The best Yoko Ono art pieces
To honor Yoko Ono on her 92nd birthday, let's take a look at some of her most iconic art pieces over the years.
1. Ceiling Painting / Yes Painting (1966)
"When I created CEILING PAINTING (1966), I was depressed at the time. So I wanted to give some positivity to my life" Yoko Ono said via Twitter.
2. Cut Piece (1964)
"Come and cut a piece of my clothing wherever you like – the size of less than a postcard – and send it to the one you love"
In Cut Piece, members of the audience were invited to approach and cut away pieces of Ono's clothing, as she knelt silently on a stage. Ono recreated the piece in 2003 in Paris, nearly forty years later.
"When I first performed this work, in 1964, I did it with some anger and turbulence in my heart".
3. Grapefruit (1964)
Grapefruit, an artist's book, is one of the first examples of conceptual art, consisting of event scores or "Fluxus"* artwork. In 2013, Ono released Grapefruit's sequel, Acorn, another book of "instructional poems"
*"Fluxus is an international avant-garde collective or network of artists and composers founded in the1960s and still continuing today" (Source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/fluxus)
4. Apple (1966)
Apple consisted of simple an apple on top of a plexiglass stand with a brass plaque with the word 'Apple' fixed to the front of the stand. Apple was covered in bronze as part of Ono's 'Bronze Age' series of artworks.
5. Wish Tree (1993-Present)
"Ono’s penchant for fusing pacifism and audience participation is perhaps best seen in her ongoing sculptural project Wish Tree. The piece invites visitors to write their wishes and dreams on a small piece of paper, which they then hang on a living tree.
The work was inspired by Ono’s childhood experiences visiting local temples in Japan: 'Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar,' she recalled in Yoko Ono: All My Works Are a Form of Wishing. Building upon this tradition, Wish Tree encourages meditation on the meaning of life and encourages hope, collaboration, and communication through collective action."
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