
Painting to Be Constructed
In Your Head (‘Observe three
paintings carefully. Mix them
well in your head’) 1962 spring
Print on paper
Dimensions variable
(not illustrated)
Painting to Shake Hands 1961,
first realised 1962, exhibition
realisation 2024
Acrylic paint on canvas
190 × 130
(p.53)
Audience Piece to La Monte
Young 1962, photographed
24 May 1962, printed 2024
Performed by (left to right)
Yoko Ono, Kenji Kobayashi,
Nobuaki Kojima, Katzuada
Tsubouchi, Tatsumi Yoshino,
Tatsumi Hijikata, Santarō
Tanabe, two unknown performers
in Works of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu
Art Center, Tokyo
Photograph by Yasuhiro
Yoshioka (1934–2002)
Photograph, print on vinyl
(p.50, below)
Audience Piece to La Monte
Young 1962, photographed
24 May 1962, printed 2024
Performed by (from left to
right) Yoriaki Matsudaira
(2nd); Yoko Ono (4th); Kenji
Kobayashi (6th); Nobuaki Kojima
(7th); Tatsumi Yoshino (9th);
Santarō Tanabe (15th); Toshi
Ichiyanagi (20th) in Works
of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu Art
Center, Tokyo
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Photograph, print on vinyl
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation
(p.50, above)
Audience Piece to La Monte
Young 1962, photographed
24 May 1962, printed 2024
Performed by (from left to
right) Yoko Ono (2nd); Kenji
Kobayashi (4th); Nobuaki Kojima
(5th); Kazutada Tsubouchi
(6th); Tatsumi Yoshino (9th);
Santarō Tanabe (12th); Kuniharu
Akiyama (standing), Works
of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu Art
Center, Tokyo
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Photograph, print on vinyl
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation
(p.51, below)
The Pulse 1962, photographed
24 May 1962, printed 2024
Performed by (left to right)
unknown, Yoriaki Matsudaira,
Toshirō Mayuzumi, Yūji
Takahashi, Toshi Ichiyanagi,
Kenji Kobayashi and Kuniharu
Akiyama in Works of Yoko Ono,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
Photograph by Akio Nonaka
Photograph, print on vinyl
Courtesy Shinchosha
Publishing Company
(p.49)
Lighting Piece 1955,
photographed 24 May 1962,
printed 2024
Performed by Yoko Ono in
Works of Yoko Ono, Sogetsu
Art Center, Tokyo
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
3 photographs, gelatin silver
print on paper
51 × 40.8
(pp.22–3)
Birth Announcement
and Announcement for
Grapefruit 1963
Envelope with ink and stamped
ink additions, containing
5 offset sheets
Envelope: 8.3 × 20.2; sheet
Grapefruit: 36 × 25.3; sheet
No. 81: 23 × 5.9; sheet first
performed by… : 23 × 5.6; sheet
No.86: 23 × 5.6; sheet The
price of the book…: 23 × 6.8
(p.88)
Typescripts for Grapefruit
c.1963–4
Introductory material (No.
1–3); MUSIC (No. 4–55);
PAINTING (No. 56–95); EVENT
(No. 96–137); POETRY (No. 138–
143); OBJECT (No. 144–151)
151 typewritten cards, with
ink and graphite
14 × 10.2 (No. 1, 3, 4–20, 22–
74, 78, 151); 9 × 14 (No. 2);
12.6 × 8.5 (No. 21); 12 × 9
(No.75); 12.5 × 9 (No.76, 77)
(pp.90–4, not all typescripts
illustrated)
Shadow Piece 1963, first
performed 1966, exhibition
realisation 2024
Performance, instruction,
pen, spotlight
Dimensions variable
(pp.230–1)
Morning Piece 1964
Future mornings:
24 May, 1972, until sunrise
24 May, 1972, all morning
3 February, 1987,
until sunrise
3 February, 1987,
after sunrise
4 February, 1987,
until sunrise
4 February, 1987,
 all morning Piece for Nam June Paik
18 February, 1991, no.1 1964
until sunrise Ink on paper
3 March, 1991, 28 × 21.7
until sunrise The Museum of Modern Art,
3 March, 1991, New York, the Gilbert and
after sunrise Lila Silverman Fluxus
3 August, 1995, Collection Gift
until sunrise (p.102)
3 August, 1995,
all morning Strip Tease for Three 1964,
8 September, 1995, exhibition realisation 2024
all morning 3 wooden chairs
16 November, 1996, Dimensions variable
after sunrise (not illustrated)
27 December, 1999,
until sunrise Strip Tease for Three 1964,
27 December, 1999, photographed 11 August 1964,
after sunrise printed 2024
27 December, 1999, Performed in Yoko Ono Farewell
all morning Concert: Strip Tease Show,
Glass, paper, ink, glue Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
Dimensions variable Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
(p.100, above) Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
Mornings for Sale 1964 51 × 40.8
Ink on paper (p.75)
25.4 × 36
(p.100, below) Draw Circle Event 1964–5*
Selection of 5 postcard
Types of Mornings 1964 responses sent by the
Ink on paper following artists:
25.4 × 36 Ay-O (born 1931)
(not illustrated) George Brecht (1926–2008)
George Maciunas (1931–78)
June 11, 1998... 1964 Charlotte Moorman (1933–91)
Ink on paper Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019)
25.4 × 36 Print on paper, ink, pigment,
(not illustrated) mixed media
Each 8.9 × 21.7
English notice for (pp.106–7, Charlotte Moorman
Morning Piece 1964 not illustrated)
Ink on paper
29.5 × 21 Bag Piece 1964, exhibition
(p.101) realisation 2024
Performance, sewn cloth,
Japanese notice for wall hooks
Morning Piece 1964 Dimensions variable
Offset lithograph, (not illustrated)
ink stamp on paper
29.5 × 21 Bag Piece 1964, photographed
(not illustrated) 11 August 1964, printed 2024
Performed by Yoko Ono and
Grapefruit 1964 Anthony Cox in Yoko Ono
Artist’s book (first Farewell Concert: Strip Tease
edition, Tokyo) Show, Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
Publisher Yoko Ono, under the Photographs by Yasuhiro
name Wunternaum Press, Tokyo Yoshioka
Edition 500 3 photographs, gelatin silver
Offset printed print on paper
13.7 × 13.7 × 3 40.8 × 30.8
Tate Archive, Nimai (pp.64–5)
Chatterji Collection
(not illustrated) Cut Piece 1964, photographed
11 August 1964, printed 2024
Grapefruit 1964 Performed by Yoko Ono in
Artist’s book (first Yoko Ono Farewell Concert:
edition, Tokyo) Strip Tease Show, Sogetsu
Publisher Yoko Ono, under the Art Center, Tokyo
name Wunternaum Press, Tokyo Photographs by Minoru Hirata
Edition 500 (1930–2018)
13.7 × 13.7 × 3 2 photographs, gelatin
Courtesy Jon Hendricks silver print on paper
(p.89) 40.8 × 30.8
(pp.58–9)
Cut Piece 1964, filmed
21 March 1965
Performed by Yoko Ono, in New
Works of Yoko Ono, Carnegie
Recital Hall, New York
Film by David and Albert
Maysles
Film, 16mm, black and white,
and sound (stereo)
8min, 27sec
(pp.62–3)
Cut Piece 1964, photographed
21 March 1965, printed 2024
Performed by Yoko Ono in New
Works of Yoko Ono, Carnegie
Recital Hall, New York
Photographs by Minoru Niizuma
3 photographs, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
(pp.60–1, one photograph
not illustrated)
Bag Piece 1964, photographed
27 June 1965, printed 2015
Performed in Perpetual
Fluxfest, Cinematheque,
New York
Photographs by George Maciunas
Six photographs, gelatin
silver print on paper
Each 19 × 19
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(p.67)
Morning Piece 1964,
photographed September
1965, printed 2024
Performed by Yoko Ono on
the roof of 87 Christopher
Street, New York
Photograph by Peter Moore
(1932–93)
Photograph, print on vinyl
Courtesy Peter Moore
Photography Archive, Charles
Deering McCormick Library
of Special Collections,
Northwestern University
Libraries
(p.99)
Soundtape of the Snow
Falling at Dawn 1963,
first realised 1965
Audio tape, acetate reel,
ink on cardboard box
1.9 × 18.4 × 18.4
(p.104)
Announcement for Morning Piece
(1964) to George Maciunas 1965
Offset lithograph, ink stamp
on paper
21.6 × 8
(p.98)
Ono’s Sales List 1965
Offset lithograph, ink
35.6 × 21.7
(p.103)
Eternal Time 1965
Clock, stethoscope, acrylic
box, acrylic pedestal
Engraved: Happy Birthday
Julius, love Sylvia / ETERNAL
TIME By Yoko Ono 3/15/65
Overall: 101.6 × 20.3 × 22.9;
clock: 4.8 × 11 × 12.7; bonnet:
7.6 × 15.2 × 16.5; stethoscope:
62.2 × 11.4 × 2.5
(p.143)
EYEBLINK / Fluxfilm No. 15 1966
Directed by Yoko Ono
Included in the Fluxfilm
Anthology compiled by
George Maciunas, 1966
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
black and white,
2min, 40sec
(p.109, frontispiece)
FILM NO. 1 (‘MATCH’) /
Fluxfilm No. 14 1966
Directed by Yoko Ono
Based on Lighting Piece 1955
Included in the Fluxfilm
Anthology compiled by
George Maciunas, 1966
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
black and white
5min, 4sec
(p.21)
The Blue Room Event 1966,
exhibition realisation 2024
2 selected texts, vinyl on wall
290 291 (not illustrated)
AD for Bagwear 1966
From the exhibition catalogue
for The Stone, Judson Gallery,
New York, March 1966
Offset on paper, 3 sheets
Each 28 × 21.6
(pp.76–7)
Voice Piece for Soprano 1961,
photographed September 1966,
printed 2024
Performed by Yoko Ono in Two
Evenings with Yoko Ono, Africa
Centre, London, 28–29 September
1966, presented by Destruction
in Art Symposium
Photograph by Nigel Hartnup
(born 1944)
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
(p.127)
Shadow Piece 1963, first
performed 1966, photographed 13
September 1966, printed 2006–7
Performed by Yoko Ono and
Barbara Steveni and others at
the Free School Playground,
London, as part of the
Destruction in Art Symposium Pointedness 1964,
Photographs by Tom Picton first realised 1966
2 contact sheets Crystal sphere, acrylic pedestal
50.6 × 40.5 Engraved: POINTEDNESS YOKO ONO
Tate Archive 1964 / THIS SPHERE WILL BE
(pp.130–131, 215) A SHARP POINT WHEN IT GETS TO
THE FAR CORNERS OF THE ROOM
Statement by Yoko Ono at IN YOUR MIND
Destruction in Art Symposium, 143 × 26.6 × 25.4
Africa Centre, London, (p.144)
11 September 1966
Audio, stereo
12min, 42 sec Forget It 1966
Tate Archive Stainless steel needle,
(not illustrated) acrylic pedestal
Engraved: FORGET IT YOKO ONO
1966
Painting to Hammer a 126.5 × 30.5 × 30.5
Nail 1961, first realised 1966, (p.145)
exhibition realisation 2024
Painted wood panel, nails, Apple 1966
chain and painted hammer Apple, acrylic pedestal
80 × 130 × 11.4 with brass plaque
(p.137) Engraved: APPLE
114.3 × 17 × 17.6
Mending Piece 1966, photographed (pp.146–7)
November 1966, printed 2024
Yoko Ono preparing the SKY TV 1966, exhibition
piece for Unfinished Paintings realisation 2024
& Objects by Yoko Ono, Closed circuit video
Indica Gallery, London, 9–22 installation
November 1966 Dimensions variable
Photograph by Graham Keen (p.141)
(1936–2019)
Photograph, gelatin silver White Chess Set 1966,
print on paper exhibition realisation 2024
30.4 × 24.1 White chess sets,
Courtesy Graham Keen / TopFoto tables, chairs
(p.152) Dimensions variable
(p.149)
Mending Piece 1966, photographed
November 1966, printed 2024 Script for Strip Tease
From Unfinished Paintings Show published 1966
& Objects by Yoko Ono, 7 sheets, mimeograph on paper
Indica Gallery, London, 9–22 28 × 21.7
November 1966 (pp.68–74)
Photograph by Iain Macmillan
(1938–2006) A Box of Smile 1967
Photograph, gelatin silver Sterling silver box, mirror
print on paper Engraved: A BOX OF SMILE Y.O.
40.8 × 30.8 ’67
(p.153) 6.4 × 6.4 × 6.4
(pp.174–5)
Ceiling Painting 1966
Ink on paper, glass, metal FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7
frame, metal chain, magnifying Directed by Yoko Ono
glass, painted ladder Film, 16mm, shown as video,
Embossed label: FLY black and white, and sound (mono)
Framed paper: 64.8 × 56.4; 1hour, 19min
chain and magnifying glass: (pp.166–7)
72.3 × 7.6 × 1.9; ladder:
182.8 × 48.9 × 120.6 Lion Wrapping Event
3 August 1967*
Ceiling Painting 1966, Directed by Yoko Ono
photographed November 1966, Film, 16mm, shown as video,
printed 2024 black and white
From Unfinished Paintings 26min, 3sec
& Objects by Yoko Ono, (pp.158–9)
Indica Gallery, London,
9–22 November 1966
Photographs by Graham Keen
3 photographs, gelatin silver
print on paper
30.4 × 24.1
Courtesy Graham Keen / TopFoto
(p.150)
Wrapping Piece 1961,
photographed 26 September
1967, printed 2024*
Performed by Yoko Ono in
Yoko Ono: Music of the
Mind, Bluecoat, Liverpool
Photographs by Sheridon
Davies (born 1947)
2 photographs, gelatin
silver print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sheridon Davies
(pp.162–3)
Peek Piece 1961, photographed
26 September 1967, printed 2024*
Performed by Yoko Ono in
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,
Bluecoat, Liverpool
Photograph by Sheridon Davies
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sheridon Davies
(p.161)
Sweep Piece 1962, photographed
26 September 1967, printed 2024*
Performed by Yoko Ono in
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,
Bluecoat, Liverpool
Photograph by Sheridon Davies
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sheridon Davies
(p.164)
Half-A-Room 1967
29 domestic objects cut
in half, paint
Dimensions variable
(p.156)
Glass Hammer 1967, photographed
1967, printed 2024
Yoko Ono holding the work
during Half-A-Wind Show,
Lisson Gallery, London,
11 October – 14 November
Photograph by Clay Perry
(born 1940)
Photograph, print on vinyl
(p.157)
Toilet Thoughts Film No. 3
1968, exhibition realisation 2024
365 posters (including film
score) displayed in bar
and café toilets in London
Digital print on paper
59.4 × 42
(p.4)
AOS recorded 29 February 1968,
released 1970*
Recorded during rehearsal for
a concert at the Royal Albert
Hall with Ornette Coleman,
Charles Haden, David Izenzon,
Edward Blackwell and Yoko Ono
Released on the album Yoko
Ono / Plastic Ono Band 1970,
Apple Records
Audio, stereo
7min, 6sec
(not illustrated)
Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only
Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)
recorded 13 September 1969
Recorded during a performance
by Plastic Ono Band at
the Toronto Rock and Roll
Revival festival
Released on the album Live
Peace in Toronto 1969 1969,
Apple Records
Audio, stereo
4min, 48sec
(not illustrated)
FLY 1970–1
Directed by Yoko Ono &
John Lennon
Score and concept by Yoko Ono
Soundtrack by Yoko Ono &
John Lennon
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
colour and sound (mono)
25min
(pp.234–5)
Freedom 1970
Directed by Yoko Ono
Soundtrack by John Lennon
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
colour and sound (mono)
1min, 5sec
(pp.232–3)
Museum of Modern [F]art
1 – 15 December 1971
Artist’s book by Yoko Ono
Photographs by Iain Macmillan
3 copies exhibited
Offset on paper
30 × 30
(p.238)
The Museum of Modern Art Show
2 December 1971
Directed by Yoko Ono
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
colour and sound (mono)
6min, 43sec
(p.239)
Telephone Piece 1964,
recorded 1971
Audio taken from different
releases of the album Fly
1971, Apple Records
Audio
30sec
(not illustrated)
Franklin Summer 1994 – ongoing*
Ink on paper
56 works, landscape and
portrait orientation:
17 × 11.3; 11.3 × 17
(pp.246–7)
Wish Tree for London,
first realisation for Wish Tree
in 1996, exhibition realisation
2024
Trees, pens, paper tags
with string
Dimensions variable
(pp.8–9)
My Mommy Is Beautiful 1997,
exhibition realisation 2024*
9 inkjet prints on canvas
Each 101.6 × 101.6 × 4.4
(p.258)
Instruction Paintings
series 1999
TOUCH; IMAGINE; YES;
REMEMBER; FLY
Acrylic paint on canvas
Each 100 × 100
(p.249)
Helmets (Pieces of Sky) 2001
Military helmets, puzzle
pieces, audio, and instruction
Dimensions variable
(pp.250–1)
My Mommy Is Beautiful 2004,
exhibition realisation 2024*
15 canvases, paper, pens,
tape, table, chair, instruction
Dimension variable
(not illustrated)
A HOLE 2009
Engraved glass, metal frame
Engraved: A HOLE / GO TO THE
OTHER SIDE OF THE GLASS AND SEE
THROUGH THE HOLE.
152.4 × 74.9 × 2.2
(pp.252–3)
WHISPER 17 November 2013*
Performed by Yoko Ono at
Sydney Opera House
Video, projection, colour
and sound (stereo)
10min, 27sec
Recorded at Sydney Opera House
With thanks to the Sydney
Opera House Trust
(p.19)
Add Colour (Refugee Boat) 1960,
first realised 2016, exhibition
realisation 2024
Wooden boat, paint, brushes,
instruction
Dimensions variable
(pp.254–6)
PEACE is POWER 2017, exhibition
realisation 2024
Translated in 24 languages
Vinyl on windows
Dimensions variable
(p.12)
PEACE is POWER 2017, exhibition
realisation 2024
Vinyl on wall
Dimensions variable
(pp.10–11)
WORKS BY JOHN LENNON (1940–80)
AND YOKO ONO
Air Bottles 1967, exhibition
realisation 2024
Glass jars, digital print
on paper labels, facsimile
Dimensions variable
(p.155)
Catalogue for Acorn
Event, Coventry Cathedral,
15 June 1968*
Book
22 × 20.2
(not illustrated)
Acorn Event, Coventry
Cathedral, 15 June 1968,
printed 2024*
Photographs by Keith McMillan
(1934–2012)
4 photographs, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
(pp.176–9)
BED PEACE 1969
Film of Montreal Bed-In,
26 May – 2 June 1969
Directed by and starring
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Filmed by Nic Knowland
(born 1941)
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
colour and sound (stereo)
1hour, 10min, 55sec
(not illustrated)
WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT
Lithograph on paper
76 × 50.8
(p.180)
WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT 1969
Billboard in Shaftesbury
Avenue, London
Photograph, print on vinyl
228.5 × 333.7
Photograph by Evening Standard /
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
(p.181)
292 293
Acorn Peace 1969*
(not illustrated)
Inscribed box
3.5 × 6.4
Photographer unidentified
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
22 × 23.2
Selection of 3 responses
to Acorn Peace from:
His Majesty Tuanku Ismail
Nasiruddin Shah, Yang di
Pertuan Agong, Malaysia,
23 October 1969
Ink on paper
32.7 × 20.2
Prime Minister Golda Meir
of Israel, 6 January 1970
Ink on paper
20.7 × 16.4
Mr Fouche, State President
of the Republic of South
Africa, 22 January 1970
Ink on paper
29.6 × 20.3
WORKS BY OTHER ARTISTS
JOHN CAGE (1912–92)
Aria and Solo for Piano with
Fontana Mix 1957–8, recorded
17 October 1962, released 2012
Performed by Yoko Ono (voice),
David Tudor (piano) and John
Cage (assistant performer),
in Sogetsu Contemporary Series
18: John Cage and David Tudor,
Mido Kaikan, Osaka
Released on CD, John Cage Shock
Vol. 2 2012, EM Records & Omega
Point, under incorrect title:
26’55.988” for 2 Pianists &
a String Player
Audio, stereo
22min, 41sec
(not illustrated)
0’00” 1962, recorded 24
October 1962, released 2012
Dedicated to Yoko Ono and
Toshi Ichiyanagi
Performed by John Cage in
Sogetsu Contemporary Series
19: John Cage and David Tudor,
1969 Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo
Released on the album John
Cage Shock Vol. 3 2012, EM
Records & Omega Point
Audio, stereo
18min, 9sec
(not illustrated)
MOTOHARU JONOUCHI (1935–86)
Shelter Plan 1964
Event by Hi Red Center
Featuring Yoko Ono, Nam June
Paik, Yasunao Tone, Masao
Adachi and Tadanori Yokoo
amongst others
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
black and white
25min
Estate of Motoharu Jonouchi
(p.111)
YŌJI KURI (BORN 1928)
Aos 1964
Music and vocals by Yoko Ono;
title taken from Yoko Ono’s
AOS – to David Tudor 1961
Film, 16mm, animation, shown
as video, black and white,
and sound (stereo)
9min, 9sec
Courtesy Yōji Kuri and
Yuukouu Kurihara
(p.214)
CHIAKI NAGANO (1931–2015)
Aru wakamono-tachi
(Some Young People) 1964
Featuring Yoko Ono, Tomio Miki,
Yoshihiro Katō, Shin’ichi Iwata,
Nakamura Hiroshi, Ushio Shinohara
and Tanaka Shintarō
Nippon Television broadcast
4 October 1964
Transcribing, translating, and
subtitling by Midori Yoshimoto
Film, shown as video, black
and white, and sound (stereo)
25min, 10sec
© Nippon Television
Network Corporation
(p.98, above)
MIEKO SHIOMI (BORN 1938)
Disappearing Music for Face /
Fluxfilm No. 4 1966
Starring Yoko Ono
Produced by George Maciunas,
published by Fluxus
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
black and white
12min, 7sec
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(p.108)
ALBUM COVERS
All album covers 31.4 × 31.4
All private collection
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Unfinished Music No. 1:
Two Virgins 1968, 3 copies
Apple Records / Tetragrammaton
(p.220)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Unfinished Music No. 2:
Life with the Lions 1969
2 copies
Zapple Records
(p.221, above)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Wedding Album 1969
Apple Records
(p.221, below)
Plastic Ono Band
Live Peace in Toronto 1969 1969
Apple Records
(p.222)
Yoko Ono with Plastic Ono Band
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band 1970
Apple Records
(p.223, above)
Yoko Ono
Fly 1971, 2 copies
Apple Records
(p.223, below)
John & Yoko / Plastic Ono
Band with Elephant’s Memory
Some Time In New York City 1972
Apple Records
(p.276)
Yoko Ono
Approximately Infinite
Universe 1973
Apple Records
(p.278)
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band
& Something Different
Feeling the Space 1973
Apple Records
(p.279)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Double Fantasy 1980
Geffen Records
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono
Season of Glass 1981
Geffen Records
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono
It’s Alright
(I See Rainbows) 1982
Polydor Records
(not illustrated)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Milk and Honey 1984
Polydor Records
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono
Starpeace 1985
Polydor Records
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band
Between My Head and the
Sky 2009
Chimera Music
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band
Take Me to the Land of
Hell 2013
Chimera Music
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono
Yes, I’m a Witch Too 2016
Collaboration and remix album
Manimal Vinyl Records
(not illustrated)
Yoko Ono
Warzone 2018
Chimera Music
(not illustrated)
A curated playlist presents
selected music recorded between
1968 and 2018. Ono’s entire
musical oeuvre is expansive,
and this partial selection
focuses on tracks that connect
directly to Ono’s art practices
and activism, linking to her
concepts and politics, some
explicitly referencing her
Grapefruit instructions.
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MINORU NIIZUMA
(1930–98)
Chambers Street Loft Series,
New York c.1960–1
These photos show those who either
participated in or attended
these events, including John
Cage, Simone Forti, Toshi
Ichiyanagi, Kenji Kobayashi,
Jackson Mac Low, Charlotte
Moorman, Toshirō Mayuzumi, Isamu
Noguchi, Yoko Ono, Robert
Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and
La Monte Young amongst others
Projection, black and white,
showing 37 photographs
Dimensions variable
(pp.32–6)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY YASUHIRO
YOSHIOKA (1934–2002)
John Cage, David Tudor, Yoko
Ono and Toshirō Mayuzumi
(left to right) performing John
Cage’s Music Walk 1958, Tokyo
Bunka Kaikan, photographed 9
October 1962, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy the artist
(p.54, above)
Yoko Ono (foreground), John
Cage, Yūji Takahashi, Toshi
Ichiyanagi and unidentified
(left to right) performing
in Sogetsu Contemporary Series
17: John Cage and David Tudor,
Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, 9–10
October 1962, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation
(p.xx?)
Yoko Ono performing in
Sogetsu Contemporary Series
18: John Cage and David Tudor,
Kyoto Kaikan Second Hall,
12 October 1962, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation
(p.55)
John Cage, Yoko Ono, David
Tudor and Kenji Kobayashi
(left to right), performing
at NHK, Tokyo, October 1962,
printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation
(p.xx?)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEORGE
MACIUNAS (1931–78)
Entrance to the exhibition
Paintings & Drawings by Yoko Ono,
AG Gallery, New York, 17–30 July
1961, printed 1993
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
50.3 × 40.4 (sheet), 39.2 × 39.3
(image)
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(p.36)
Yoko Ono, Toshi Ichiyanagi,
and Jonas Mekas during
Paintings & Drawings by Yoko
Ono, AG Gallery, New York,
17–30 July 1961, printed 1993
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
50.3 × 40.4 (sheet), 39.2 × 39.3
(image)
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(p.27)
Yoko Ono with Painting to See
in the Dark (Version 1) 1961
from Paintings & Drawings by
Yoko Ono, AG Gallery, New York,
17–30 July 1961, printed 1993
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
50.3 × 40.4 (sheet), 39.2 × 39.3
(image)
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus
Collection Gift
(p.37)
Photograph conceived as
a poster for Works by Yoko
Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall,
New York, 24 November 1961
Poster by Yoko Ono
Photograph, print on vinyl
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, the Gilbert and Lila
Silverman Fluxus Collection
Gift / Scala, Florence
(p.43)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM PICTON
(1932–2000)
Destruction in Art Symposium,
Africa Centre, London, 13
September 1966, printed c.2006
Photograph, gelatin sliver
print on paper
17.5 × 25
Tate Archive
(pp.130–1)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HANNS SOHM
(1921–99)
Yoko Ono speaking at the
Destruction in Art Symposium,
Africa Centre, London, 11
September 1966, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,
Archiv Sohm, erworben mit
Lotto Mitteln 1981
(p.128)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GW YN RICHARDS
(BORN 1933)
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,
Bluecoat, Liverpool, 26
September 1967, printed 2024*
Photograph, print on vinyl
Courtesy Gwyn Richards
(p.165)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNIS HART
(1927–2020)
Yoko Ono leading a protest at
the British Board of Film Censors
Office against the banning of
FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7,
photographed 1967, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Dennis Hart / ANL / Shutterstock
(p.169)
UNIDENTIFIED PHOTOGRAPHER
Yoko Ono protesting ban on
FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7,
photographed 1967, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
40.8 × 30.8
Courtesy Daily Sketch /
Shutterstock
(p.168)
Yoko Ono performing Bag
Piece and John Lennon
performing Cold Turkey with
Plastic Ono Supergroup, Peace
for Christmas, UNICEF event,
Lyceum Ballroom, London, 15
December 1969, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
19.9 × 15.5
KEYSTONE Pictures USA /
Alamy Stock Photo
(p.182)
Yoko Ono performing Don’t Worry
Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking
294 295 For Her Hand In The Snow) with
Plastic Ono Supergroup, Peace
for Christmas, UNICEF event,
Lyceum Ballroom, London, 15
December 1969, printed 2024
Photograph, gelatin silver
print on paper
19.9 × 15.5
Keystone Press /
Alamy Stock Photo
(p.183)
EPHEMERA
Invitation to Works of
Yoko Ono, Sogetsu Art Center,
Tokyo, 24 May 1962
Designed by Yoko Ono and
Kōhei Sugiura
Ink on paper
47.6 × 11.4
(p.48)
Tickets for Three Kyoto
Events, 20 – 22 July 1964
Contemporary American
Avant-Garde Music Concert,
Yamaichi Hall, 20 July 1964
Evening till Dawn, Nanzenji
Temple, 21 July 1964
Symposium, French Cancan
Coffee House, 22 July 1964
Print on paper
7.2 × 25.1
(p.56, above)
Programme for Contemporary
American Avant Garde Music
Concert: Insound and
Instructure, Yamaichi Hall,
Kyoto, 20 July 1964
Print on paper
17.9 × 25.1
(p.56, below)
Announcement for Yoko Ono
Farewell Concert: Strip
Tease Show, Sogetsu Art
Center, Tokyo, 11 August 1964
Print, letterpress on paper
9.1 × 14.1
(p.57, above)
Tickets for Yoko Ono Farewell
Concert: Strip Tease Show,
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo,
11 August 1964
Print on paper
4.5 × 13.6
(p.57, below)
Draw Circle published in
Art and Artists, Vol. 1,
No. 5, August 1966*
Magazine
27.5 × 21
Tate Archive
(not illustrated)
Poster for Two Evenings
with Yoko Ono, Africa
Centre, London, presented by
Destruction in Art Symposium,
28–29 September 1966
Print on paper
59.7 × 45.7
(p.126)
Programme for Two Evenings
with Yoko Ono, Africa
Centre, London, presented by
Destruction in Art Symposium,
28–29 September 1966
Facsimile, ink on paper
23 × 33.5
Tate Archive
(pp.132–3)
Art and Artists, Vol. 1,
No. 7, October 1966
Magazine
27.5 × 21
Tate Archive
(pp.134–5)
Poster for Unfinished
Paintings & Objects by
Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery,
London, 9–22 November 1966
Designed by James Dwyer
Poster
61.7 × 45.4
(p.136)
Poster for world premiere
screening of FILM NO. 4
(‘BOTTOMS’) 1966–7, Jacey
Tatler, London, 8 August 1967
Offset on paper
30 × 20.5
(p.171)
London Look, 18 March 1967
Cover photograph by John
Prosser
Magazine
28 × 21.5
Tate Archive
(pp.138–9)
Documentary footage of
Yoko Ono: Music of the
Mind, Bluecoat, Liverpool,
26 September 1967
Filmed by Granada TV
Film, 16mm, shown as video,
black and white, and sound
(stero) 3min, 30sec
ITV Archive
(not illustrated)
Poster for Yoko Ono:
Music of the Mind, Bluecoat,
Liverpool, 26 September 1967*
Print on paper
44.3 × 34.3
(p.160)
Invitation for Music of the
Mind: Yoko Ono at The Saville,
The Saville Theatre, London,
8 December 1967*
Print on paper
203 × 327
Not Illustrated
Programme cover for Ornette
Coleman with David Izenzon,
Charles Haden, Edward Blackwell
and Yoko Ono, Royal Albert
Hall, London, 29 February 1968*
Print on paper
21 × 29.8
(p.217)
Index
Page references in italics
indicate pages on which works
appear; all works are by Yoko
Ono unless otherwise stated.
A Plus B Painting (1961) 39
Aachen University of Technology
226
Abolins, Valdis 226
Acorn Event (with JL, 1968)
123, 176–79
Acorn Peace (with JL, 1969) 16
AD for Bagwear (1966) 76–77
Adachi, Masao 111
Add Colour (Refugee Boat)
(2016) 19, 254–57
Africa Centre see Destruction
in Art Symposium
AG Gallery, New York 27, 27,
36–37, 225, 226, 227, 228, 262
Air Bottles (with JL, 1967) 155
Akiyama, Kuniharu 49
Ali, Tariq 125
Amaya, Mario 113, 114, 215
AMM 216, 217
Aos (film by Kuri with music
by Ono, 1964) 214, 214
‘AOS’ (1968) 217–18
AOS – To David Tudor (1961)
13, 28
Apple (1966) 146–47
Approximately Infinite Universe
(album, 1973) 278, 278
Arising (2013) 18, 281
Art and Artists magazine 113,
114, 123, 134–35, 213, 215
Arts Lab, Drury Lane, London
114, 122–3, 218
Asher, Peter 114–5
Audience Piece to La Monte
Young (1962) 50–51
avant-garde art/music 17,
25–29, 57, 113–14, 215–7,
241–45, 262, 267
Ay-O 13, 28, 206, 107
Bag Piece (1964) 64–67, 182,
215, 217, 244
Bailey, Derek 218
Barnett, Anthony 218
The Beatles 114, 217, 243,
244, 266, 268
BED PEACE (with JL, 1969)
16–17, 124
Bed-In events 16, 124, 184–5,
243
Better Books, London 114, 115
Biggers, Sanford 241–45
Black Dwarf newspaper 122
Black Panther Party 243
Blackburn, Robin 125
Blackwell, Edward 217–18,
217–18
The Blue Room Event (1966) 119
Bluecoat, Liverpool 160–65
‘Bottoms’ film see FILM NO. 4
(‘BOTTOMS’)
A Box of Smile (1967) 174–75
Brecht, George 13, 28, 106
Brett, Guy 115
Brown, Trisha 13, 28
Bryan-Wilson, Julia 243
Bubnova family 79
Buddhism 19, 117–18, 241, 242
Cage, John 25, 26, 27, 28–29,
31–35, 54–5, 79, 115, 214,
226–7, 241, 262, 263
Music Walk (1958) 29, 54
Cannes Film Festival 125
Carnegie Recital Hall, New York
13, 15, 27, 28, 43, 60–63,
213, 215, 216, 228, 242
Ceiling Painting (‘YES’ label,
1966) 16, 119, 150–51,
216, 245
censorship 16, 168–69, 216,
220, 265
Century City (exh., 2001) 86
Chambers Street loft, New York
19, 26, 32–35, 215, 226,
228, 242
“Cheers to Women on Top” (1973)
280, 280
Chekhov, Anton, The Bear
(Ono in) 83, 83
Christopher Street, New York 99
Cinematheque, New York 67
civil rights movement 125, 241,
242, 244
Clock Piece (1965) 215
Cobbing, Bob 114
Coleman, Ornette 217–18, 217–18
Concannon, Kevin 17
conceptual art 28, 115–16, 213,
225, 227–29, 243, 245
The Connection (1952) 84
Contemporary American Avant
Garde Music Concert: Insound
and Instructure (1964)
56, 227
Corner, Philip 13, 28
Cott, Jonathan 215
Cough Piece (1961) 218
Coventry Cathedral 123, 176–79
Cox, Anthony D. (Tony) 29,
64–65, 121, 213, 214
Cut Piece (1964) 17, 18, 58–63,
114, 116–18, 213, 215, 219,
227, 241, 242–43, 264
Davies, Ivor 113, 123
Destruction in Art Symposium
(DIAS), Africa Centre, London
(1966) 15, 17, 113–21, 123,
125, 129–35, 215–8, 215
Ono speaking at 114, 128
Two Evenings with Yoko Ono
126–27, 132–33, 215
Disappearing Music for Face /
Fluxfilm No. 4 (Ono in film
by Shiomi, 1966) 108
DISAPPEARING PIECE (1966)
118, 216
documenta 5 (1972) 228–29
Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s
Only Looking For Her Hand
In The Snow) (1969) 183
drama club (Ono’s) 79, 80–83,
81–83
Draw Circle Event (1964–5) 106–7
Dunbar, John 15, 114
Düsseldorf State Art Academy
226, 228
Eternal Time (1965) 143, 216
An Evening of Contemporary
Japanese Music and Poetry
(1961) 27
EYEBLINK / Fluxfilm No. 15
(1966) 14, 109
Feeling the Space (album, 1973)
279, 279
feminism 17, 18, 241–5, 277–81
Festival of Misfits (1962)
115, 120
FESTUM FLUXORUM FLUXUS
(festival, 1963) 226, 228
FILM NO. 1 (‘MATCH’) / Fluxfilm
No. 14 (1966) 14, 21
FILM NO. 4 (‘BOTTOMS’) (1966–7)
16, 119, 120–21, 166–73, 216,
227, 265
Flanagan, Barry 114
Fluxfilms 14, 21, 108, 109,
109, 227
Fluxus 13, 14, 26, 29, 67, 80,
115, 120–21, 242
in Germany 225–29, 228
Fluxus – Festival of New Music /
Festival der Neuen Kunst
(1964) 115, 226
Fly (1963) 16, 216
Fly (album, 1971) 17–18, 219,
223, 266
FLY (exh., 1964) 95
FLY (film, with JL, 1970–1)
18, 234–35, 266
Fly Piece 216, 165
Forget It (1966) 145
Forti, Simone 32–35, 215
Four Thoughts (exh., with
JL, 1968) 122
Franklin Summer (1994–ongoing)
246–47
Free School Playground, London
117, 130, 215, 216
Freedom (film, with JL, 1970)
232–33
Freight Train (1999) 30
Fujin kōron (magazine) 86
Gakushūin Girls’ High School
and University (Ono at)
79, 80–85, 81–83, 118
Gallery One, London 115, 120
Germany 225–29, 228
Gerstenberg, Alice, Overtones
(1915) 81, 81
‘Give Peace a Chance’ (with
JL, 1969) 124
Glass Hammer (1967) 157
Goldsmiths’ College, London 115
Gomez, Edward M. 214
A Grapefruit in the World
of Park (1961) 27
Grapefruit (artist’s book,
1964) 13, 14–15, 79, 84, 89,
115, 120, 213, 219, 229, 242,
245, 264
Birth Announcement and
Announcement for 88
Typescripts for 20, 90–94
Haden, Charles 217–18
Half-A-Room (exh., 1967) 16,
119, 119, 156, 265
Half-A-Wind Show (exh., 1967)
119–20, 157
Hampton, Fred 243
Hanafusa, Atsuko 81
happening & fluxus (exh., 1970)
228
happenings 113, 115, 116,
117, 228
‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’
(with JL, 1971) 125
Hart, Dennis, photographs
by 169
Haynes, Jim 113–14
Helmets (Pieces of Sky) (2001)
18–19, 250–51
Hendricks, Jon 226
Hi Red Center, Tokyo 28, 28,
296 297 111, 227
HIDE-AND-SEEK PIECE (1964) 116
Higeki kigeki (magazine) 82, 83
Hijikata, Tatsumi 50
Hisamitsu, Yōko 81
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings
13, 117
A HOLE (2009) 252–53
Hoyland, John 122
Ichiyanagi, Toshi 13, 25–30,
27, 32–35, 49, 214, 241, 262
handwriting for Instructions
for Paintings (1962) 25,
26, 44–47, 225, 228, 242
Iimura, Takahiko, Ai (1962) 214
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, Iceland 19
imperialism 121, 125
Indica Gallery, London
15–16, 114, 115, 119, 120–21,
124, 216
Unfinished Paintings & Objects
by Yoko Ono (1966) 136,
150–53, 216, 217
Institute of Contemporary Arts
(ICA), London 113
instructions 13, 14–15, 19,
83–86, 262, 263
Instruction Paintings (1999)
27, 225, 248–49
Instructions for Paintings
(1962) 25–26, 44–47, 228,
242, 262, 263
International Times (IT)
113, 114, 120, 123
Ishikawa, Minako 82
Issa, Kobayashi 213
Izenzon, David 217–18
Jacey Tatler Cinema, London
121, 171, 216
Japan Society, New York
26, 262, 269
Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre /
Traverse Theatre, London
19, 113, 119
Jennings, Terry 215
Jiyū Gakuen, Tokyo (Ono’s
school) 79, 214, 261
Johnson, David 27
Jonouchi, Motoharu, Shelter
Plan (1964) 111
Judson Gallery, New York 76–77
Kaku, Yoshiko 82
Knowles, Alison 228
Kobayashi, Kenji 28, 31, 32–35,
49, 50, 214
Kojima, Nobuaki 50
Kölnischer Kunstverein 228
Kuri, Yōji
Aos (1964) 214, 214
Tragedy on G String (1969)
214
Kurahashi, Junko 81
Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge
218
Latham, Barbara (Steveni)
114, 119, 120, 130–31, 215,
215, 216
Latham, John 114, 119, 120,
215, 216
Latham, Noa 118–19, 216
Lennon, John 14, 15, 16–17,
18, 115, 121–24, 217, 229,
230–31, 243, 244, 265, 267
artworks with Ono 15, 155
Bed-Ins with Ono 16–17,
124, 184–85, 243, 266
events with Ono 122, 123,
124, 176–79, 182–83
films with Ono 18, 232–35,
266
music with Ono 17, 17, 122,
124, 125, 218–19, 220–21,
245, 265–66
‘War is Over’ campaign
with Ono 15, 124–25,
180–81, 266
Build Around It (1968) 122
Imagine (1971) 245
Lighting Piece (1955) 13, 22–23,
25, 262
Lion Wrapping Event (1967)
119, 121, 158–59
Lisson Gallery, London
16, 119–20, 121, 142, 157
Live Peace in Toronto 1969
(1969) 222
London Look (Ono on cover,
1967) 138–39
Lord, Catherine 241–45
Lust, Virginia 18
Lyceum Ballroom, London 124,
182–83
Mac Low, Jackson 13
Maciunas, George 14, 27,
98, 107, 108–9, 115, 225–27,
228, 229
photographs by 27, 36, 37, 43
Maeda, Kazuo 82
mass media 123–25, 215, 243,
244, 269
Matsudaira, Yoriaki 49
Maxfield, Richard 215
Mayuzumi, Toshirō 27, 28,
32–35, 49, 54
McCartney, Paul 114
Mekas, Jonas 13
Mending Piece (1966) 122,
152–53
Metzger, Gustav 113, 115,
116, 118, 215, 216, 217
Meyer-Förster, Wilhelm, Old
Heidelberg (1901) 83
Mitsuhashi, Sueko 81
Molesworth, Helen 241–45
Montreal Bed-In (with JL, 1969)
124, 184–85, 243, 266
Moore, Peter 14
Moorman, Charlotte 227, 228
Morning Piece (1964) 28, 98–99,
100–101, 228, 263–64
Mornings for Sale (1964) 100
Munroe, Alexandra 26, 117
Museum of Modern [F]art
(artist’s book, 1971) 85–86,
236, 238–39
The Museum of Modern Art Show
(film, 1971) 237
music composition 15, 79–80,
115, 214, 218–19, 225, 242,
261, 268; see also avant-
garde art/music
Music of the Mind (performance,
1966) 119
My Mommy Is Beautiful (1997) 258
My Mommy Is Beautiful (2004) 259
Nagano, Chiaki, Aru wakamono-
tachi (Some Young People)
(1964) 98
Naiqua Gallery, Tokyo 28, 95
Nemser, Cindy 241
New School for Social Research,
New York 115
New Works of Yoko Ono (1965)
60–63
NHK, Tokyo 31
Niizuma, Minoru, Chambers
Street Loft Series (c.1960–1)
26, 32–35
Noguchi, Isamu 32–35
Nothing Doing In London Two
(1968) 218
nuclear/anti-nuclear stance
113, 117–18
Object in Three Parts (1966)
119
Okada, Shigehiro 83
On Paper (1967) 218
Ono, Eisuke (father) 79
Ono Cox, Kyoko (daughter) 29
Ono’s Sales List (1965) 103
Ozawa, Seiji 29
pacifism 118, 242
Paik, Nam June 102, 111,
227, 228
Painting for the Wind (1961) 38
Painting in Three Stanzas
(1961) 38
Painting to be Stepped On (1961)
 38, 213, 225, 228, 262
Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961)
16, 137, 228
Painting to Let the Evening
Light Go Through (1961)
38, 225, 228
Painting to See in the Dark
(Version 1) (1961) 37, 39
Painting to See in the Dark
(Version 2) (1961) 39
Painting to See the Skies
(1962) 27
Painting to Shake Hands
(1961) 53
Paintings & Drawings by Yoko
Ono (exh., 1961) 27, 27,
36–37, 227, 228
Parker, Evan 218
Part Painting or Painting Until
It Becomes Marble ‘To Richard’
(1961) 40–41
peace 16–17, 117–25, 187–210, 243
Peace for Christmas (UNICEF
event with JL, 1969) 124,
182–83
PEACE is POWER (2017) 0–11, 12
Peek Piece (1961) 161
Penthouse magazine 123–24
Perception Weekend (1967) 119
Perpetual Fluxfest (1964) 67
philosophy 16, 80–2, 117–18,
214, 241
A Piano Piece to See the Skies
(1962) 13–14, 25, 226
Picton, Tom, photographs by
114, 129, 130, 215
Piece for Nam June Paik no.1
(1964) 102
Pieces for Orchestra to La Monte
Young (1962) 97
Plastic Ono Band 17, 124, 125,
217–19, 222–23, 244, 269, 276,
277, 279, 279
Plastic Ono Supergroup 124,
182–83
Pointedness (1964) 144
pop art/culture 17, 114, 123,
216–17, 267
Promise Piece (1966) 19
Proust, Marcel 213
publicity see mass media
The Pulse (1962) 49, 226
racism 17, 125, 241
Rainer, Yvonne 13, 28
Rauschenberg, Robert 32–35, 215
Recording Artists podcast
241–45
Reincarnation (1952) 84
‘Remember Love’ (1969) 124
Richards, Gwyn, photographs
by 165
Richie, Donald 25, 28
Rising (song/album, 1995)
18, 281, 281
Rolling Stone magazine 215
Rose, Barbara 241–45
Royal Albert Hall, London
16, 217, 217–18, 218
Russian constructivism 79
Sachiko, Hashimoto 81
‘The Saga of Japanese Men Sinking:
A Social Parody’ (1973) 86
Sakakibara, Masatsune, Gaikō 168
(Extrovert 168) (1950) 82, 82
Salcius, Almus 225
Salzman, Eric 27
Sapporo Contemporary Music
Festival (1962) 29
Sarah Lawrence College,
New York (Ono at) 13,
26, 80, 85, 214, 241
Schmit, Tomas 226, 228
Schneemann, Carolee 106
Scotch of St James, London 114
Seaman, Norman J. 28
Second World War 13, 18, 80,
117, 118, 123, 243, 261
Secret Piece (1953) 85, 213–14
‘Seven Little Stories’ (1952) 84
sexism 17, 85, 125
Shadow Painting (1961) 39,
225, 227
Shadow Piece (1963) 117, 118,
120, 130–31, 215, 216, 230–31
Shadow Piece No. 1 – ‘Me and
my shadows’ (1991) 229, 229
Sharkey, John 113
Shiraishi. Motoe 81
Shiomi, Mieko, Disappearing
Music for Face / Fluxfilm
No. 4 (1966) 108
Singer, Andre 241
‘Sisters, O Sisters’ (1972)
18, 125, 267, 276, 277
SKY TV (1966) 141
Smoke Painting (1961) 38, 225
Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo 28,
29, 31, 55, 225
Sogetsu Contemporary Series
15: Works of Yoko Ono
(1962) 13–14, 22–23, 25,
28, 48–51
Yoko Ono Farewell Concert:
Strip Tease Show (1964)
28, 57–65, 68–75
Sohm, Hanns 128, 228
Some Time in New York City
(album, 1972) 18, 267, 276, 277
Soundless Music (1952) 83–84, 87
Soundtape of the Snow Falling
at Dawn (1963) 104
Steveni, Barbara (Latham)
114, 119, 120, 130–31, 215,
215, 216
Stevens, John 218
Stiles, Kristine 117
The Stone (exh. cat., 1966)
76–77
Strip Tease for Three (1964) 75
Suematsu, Shigeko 81
Sugiura, Kōhei 48
Sweep Piece (1962) 164
Swenson, Gene 214
Sydney Opera House 14, 19, 19
Szeemann, Harald 227–28
Takahashi, Yūji 29, 49
Tanabe, Santarō 50
Tate Modern, London 86
Tchicai, John 218
Telephone Piece (1964) 19
Thirteen Film Scores by Yoko
Ono, London ’68 18
Time Painting (1961) 39
To The Wesleyan People (1966)
272–5
Toilet Thoughts Film No. 3
(1968) 4
Tokoro, Makiko 82
Tokyo bombings 18, 118, 261
Tone, Yasunao 111
Touch Poem #5 (c.1960) 105
touch poem no.3 (1964) 95
Trafalgar Square, London
118, 119, 121, 265
Tsubouchi, Katzuada 50
Tudor, David 13, 27, 28–29,
31–35, 54, 55, 79
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two
Virgins (with JL, 1968)
122, 219, 220, 265–66
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life
with the Lions (with JL, 1968)
218–19, 221
Unfinished Paintings & Objects
by Yoko Ono (exh., 1966)
136, 150–53, 216, 217, 262
Vietnam War 16, 121, 124,
125, 243
The Village Gate, New York 27
violence 17, 18, 115–18, 213
Voice Piece for Soprano
(1961) 127
Wall Piece (1962) 215
WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT
(campaign, with JL, 1969)
15, 16, 124–25, 180–81, 266
war/anti-war stance see
pacifism; peace; nuclear/anti-
nuclear stance; violence
Waterdrop Painting (Version 1)
(1961) 38–39
Waterdrop Painting (Version 2)
(1961) 39
Wedding Album (album with JL,
1969) 219, 221
‘What a Mess’ (1973) 278, 278
WHISPER (2013) 14, 19, 19
WHISPER PIECE (1961) 118, 215
White Chess Set (1966) 16, 149
WIND PIECE (1962) 119, 215
Wish Tree (1996) 8–9, 19, 268 298
‘Woman Power’ (1973) 18,
279, 279
Works by Yoko Ono (New York,
1961) 28, 43, 262
Works of Yoko Ono (Tokyo, 1962)
13–14, 22–23, 25, 28, 48–51
Wrapping Piece (1961) 15, 118,
124, 162–63
Yamaichi Hall, Kyoto 56, 227
‘Yes, I’m a Witch’ (recorded
1974, released 1992) 268
Yoko Ono Farewell Concert: Strip
Tease Show (1964) 28, 57,
58–65, 68–75
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind
(1967) 160–65
Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band
(album, 1970) 217–19, 223
Yoko Ono: The Bronze Age
(exh., 1989) 268
Yokohama Triennial (2001) 30
Yokoo, Tadanori 111
Yoshino, Tatsumi 50
Yoshioka, Yasuhiro, photographs
by 22–23, 31, 50–51, 54–55,
64–65, 75
Young, La Monte 13, 26, 29,
32–35, 50–51, 97, 215, 226
Zen Buddhism see Buddhism
Credits
Copyright
All works by Yoko Ono © Yoko Ono
© Ay-O 107 top
George Brecht © DACS 2024 106 top
© Sheridon Davies 161-4
© Nigel Hartnup 16, 120, 121, 124,
127, 216
© Estate of Minoru Hirata 58, 59
© Estate of Motoharu Jonouchi 111
© Graham Keen / TopFoto 150–2
© Yōji Kuri / Kuri Jikken Manga
Kobo 214
© 2024 George Maciunas Foundation
Inc. 27, 36–39, 42, 67, 98 bottom,
107 bottom, 227, 288
Photography © Yoko Ono front cover
Photo, 14, 15, 17, 32–5, 60-1,
104, 105, 119, 137, 153, 155–7,
120–1, 142, 143, 144–145, 147,
149, 153, 174–5, 176–7, 179, 180,
238–9, 248
Albert and David Maysles © Yoko Ono
62-3
© Estate of Frank W. McDarrah
230–1
© The Estate of Peter Moore 99
© Nippon Television Network
Corporation 98 top
© Akio Nonaka 49 top
© Yoko Ono and Kōhei Sugiura 48
© The Estate of Tom Picton / Tate,
2024 114, 129, 130–1, 215
© Estate of John Prosser 134–5,
138 top
© Gwyn Richards 165
Carolee Schneeman © ARS, NY and
DACS, London 2024 106 bottom
© 2024 Mieko Shiomi 108
Estate of Hanns Sohm /
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 128
© Estate of Yasuhiro Yoshioka
22–3, 31, 49 below, 50–1, 54–5,
64–5, 75
Photography
Alamy Stock Photo / Keystone Press
182–3; / Tracksimages.com 219
Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor
© Yoko Ono 105, 137, 174–5
Photograph by Filipe Braga 254–5,
256–7
Bridgeman Images 118
Photographs by Sheridon Davies
161–4
Colin Davison 250–1
Photograph by Richard DiLello
© Yoko Ono 17
Collection of Dōshōkai 82
Photo by Xu Lei Studio © 2015 Yoko
Ono © Faurschou Foundation
Courtesy of Faurschou Foundation 4
Collection of Gakushūin Girls’
Junior & High School Library 81
Getty Images / Central Press /
Stringer / Getty Images 184–5; /
Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch
Collection / CORBIS / Corbis via
Getty Images 181; WATFORD /
Mirrorpix via Getty Images 146
Photograph by Bill Habets 116–117
Photograph by Nigel Hartnup 16,
120, 121, 124, 127, 216
Photographs by Minoru Hirata 58,
59
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC.;
Photograph by William Andrews 141;
/ Photograph by Tex Williams 259
Photograph by Eiji Ina 253
Graham Keen / TopFoto 150–2
Yōji Kuri 214
Photograph by Iain Macmillan ©Yoko
Ono 120–1, 142, 143, 147, 149,
153, 238–9
Ken McKay © Yoko Ono 14
Photographs by Keith McMillan
© Yoko Ono 176–7, 179
Photograph by Karla Merrifield
© Yoko Ono 248
Photograph by Moderna Museet / Asa
Lunden 8
Photograph by Connor Monahan © Yoko
Ono 252
Photographs by Peter Moore /
Charles Deering McCormick Library
of Special Collections
Northwestern University Libraries
14, 99
Digital image, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York / Scala,
Florence 10–12, 25–6, 27, 36–9,
43–7, 67, 96–7, 98 bottom, 228,
230–1, 236
Photographs by Minoru Niizuma
©Yoko Ono 32–5, 58–61
Collection of Mrs. Rumiko OKADA 83
Photographs by Isabel Asha
Penzlien © Yoko Ono 104, 144–5
Photographs by Clay Perry, England
& Co, London. © Yoko Ono Front
cover, 119, 155–7
© The Estate of Tom Picton / Tate.
2024 / Lucy Dawkins 114, 129,
130–1, 215
Photograph by Gwyn Richards 165
Royal Albert Hall Archive 218
Photography by Katrin Schilling
258
300 301 Courtesy Shincosha Publishing
Company. Photograph by Akio Nonaka
49 top
Shutterstock / Daily Sketch 168; /
Dennis Hart / ANL 169
Estate of Hanns Sohm /
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart 128
Courtesy Sogetsu Foundation /
Photographs by Yashuhiro Yoshioka
55
© Tate, 2024 / Lucy Dawkins 132–
135, 136, 138–9
Photograph by Val Wilmer 219
Photograph by Yasuhiro Yoshioka
22–3, 31, 49 below, 50–1, 54–5,
64-5, 75
The publishers have made every
effort to trace the copyright
holders of the works illustrated
and apologise for any omissions or
errors that may have been made.
Information correct at the time of
printing.
Contributors
Sanford Biggers is an interdisci-
plinary artist who works in film,
installation, sculpture, music,
and performance, based in New York
Juliet Bingham is Curator
of International Art at Tate
Modern, London
Andrew de Brún is Assistant
Curator of International Art
at Tate Modern, London
Patrizia Dander is Head of Curatorial
Department, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-
Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Jon Hendricks has known Yoko
Ono since 1965, and worked with
her extensively.
Catherine Lord is an artist,
writer, curator and activist. She
is Professor Emerita of Art at the
University of California.
Helen Molesworth is a writer and
a podcaster based in Los Angeles
and Provincetown
Connor Monahan is the Studio
Director for Yoko Ono
Yasufumi Nakamori is Director,
Asia Society Museum, New York,
previously Senior Curator of
International Art (Photography),
Tate (2018–2023)
Barbara Rose (1936–2020) was
an art historian and critic,
who lived and worked in the
United States
Naoko Seki is a curator and art
historian, she was previously
Curator at Museum of Contemporary
Art, Tokyo (1993–2020)
David Toop is a musician, author
and Emeritus Professor. He was
previously Professor of Audio
Culture and Improvisation at 302
London College of Communication
(2013–2021)
Kira Wainstein is Research
Assistant at Tate Modern, London
Andrew Wilson is a critic,
historian and curator, he was
previously Senior Curator of
Modern and Contemporary British
Art, and Archives at Tate Britain
(2006–2021)
First published 2024 by order of the Tate
Trustees by Tate Publishing, a division of
Tate Enterprises Ltd, Millbank, London
SW1P 4RG
www.tate.org.uk/publishing
on the occasion of the exhibition
YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND
Tate Modern, London (Blavatnik Building)
15 February – 1 September 2024
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K20,
Düsseldorf (Grabbe Hall)
28 September 2024 – 16 March 2025
Organised by Tate Modern, London
in collaboration with Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
The exhibition is curated by Juliet
Bingham, Curator, International Art,
Tate Modern and Patrizia Dander,
Head of Curatorial Department,
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Supported by
John J. Studzinski CBE
With additional support from the Yoko Ono
Exhibition Supporters Circle:
Alexandra Howell
Chris Keesee
Bob Rennie
Tate Americas Foundation
© Tate Enterprises Ltd 2024
All works © Yoko Ono unless
otherwise stated
Cover: Glass Hammer 1967, photographed
1967. Yoko Ono holding the work during
installation of Half-A-Wind Show, Lisson
Gallery, London, 11 October – 14 November
1967. Photograph by Clay Perry (see p. 157)
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photo-
copying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers
or a licence from the Copyright Licensing
Agency Ltd, www.cla.co.uk.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-84976-884-9
ISBN 978-1-84976-891-7
Senior Editor: Emilia Will
Production: Bill Jones
Picture Researcher: Emma O’Neill
Design: A Practice for Everyday Life
Colour reproduction by Grafica SIZ
Printed and bound in Italy by Grafica SIZ
Editorial team: Juliet Bingham,
Jon Hendricks, Connor Monahan