Yoko Ono's Relationship with Popular Culture - Essay Example

Yoko Onos Relationship with Popular Culture It is almost fifty years ago, when people started thinking of YokoOno as that woman. She was aged 27 years and lived in New York. She was an admirer of John Cage and was involved in creating conceptual art. She came up with Haiku-like instructions to be imagined or performed. This was like lighting a match and watching it till it goes off. Yoko was an outstanding artist who had a lot to pass in the world. Her great talent in arts, and to be specific paintings and music, made her an outstanding female. Her artwork will remain an important mark in the development of various forms of art in all parts of the world. It is her background that partly explains radical works and performances. The performances include Cut Piece that she did in 1965 (Ono 147-154). It is here that she sat impassively like Bodhisattva, while the audience slowly one by one cut off her clothes (Bateman 11). This was an amazing feminist manifesto as by then most people did not know what feminism was. It was about exhibitionism and sex. Similar to her other works she did, it rebuffed parent’s mores in a great way. But in the performance, of importance was the element of ritual violence. This was not like seppuku but a theatrical version of self-sacrifice. This was a recurrent theme around Yoko Onos public life (Foster 267-275). Yoko Ono can be considered as a muse. This does not only apply to John Lennon whose devotion and love for her resulted in the most interesting and beautiful artworks of his career. She was a pioneering artist, activist, musician, and feminist (Ballico 456-458). Yoko Ono has influenced to a great extent those artists who are daring enough in pushing at and experimenting the imaginary distinctions and boundaries between media and art forms. Her talent was formidable but the prominent quality in her painting works was her spirit (Johnson 495-497). In the years 1961 to 1962, Ono made a number of pieces referred to as instruction paintings. The paintings were sets of painted instructions in Japanese scripts but she later produced them in English language. The absence of images made the audience to creatively think and deduce the work in their imagination (Ballico 456-458). Her destructive works in cut piece or “painting to Hammer a Nail” where the audience destroyed valuable traditional art forms with nails aimed at bringing the process of self-discovery. Yoko Ono used intangible things in drawing the audience back to their philosophical state (Ballico 456-459). She plays with silence and noise and works with Perspex and glass. She uses the white color in her works because it does not interfere with one’s mind. Yoko Ono, who recently turned 80 years, was born in 1933 in Tokyo. She first came to New York City while attending Sarah Lawrence College (Shank 282-300). It is while at college that she took her first strides in the world of arts. By 1960s, Ono had started exploring her works along with the Fluxus movement. As stated earlier, one of her very important performance was the 1964’s Buddhism influenced “cut piece”. In this performance, people were invited to come to her with silver scissors and cut off pieces of her dress. People cut the pieces that did not amuse them but were not satisfied even when only the stone remained (Shepherd 5). The curious nature of people can lead them to great heights. Never can a person be satisfied with everything that happens. Trying to be perfect is almost unachievable. People should be contented with what is in hand. Cut piece was about freeing oneself from oneself. In the most usual manner, artists express their ego through their own work. Artists give ego to the audience (Shepherd 5-11). In this “cut piece”, Ono intended to produce work with no ego. She gave the audience what they chose to take and not what she chose to give. The act of giving has a lot to do with Buddhism. Buddha a character in the performance gives out everything he owns including his children, wife, and his own life. That was an act of total giving. This giving is opposed to the most reasonable giving of what one deserves or what one thinks is good to give out (Shepherd 5-12). Every time she did the performance, she wore her best clothes. Her wardrobe became smaller and smaller with time (Concannon 4-7). Despite her poor condition, she always felt satisfied when losing her most precious clothes. She felt nice as it was her own genuine contribution. The audience was always quiet when she performed it. She always stared in space and had a feeling that she was sacrificing herself. The act had the negative and positive sides of giving. People thought of the negative, that she was destroying her body, but they could have made it positive (Concannon 4-7). The play also focuses on trust. The play was dangerous and scaring to take part in it. At one time during her performance in Paris, Sean stood on the sides of the audience to protect her. Her friends always advised her to hire a bodyguard, but Yoko Ono insisted on her principle of “we have to trust each other” (Shepherd 5-12). Yoko Ono once received an honorary Doctorate of Laws in 2001 from Liverpool University (Dimitrakaki 99-105). In 2002, she got an honorary doctorate degree in Fine Arts from Bard College (Merz 6). Professor Scott MacDonald said she was to be congratulated for the works she had done. He said she was to be celebrated for what she represented in the society, within the media and all over the world. The professor said that she had shown courage, persistence, imagination, resilience, independence and a belief that love and peace are the gateway for a brighter, more-diverse human future. Annotated bibliographies 1) Shephard, Julianne . "Walking on Thin Ice: A Career-Spanning Conversation With Yoko Ono." Spin 1 (2013): 5. Print. This article explains Yoko Ono’s life career. The author engages her in conversion where she gives out information regarding her best performances as an artiste. The author gets to question her so much regarding the “cut piece” work. Cut piece is one her outstanding works that gained her recognition worldwide. 2) Concannon, Kelvin. "Yoko Onos CUT PIECE." IMAGINE PEACE 1 (2010): 4-7. Print. The author of this article exclusively focuses on the “cut piece” work. The author describes what Ono’s thought about it as well as the audience. The author is quick at noting responses from the audience at different performances. 3) Ballico, Christina. "Sound society and the geography of popular music." Continuum 25.3 (2011): 456-458. Print. Ballico, the author of this article explains about Yoko Ono’s life and focuses on her works in the arts. The author analyzes her musical and instructional paintings as part of her career. The author explains why Ono preferred “paintings” in her work. The author makes the purpose of this article very clear. He gives reasons why Ono used things like white color and she never used images in her paintings. Works Cited Ballico, Christina. "Sound society and the geography of popular music." Continuum 25.3 (2011): 456-458. Print. Bateman, Shahbeila. "Yoko Ono Biography." Lovearth Network 5 (2010): 11. Print. Concannon, Kelvin. "Yoko Onos CUT PIECE." IMAGINE PEACE 1 (2010): 4-7. Print. Dimitrakaki, Angela. "Yoko Ono." Third Text 12.42 (1998): 99-104. Print. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. "Self-Stylization and Performativity in the Work of Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama and Mariko Mori." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27.4 (2010): 267-275. Print. Johnson, Bruce. "Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music. Edited by Ola Johansson and Thomas L. Bell. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 305 pp. ISBN 978-0754675778 (hb), 978-07546987539 (ebk)." Popular Music 29.03 (2010): 495-497. Print. Merz, Theo. "Yoko Ono thankful for McCartney’s admission she did not break up The Beatles." The Telegraph 2 (2013): 6. Print. Ono, Yoko. "Lost Heroes: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Japanese and Hong Kong Gangster Films." Asian Cinema 16.2 (2005): 147-154. Print. Shank, Barry. "Abstraction and Embodiment: Yoko Ono and the Weaving of Global Musical Networks." Journal of Popular Music Studies 18.3 (2006): 282-300. Print. Shephard, Julianne . "Walking on Thin Ice: A Career-Spanning Conversation With Yoko Ono." Spin 1 (2013): 5. Print. Read More