Yoko: A Biography
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
I am not engaged with her actual work, but here is a not-out-of-context clip[0] of her live art from MOMA. Perhaps you could give more insight into the artistry ?
If anything, Ringo is the disruptive one (albeit briefly) when the others ego trips get him down.
Yoko was mythologised into the evil influence by fans distraught at the breakup of the group. Was she wierd? Sure.
Was she wierder than anyone else in those times? Not really. The Chuck Berry gig is just a moment, it doesn't define her. The screaming shtick was a thing, sure.
Billy Preston sort of glued them back together. He was an amazingly nice person to them, really helped things along.
She's a provocateur, art is the medium she uses.
https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/07/14/notes-on-...
There is short o Yoko given name too; I suspect it's pretty rare.
However, I missed not having new music from them sorely! AM radio was the main medium and the Beatles were on a lot, which I loved. In a parallel universe, great bands, which I get to choose, will be prevented from fighting and hating each other until I've had enough time loving their music, which they will continue to drop, until an acceptable retirement age. There.
I don't think she is a very good artist. Everyone felt they have to like her, and galleries brought her work in because, well, she is John Lennon's widow.
Here is her performance art, she is screaming in a microphone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdZ9weP5i68
And some drawings https://www.moma.org/collection/works/131503
It's fine, but just nothing outstanding. The article gives her the best description I've heard so far "ultimate professional widow".
But to be displayed in MoMA she'd kind of have to be.
> Art’s all about the path you take, the experiences you collect, and the way you view the world.
I guess I see your point, the fact that she is the widow is also part of the artist and the artwork. That's fair. But, I'll also say that who she is is the 90% part and the 10% is the art. If one anonymized her work, it would never have made it to those galleries or exhibits.
While I agree with you about Ono’s art, I disagree on this. I know art is subjective, but in my times at MoMA I’ve found it bimodal: works on display there either blow ls my mind or I just don’t feel anything about.
She was also well connected to that world (she was invited to join the Fluxus community and artists like Marcel Duchamp attended her NYC loft parties) and quite ambitious, so there's a non-zero chance she would have become even more prominent had The Beatles association never taken place.
I have no interest in that world myself, but to say she was a nobody without The Beatles simply isn't true, she was definitely a rising star. A household name? Probably not, but possibly. An artist from that period that could be exhibited at the major international galleries, have her works studied in art schools? Absolutely.
However I think she would have stayed relatively obscure had she not become "ultimate professional widow" as the article put it.
She and Lennon may have been right for each other. I think they both reached a point of arrogance and self-indulgence that made them complement each other well. The difference was that Lennon was absurdly talented and Yoko, not so much.
And that's the problem with contemporary art in her style: a dearth of talent and a need for attention create an urge to do something, anything, to stand out in some way. Great art by a talented artist can take you into the artist's imagination, expanding your perspective. Mediocre art often comes off as a form of trolling because the point is not to show you a rich new point of view but merely to challenge you, to piss you off. Hence the urinal exhibited as a sculpture; the banana taped to a wall; the scrawled instructions on how to create the piece exhibited instead of the piece itself, there being often no piece at all, just a bit of manic-pixie-dream-girl vagueness. ("Hide until everyone goes home. Hide until everyone forgets you. Hide until everyone dies.") And curators and collectors all standing around telling the emperor what a lovely outfit he has on.
anybody who judges an artist on the basis of one work is an ass. here are a number of those in a work that cleaved the art world into two hemispheres with a chasm between them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CbDkRFjLAQ
been a long time since I read about it, but pretty sure iirc those are celebs making cheeky cameos in that piece
For anyone that's Yoko's "Film No 4 Bottoms 1966-67" which is exactly what it sounds like, if you'd rather not click on it.
edited with a better link.
But that's par for the course with much of modern art. It's a vast movement occupying this Poe's Law-style zone of artistic ambiguity.
I still think Grapefruit is great. Nonetheless a lot of her work, especially her recent work, seems kind of disconnected form its historical context, not very daring, deep or metaphorical. It doesn't really propose anything new or seem distinctively hers. It's almost performative, like someone doing conceptual, installation and performance art "as a brand" rather than as a means to achieve something that can't be achieved via other mediums.
The only worthy Lennon's post-Beatles album is Mind Games, the rest was a daub, with Imagine on the top of it.