http://www.observer.com/2010/yoko-ono%E2%80%99s-revenge
By Julia Halperin
July 6, 2010
Yoko Ono stepped up to a microphone in the cavernous atrium of the
Museum of Modern Art last week and began to wail. Standing at her own
Voice Piece for Soprano, 1961, she inaugurated MoMA's sweeping
reinstallation of its contemporary art galleries. "Contemporary Art
from the Collection" consciously seeks to right some past
art-historical slights-and includes nine Yoko Ono artworks. It's a
triumph of sorts for the highly controversial conceptual artist:
Thirty-nine years ago, MoMA had turned her away.
Not that she let that stop her. "Since the museum wouldn't give her
an exhibition, she curated an exhibition of her own," said MoMA
director Glenn Lowry, gesturing at the photographs of her renegade
show that are now installed in the galleries. Called The Museum of
Modern FArt, the 1971 piece, which went on to became somewhat famous
in the alternative Fluxus art community, involved Ms. Ono strolling
in as a visitor and then setting scores of flies loose in the MoMA
sculpture garden.
And there you have the conundrum of Yoko Ono. Isolated from the art
community for much of her life, put down as a wealthy celebrity wife,
she has never been taken seriously as an artist in the U.S. The MoMA
show, in an unexpected turnaround, changes that, putting more of her
works on view in this show than it had, until recently, owned in its
entire history. It's all part of a rethink of the collection, one
that showcases more women artists-MoMA has faced criticism for their
absence in the past-and more conceptual and 1970s work. Curator
Christophe Cherix said, "We really tried to create a show that
wouldn't ghettoize any group." Moreover, "Curatorially, the 1960s and
early 1970s needed to be reassessed and reconsidered," he said.
For her part, Ms. Ono is thrilled to be invited to the party. "I
think it's a very unique and original show-but also, it's a
revolution, and you want to be a part of it." Other pieces in the
exhibition, which commandeers much of the second floor of MoMA
through Sept. 12 of next year, are by Kara Walker, Agnes Martin, Cady
Noland, Paul Chan, Kalup Linzy and Robert Rauschenberg. The artist
added: "I'm just very honored that I'm included in all these
incredible contemporary people."
But, if Yoko Ono, 77, really is being inducted into the canon of
20th-century art-and the jury is still out on that issue-why was she
ignored for so long?
Four decades ago, she was a decently well-known Japanese conceptual
artist. She famously met husband John Lennon at one of her 1966
London exhibitions, when he climbed on a ladder to read, with a
magnifying glass, a word she had written on the ceiling: "Y E S."
Later projects were less historic.
"I was derided for showing her work," recalled Jeffrey Deitch, an
influential art dealer who just took over as director of the Los
Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. He staged two Yoko Ono
exhibitions, but "the New York art world was not yet ready to take
her seriously as a great innovative artist. 'What a silly thing to be
showing this celebrity!' people said."
Ms. Ono's gender and celebrity ties may have prevented her from
winning art-world acceptance. "It's true that [because of] her
association with John Lennon in the late '60s, she may be less a part
of what we considered the art world," said Mr. Cherix, who co-curated
the show with MoMA's associate director Kathy Halbreich. But a shift
in attitudes toward celebrity has served her well. "Today, the art
world is much more willing to accept artists who were close to
stars," said Alexander Alberro, an associate professor of Art History
at Barnard. "In fact, a lot of the art world trades in this."
According to a number of art curators and historians, Ms. Ono's
presence in MoMA's galleries arose out of a growing respect for her
work that began about 10 years ago, when New York's Japan Society
organized a well-received career retrospective, "YES YOKO ONO." (The
2000 show, curated by Alexandra Munroe, now a senior curator at the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, won "Best Museum Show Originating in
New York City" from the International Association of Art Critics.)
"Over the past 10 years, her work has been more and more taken
seriously," said Mr. Deitch. "Hers are among the first works of
conceptual art, the first works of conceptual performance," he said.
"She's one of the most important innovators."
To some degree, Ms. Ono's ascent is part of a broader rewriting of
art history. New York museums have in recent years embraced
conceptual and performance art, as evidenced by MoMA's recent Marina
Abramovi show (Ms. Ono's Voice Piece for Soprano is in the same
gallery that hosted the Abramovi piece in which she sat, silent,
across from visitors, for hours). Ms. Ono's Cut Piece, done in 1964,
in which she sat passively as viewers were invited to slice off her
clothes, presaged Ms. Abramovi 's Rhythm 0, 1974, a similar but more
complicated and potentially violent work years later.
Still, Ms. Yoko's name is missing from the latest editions of the
classic Janson's History of Art or the best-selling survey text Art
History, by Marilyn Stokstad and Michael Cothren. "We just kept
cutting and cutting, and [she] it never made it in," said Ms. Stokstad.
And Ms. Ono's induction into the canon at MoMA has been breathlessly
recent. The Museum of Modern Art did not acquire a discrete work by
the artist for its permanent collection until 2009, when it received
a gift of 3,000 works donated by Detroit developer Gilbert Silverman
from the 1960s and '70s Fluxus movement. "Ever since we acquired the
giant Fluxus collection, she emerges as a real giant of the 1960s,"
said Mr. Lowry.
Now, walking through the newly installed galleries, you would never
know MoMA was a late arrival to Yoko fandom. Ms. Ono's presence
follows the viewer throughout the entire show. ("It's a nice space,"
Ms. Ono said of MoMA's galleries, in a bit of an understatement, "and
I'm always looking for nice spaces to do something.")
Her Wish Tree stands in the same courtyard where she once furtively
performed, beckoning visitors to write down their wishes and hang
them on a branch. In one work commissioned by the museum specifically
for the reinstallation, 16 scribbled instructions mark the walls of
the galleries-and one, the floor. "As I was walking, the white space
kind of beckoned to me, so I just went there, and I just put
something down. That's how I did it," she explained.
Many, like New York University Art History Assistant Professor Julia
Robinson, are critical of the reevaluation of Ms. Ono's work, arguing
that she, at best, was at the fringe of the important Fluxus movement
and is far from a giant figure in the art of the period. And
art-history textbook author Ms. Stokstad, when asked if she believes
Ms. Ono will make it into the next edition of Art History, balked. "I
really don't know," she said. "I've seen so many things come and go
and come back again."
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