Ray pieces
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Yoko
Ono in Half-A-Room, Lisson Gallery, London, 1967
Photo
by Clay Perry
©
Yoko Ono
|
She says
she is a witch. The world thinks she is, indeed, but the only sure thing is Yoko
is an ocean child so that’s the way she was called when she was born in 1933 in
Tokyo. At least that’s the meaning of Yoko in its Kanji translation and so
called her John Lennon in his song Julia featured
in The Beatles’ White album released in 1968. Her father was Eisuke Ono, a
classical pianist in his youngest days who became a very important banker in
Japan. He was the son of Zenjiro Yasuda from the samurai Yasuda clan and
founder of the Yasuda zaibatsu, one
of the four major financial conglomerates of Imperial Japan, dissolved at the
end of the war in 1945. So we have another fact: Yoko comes from a long line of
samurai warriors and we must admit she’s a very good example of a warrior
spirit. Thanks to her father’s job she travelled soon to America having an
early experience of the life in San Francisco and New York. The war years were
difficult times for her family which had returned to Japan but once the war was
over she started studies in music and philosophy in Tokyo, although she left
the university after a few months. Her family had gone back to New York and she
joined them after leaving the university. There she joined the Sarah Lawrence
College, a private and independent liberal arts college and she started to meet
artists like La MonteYoung, the American avant-garde artist, composer and experimental
musician originator of the drone music, and John Cage, pioneer of indeterminacy
in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments.
They both were her mentors in the early days of Ono’s artistic career.
She’s been
married three times: in 1956 with the avant-garde musician Toshi Ichiyanagi, in
1963 with film producer Anthony Cox, and finally with John Lennon in 1969 which
story is vastly known. Now, at 80, she assures she’s starting a new life and
presents a wide retrospective at Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, a very good
chance to discover her artistic career beyond The Beatles myth shadow because Yoko
Ono has been an explorer of conceptual and performance art since the late
fifties collaborating with the Fluxus Group and her first important works like Painting to Be Stepped On in 1961 and Cut Piece and the book Grapefruit, including surreal instructions
to be completed by the reader, in
1964. Then she started a prolific career in experimental film with titles like No 4 (1966), also known as Bottoms, Rape (1968) and the latest Onochord
(2004).
But she’s
mainly popular because of her relationship with the former Beatle John Lennon
and their music collaboration in the seventies, although her solo music career
is deeply interesting itself as well as very irregular too. Beatles’ fans
normally would prefer to erase her songs from the album Double Fantasy released in 1980 just before Lennon’s murder which
features songs written by Lennon and songs written by Ono edited as a dialogue
between them. But when one listens to
the album it’s obvious Ono was more connected to the current times in music
scene than Lennon. Maybe his songs were better but their structure was
classical pop, closer to his Beatle times, and the sound too over-produced. On
the other hand, Ono’s songs had a sound closer to bands like B-52’s and The
Talking Heads. After Lennon’s death, she has released some very good albums and
incredible collaborations like Hiroshima
Sky (Is Always Blue), an experimental track recorded with Paul McCartney in
the early nineties and still unreleased. Her recent Take Me to the Land of Hell (2013) recorded along with her son Sean
Lennon and Yuka Honda, Nels Cline, and Cornelius' Keigo Oyamada, which features
magnificent songs Moonbeans, Cheshire Cat
cry and N.Y. Noodle Town is one
more proof of her magnificent and strong talent.
Yoko Ono | Half a wind-show. A Retrospective at Bilbao Guggenheim Museum
A selection of images by a click here
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo by Clay Perry. © Yoko Ono
Courtesy of Museo Guggenheim de Bilbao
All rights reserved