LONDON.- “Yoko Ono “She is the most famous unknown artist in the world, everyone knows her name, but no one knows what she does,” John Lennon summarized in the 1970s the disregard for his wife’s work, which now arrives at the Tate Modern in London.
The prestigious British National Museum of Modern Art hosts, in an exhibition that opens to the public on February 15 and will continue until September 1, a retrospective of the Japanese multidisciplinary artist, who will turn 91 on Sunday.
Under the title Music of the mindthe museum covers the creations in different disciplines of a woman better known for being the wife of the former member of the Beatles than for being one of the symbols of conceptual art.
“This exhibition is a celebration of Yoko as an artist. It is true that John Lennon was a very important collaborator for her, but we are very happy to be able to show her art,” one of the exhibition’s curators, Andrew de Brun, told AFP. .
200 works by Yoko Ono
In 200 works, the museum offers a portrait of the artist between installations, objects, videos, photographs, sculptures, documents about her performances, music and performances carried out over seven decades.
This retrospective, the largest ever held in the United Kingdom on her, settles a debt to the artist.
“We recognize the importance of Yoko Ono in contemporary art and culture. By showing some of her works, we help show the important place she occupies,” explained De Brun.
The curator highlighted that one of the objectives of the exhibition is to be able to present his work, his campaigns for peace, to new generation visitors.
Since the 1950s, with her first exhibitions in New York, Yoko Ono adhered to conceptualism, a current that defends that the ideas behind a work have more weight than the work itself, that what is important is the meaning that the artist wants to give it
With her performances and installations, the avant-garde artist invited viewers to play an active role in the work.
The exhibition includes some of his most controversial works, such as the video that shows his performance in Cut Piece1964/1965), a work that he presented first in Japan and then in New York.
On stage, Ono appeared wrapped in a black dress and left a pair of scissors next to her, so that the audience could cut her clothes.
The artist tried to draw attention to the violence exercised by society against women.
The exhibition appears as a vindication of the artist’s vast career, after decades of enduring being pointed out by some as the culprit of the breakup of The Beatles in 1970.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon met in 1966 in London, when the artist was a member of the group Fluxus, a movement born in New York that brought together conceptual and avant-garde artists in that city, where she had lived since she was a child after her family left Tokyo.
Meeting with Lennon
Yoko Ono’s conceptual art installations at London’s Galera Indica captivated Lennon.
On that occasion, there was a work called Ceiling paintingin which the visitor was invited to climb a ladder and look through a magnifying glass at a word that appeared at the top.
The word was andes (S). Lennon climbed the stairs and was amazed by that work.
With that work, now exhibited in London, Ono wanted to represent a journey towards hope from pain.
The Japanese artist sought to compare the difficulty of reaching it with the height of a cathedral.
That meeting marked the beginning of a couple that was united until the death of Lennon, murdered in 1980 in New York, when he was barely 40 years old.
During the time they were together, in addition to releasing six albums, they created experimental music recordings, short films, performances and installations as a team.
With Lennon, the Japanese artist achieved success in music, a journey also included in the London exhibition.
In 1980, with Double Fantasyrecorded before Lennon’s death, won the Grammy Award for Best Album of the Year.
FUENTE: AFP
