Yoko Ono’s Art

Yoko Ono is typically known as being the wife of the Beatles icon, John Lennon. However, Yoko is an icon in her own right. She has been an advocate for equality and women’s rights before she even became a household name. Her contributions to the feminist sect of avant-garde art are great, yet not commonly known to the public. She has created feminist performance art, music, and written essays. Yoko Ono’s artistic contributions to the avant-garde movement touch upon the several recurring themes of feminism such as the male gaze, sexual assault, and a call to action to end female silence, all while being radical, unorthodox, and sometimes even controversial.

Yoko was born on February 18th, 1933 in Tokyo, where she was raised by her two parents. Her mother was a classical pianist while her father was a banker. Thus, she got her musical inclination from her mother. Being born in Japan, Yoko experienced the firebombings of Tokyo done by the United States at the time of WWII. After she experienced that and the sudden disappearance of her father, her and her mother had to struggle to live day by day. According to the Inquirer in their article titled “Yoko Ono recounts own hunger during war in Japan,” Yoko Ono experienced extreme poverty herself. After her family lost their house, they were left wandering streets, often times begging for food. She recalls “she knew [people who] starved to death or died from eating poisonous mushrooms they collected in the hills. This of course has led herself to believe that this is where her aggression stems from. It has hardened her, thus affecting the way she views the world and feminist issues.

One of her most famous performance pieces is called “Cut Piece.” This performance concerns itself with the way women are subjected to being probed by men and even other women. Although this piece became famous and well-received in the U.S., it did not always have the same response. According to Jieun Rhee in “Performing the Other: Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” when Yoko Ono first performed her art in Japan, her and her collaborators were rarely praised. Instead, they were met with criticism. However, one anonymous critic from Tokyo understands what Yoko was trying to achieve and claims that the audience “seems to have had unusual experiences...seeing the sequence of these apparently senseless mundane acts.” He explains that her piece is “not an art that has already been completed, but an art form which the audience can receive something by witnessing the unfolding of nonsense acts, experiencing the process together with the performers,” by which he means that this type of art is something that must be experienced through the passage of time.

In Yoko’s feminist essay titled “The Feminization of Society,” she grasps at the hope that the world can begin to push forward a female energy, one that has been suppressed by its counterpart, the male energy. This essay was written in 1972 which happens to align with second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism tended to focus on issues such as sexuality, reproductive rights, and the workplace. In this essay she claims that women need to “realize the futility of competing and trying to be like men,” and instead use “feminine tendencies as a positive force to change the world.” By feminine tendencies, she means the emotions and characteristics that are hegemonically feminine, such as compassion, love, empathy, and so on. She wants to push the hegemonic boundaries and try and make these “feminine tendencies” the hegemony for all genders.

In the end, Yoko Ono has created a large portfolio of avant-garde feminist art, which has largely pushed previously set boundaries and limits. Although not many people are aware of it, mainly due to her association with her late husband John Lennon, we must continue to celebrate her work and message