In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

Visual arts, performing arts, and art performance[link]

Performance art is an essentially contested concept: any single definition of it implies the recognition of rival uses. As concepts like "democracy" or "art", it implies productive disagreement with itself.^[1]

The meaning of the term in the narrower sense is related to postmodernist traditions in Western culture. From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud, Dada, the Situationists, Fluxus, Installation art, and Conceptual Art, performance art tended to be defined as an antithesis to theatre, challenging orthodox art forms and cultural norms. The ideal had been an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased.^[2] The in this time widely discussed difference, how concepts of visual arts and concepts of performing arts are utilized, can determine the meanings of a performance art presentation (compare Performance: A Critical Introduction by Marvin Carlson, P. 103,2-105,1).

Performance art is a term usually reserved to refer to a conceptual art which conveys a content-based meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own sake for entertainment purposes. It largely refers to a performance presented to an audience, but which does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or a formal linear narrative, or which alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted interactions. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand.

Some kinds of performance art nevertheless can be close to performing arts. Such performance may utilize a script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still constitute performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirize or to transcend the usual real-world dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays.

Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is". As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements (compare Blue Man Group); utilize robots and machines as performers, as in pieces of the Survival Research Laboratories; or borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and circus.

Some artists, e.g. the Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists, prefer to use the terms "live art", "action art", "actions", "intervention" (see art intervention) or "manoeuvre" to describe their performing activities. As genres of performance art appear body art, fluxus-performance, happening, action poetry, and intermedia.

Origins[link]

Performance art activity is not confined to European or American art traditions; notable practitioners can be found in Asia and Latin America. Performance artists and theorists point to different traditions and histories, ranging from tribal to sporting and ritual or religious events. In an episode of In our time broadcast on Thu, 20 Oct 2005, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4, Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Warwick; Miriam Griffin, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; and John Moles, Professor of Latin, University of Newcastle discussed with Melvyn Bragg the idea that Antisthenes and Diogenes in ancient Greece practiced a form of performance art and that they acquired the epithet of cynic which means "dog" due to Diogenes behaving repeatedly like a dog in his performances.

There are also accounts of Renaissance artists such as itinerant poets putting on public performances that could be said to be ancestors of performance art.^{[citation needed]}

Western cultural theorists often trace performance art activity back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the Russian constructivists, Futurists and Dada. Dada provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional performances of poetry, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara. Russian Futurist artists could be identified as precursors of performance, such as David Burliuk, who painted his face for his actions (1910–20) and Alexander Rodchenko and his wife Varvara Stepanova.

According to the art critic Harold Rosenberg in the 1940s and 1950s Action Painting gave artists the freedom to perform - the canvas as "an arena in which to act", thereby rendering the paintings as traces of the artist's performance in his/her studio. Abstract expressionism and Action painting preceded the Fluxus movement, Happenings and the emergence of Performance Art.

Performance art was anticipated, if not explicitly formulated, by Japan's Gutai group of the 1950s, especially in such works as Atsuko Tanaka's "Electric Dress" (1956) [1].

Yves Klein had been a precursor of performance art with the conceptual pieces of Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 1959–62, and works like the photomontage, Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). In the late 1960s Earth artists as diverse as Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer and Carl Andre created environmental pieces that predict the performance art of the 1970s. Works of conceptual artists in the early 1980s, like Sol LeWitt, who converted mural-style drawing into an act of performance by others, were influenced by Yves Klein and the Earth artists as well.

1960s[link]

In the 1960s a variety of new works, concepts and the increasing number of artists led to new kinds of performance art.

Prototypic for the artform later explicitly labeled "performance art", were works of artists like Yoko Ono with her Wall piece for orchestra (1962); Carolee Schneemann with pieces like Meat Joy (1964); Wolf Vostell with his Happening YOU ^[3] (1964 in New York); Joseph Beuys with How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965); Yayoi Kusama, with actions such as a naked flag-burning on the Brooklyn Bridge (1968) and Allan Kaprow in his many Happenings.

Kaprow had coined the term Happening describing a new artform, at the beginning of the 1960s. A Happening allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells. One of Kaprow's earliest was "Happenings in the New York Scene," written in 1961 as the form was developing.^[4] Notably in the Happenings of Allan Kaprow, the audience members become performers. While the audiences in Happenings had been welcomed as the performers, it is only sometimes and often unwittingly that they become an active part in a Performance. Other artists who created Happenings besides Kaprow include Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Whitman, and Wolf Vostell: Theater is in the Street (Paris in 1958).

Hermann Nitsch in 1962 presented his "Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries" (Orgien- und Mysterien Theater), a precursor to performance art, close to the performing arts.

Andy Warhol during the early 1960s beginning to create films and video, in the mid-60s sponsored the Velvet Underground and staged events and performances in New York, like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966) that featured live Rock music, exploding lights, and film.

Indirectly influential for art-world performance, particularly in the United States, were new forms of theatre, embodied by the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Living Theatre and showcased in Off-Off Broadway theaters in SoHO and at La MaMa in New York City. The Living Theatre chiefly toured in Europe between 1963 and 1968, and in the U.S. in 1968. A work of this period, Paradise Now was notorious for its audience participation and a scene in which actors recited a list of social taboos that included nudity, while disrobing.

The work of performance artists after 1968 often showed influences of the cultural and political events of that year. Barbara T. Smith with Ritual Meal (1969) was at the forefront of the feminist body-, and performance art of the 1970s; among others including: Carolee Schneemann, and Joan Jonas. Schneemann and Jonas along with Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Allan Kaprow, Vito Acconci, and Chris Burden pioneered the relationship between Body art and performance art.

1970s[link]

Artists whose work already before tended to be a performance art, as well as new artists, at the beginning of the 1970s began to present performance art in a stricter form.

New artists with radical performances were Chris Burden, with the 1971 performance piece Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, and Vito Acconci in the same year with Seedbed.

The book Expanded Cinema, by Gene Youngblood, marked a shift in the use of media by performance artists. The first book considering video art as an art form, mentions Jud Yalkut as a pioneering video artist. Since 1965 he had collaborated in dozens of intermedia performances throughout the United States, also with Nam June Paik, who beginning of the 1960s already had been a fluxus performer on the way to become a media artist. As to the art of Paik, Youngblood refers to works of Carolee Schneemann and Robert Whitman from the 1960s, which had been pioneering for performance art, becoming an independent artform at the beginning of the 1970s.^[5]

The British-based pair Gilbert and George, already in 1970, had documented actions of themselves on video, and created their "living sculpture" performance, being painted in gold and singing "Underneath The Arches" for extended periods. Joan Jonas began to include video in her experimental performances in 1972.

In 1973 Laurie Anderson performed Duets on Ice, on the streets of New York City. Marina Abramović, in the performance "Rhythm 10", conceptually included the violation of her body.^[6]

Since 1973 the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles had a formative impact on the wave of performances with feminist background.

Carolee Schneemann work in 1963, Eye Body, already had been a prototype of performance art. Schneemann in 1975 drew on with innovative solo performances, like Interior Scroll, showing the female body as an artistic medium.

Performance art, because of its relative transience, by the 1970s, had a fairly robust presence in the avant-garde of East Bloc countries, especially Yugoslavia and Poland.

1980s[link]

Until the 1980s, performance art had been demystifying virtuosity. Now it began to embrace technical brilliance.^[7] In reference to Presence and Resistance^[8] by Philip Auslander, a performance art critic, Sally Banes writes “… by the end of the 1980s, performance art had become so widely known that it no longer needed to be defined; mass culture, especially television, had come to supply both structure and subject matter for much performance art; and several performance artists, including Laurie Anderson, Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Willem Dafoe, and Ann Magnuson, had indeed become crossover artists in mainstream entertainment.”^[9]

Despite the fact that many performances are held within the circle of a small art-world group, RoseLee Goldberg notes, in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present that "performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that the artists devise.”^[10]

Among the performance art most discussed in the art-world of this decade were a performance by Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh between July 1983 and July 1984, Art/Life: One Year Performance (Rope Piece), and Karen Finley’s I'm an Ass Man 1987.

Until the decline of the European eastern block during the late 1980s, performance art by most communist governments had actively been rejected. With the exception of Poland and Yugoslavia, performance art was more or less banned in countries where any independent public event was feared. In the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Latvia it happened in apartments, at seemingly spontaneous gatherings in artist studios, in church-controlled settings, or covered as another activity, like a photo-shooting. Isolated of the western conceptual context, in different settings it could be like a playful protest or like a bitter comment, using subversive metaphors to express dissent with the political situation.^[11]

Hedwig Gorski before 1982 came up up with the term performance poetry, to distinguish her text-based vocal performances from performance art, especially the work of performance artists, such as Laurie Anderson, who worked with music at that time. Performance poets relied more on the rhetorical and philosophical expression in their poetics than performance artists, who arose from the visual art genres of painting and sculpture.

1990s[link]

While the Soviet bloc disintegrated, formerly repressed activities of performance artists like György Galántai in Hungary, or the Collective Action Group in Russia, became better known. Young artists from all over the former Eastern bloc, including Russia, turned to performance. Performance art at about the same time appeared in Cuba, the Caribbean and China. Chinese performance artists like Zhang Huan had been performing underground since the late 1980s. Beginning of the 1990s chinese performance art already was acclaimed in the international artscene.^[12]

"In these contexts performance art became a critical new voice with a social force similar to that found in Western Europe, the United States and South America in the 1960s and early 1970s. It should be emphasized that the eruption of performance art in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, China, South Africa, Cuba, and elsewhere should never be considered either secondary to or imitative of the West."^[13]

In the western world in the 1990s, even sophisticated performance art became part of the cultural mainstream: performance art as a complete artform gained admittance into art museums and became a museal topic.^[14]

2000s[link]

In the second half of the decade, computer-aided forms of performance art began to take place.^[15]

From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Marina Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history.^[16] During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.^[17] A support group for the "sitters," "Sitting with Marina," was established on Facebook.^[18] The performance attracted celebrities such as Björk and James Franco and received coverage on the internet.^[19]

Gallery[link]

• 

  Performance artist Joseph Beuys in 1978: Jeder Mensch ein Künstler — Auf dem Weg zur Freiheitsgestalt des sozialen Organismus - Every person an artist — On the way to the libertarian form of the social organism

• Stelarc ArsElectronica97.jpg

  Stelarc "Parasite: Event for Invaded and Involuntary Body" (1997) Ars Electronica Festival

• 

  Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces, 9. November 2005

• 

  Marina Abramović performing in "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art, May 2010

See also[link]

• Classificatory disputes about art
• Danger music
• Flash mob
• Noise music
• New media art
• Living statue
• List of performance artists
• Survival Research Laboratories

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Carlson, Marvin (1996) Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-13702-0, ISBN 0-415-13703-9
• Carr, C. (1993) On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5267-4, ISBN 0-8195-6269-6
• Thomas Dreher: Performance Art nach 1945. Aktionstheater und Intermedia. München: Wilhelm Fink 2001. ISBN 3-7705-3452-2 (in German)
• Erika Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt: edition suhrkamp 2004. ISBN 3-518-12373-4 (in German)
• Goldberg, Roselee (1998) Performance: Live Art Since 1960. Harry N. Abrams, NY NY. ISBN 978-0-8109-4360-5
• Goldberg, Roselee (2001) Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art). Thames & Hudson
• Gómez-Peña, Guillermo (2005) Ethno-techno: Writings on performance, activism and pedagogy. Routledge, London. ISBN 0-415-36248-2
• Jones, Amelia and Heathfield, Adrian (eds.) (2012), Perform, Repeat, Record. Live Art in History. Intellect, Bristol. ISBN 978-1-84150-489-6
• Rockwell, John (2004) Preserve Performance Art? New York Times, April 30.
• Schimmel, Paul (ed.) (1998) Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979. Thames and Hudson, Los Angeles. Library of the Congress NX456.5.P38 S35 1998
• Smith, Roberta (2005) Performance Art Gets Its Biennial. New York Times, November 2.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Performance art

Wikiversity has learning materials about Performance art

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Performance art

• Live Art Archives at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection
• Thomas Dreher: Intermedia Art: Performance Art (most articles in German)
• João Raposo (pt):

Marina Abramović
Abramović performing The Artist is Present, MoMA, May 2010
Born	(1946-11-30) November 30, 1946 (age 65) Belgrade, PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia
Field	Performance Art
Training	Academy of Fine Arts, Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb
Movement	Conceptual art
Works	Rhythm Series (1973–1974) Works with Ulay (1976–1988) Balkan Baroque (1997) The Artist is Present (2010)

Marina Abramović (Serbian Cyrillic: Марина Абрамовић; born November 30, 1946) is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the "grandmother of performance art". Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

Early life[link]

Marina Abramović's great uncle was Patriarch Varnava of the Serbian Orthodox Church.^[1] Both of her parents were Partisans^[2] during the Second World War: her father Vojo was a commander who was acclaimed as a national hero after the War; her mother Danica was a major in the army, and in the mid-sixties was Director of the Museum of the Revolution and Art in Belgrade.

Abramović's father left the family in 1964. In an interview published in 1998, she described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening."^[3]

Abramović was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965–70. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, SR Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad, while implementing her first solo performances.

From 1971 to 1976, she was married to Neša Paripović. In 1976, Abramović left Yugoslavia and moved to Amsterdam.

Selected early works[link]

[edit] Rhythm 10, 1973

In her first performance Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of her hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and record the operation.

After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramović began to consider the state of consciousness of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.”^[4]

[edit] Rhythm 5, 1974

Abramović sought to re-evoke the energy of extreme body pain, in this case using a large petroleum-drenched star, which the artist lit on fire at the start of the performance. Standing outside the star, Abramović cut her nails, toenails, and hair. When finished with each, she threw the clippings into the flames, creating a burst of light each time. Burning the communist five-pointed star represented a physical and mental purification, while addressing the political traditions of her past.

In the final act of purification, Abramović leapt across the flames, propelling herself into the center of the large star. Due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience didn't realize that, once inside the star, the artist had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen. Some members of the audience realized what had occurred only when the flames came very near to her body and she remained inert. A doctor and several members of the audience intervened and extricated her from the star.

Abramović later commented upon this experience: “I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform.”^[5]

[edit] Rhythm 2, 1974

As an experiment testing whether a state of unconsciousness could be incorporated into a performance, Abramović devised a performance in two parts.

In the first part, she took a pill prescribed for catatonia, a condition in which a person’s muscles are immobilized and remain in a single position for hours at a time. Being completely healthy, Abramović's body reacted violently to the drug, experiencing seizures and uncontrollable movements for the first half of the performance. While lacking any control over her body movements, her mind was lucid, and she observed what was occurring.

Ten minutes after the effects of that drug had worn off, Abramović ingested another pill – this time one prescribed for aggressive and depressed people – which resulted in general immobility. Bodily she was present, yet mentally she was completely removed. (In fact, she has no memory of the lapsed time.) This project was an early component of her explorations of the connections between body and mind, which later took her to Tibet and the Australian desert. Following Rhythm 2, she set to develop the rest of the series of rhythm projects, continually testing her endurance.

[edit] Rhythm 0, 1974

To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later:

“What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”^[6]

Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)[link]

In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They have the same birthday, in different years.

When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritages and the individual’s desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “the other”, and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body”.^[7] They dressed and behaved like twins, and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny.”^[8]

While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concern themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In "Relation in Space" (1976) they ran around the room – two bodies like two planets, mixing male and female energy into a third component called “that self.” "Relation in Movement" had the pair drive their car inside of a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozed from the car, forming a kind of sculpture, each lap representing a year. (After 365 laps they entered the New Millennium.)

In discussing this phase of her performance history, Abramović has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.”^[9]

To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.

In Imponderabilia (1977, reenacted in 2010) two performers, both completely nude, stand in a doorway. The public must squeeze between them in order to pass, and in doing so choose which one of them to face.

In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramović described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye.”^[10]

Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”^[10]

Abramović reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the great wall has been described as a “dragon of energy.”

[edit] Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005

Abramović performing Bruce Nauman's "Body Pressure." Guggenheim Museum, November 2005.

Beginning on November 9, 2005, Abramović presented Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. On seven consecutive nights for seven hours she recreated the works of five artists first performed in the 60s and 70s, in addition to re-performing her own "Lips of Thomas" and introducing a new performance on the last night. The performances were arduous, requiring both the physical and the mental concentration of the artist. Included in Abramović's performances were recreations of Gina Pane's Self-Portraits, which required lying on a bed frame suspended over a grid of lit candles, and of Vito Acconci's 1972 performance in which the artist masturbated under the floorboards of a gallery as visitors walked overhead. It is argued that Abramović re-performed these works as a series of homages to the past, though many of the performances were altered from their originals.^[11]

Here is a full list of the works performed:

• Bruce Nauman's Body Pressure (1974)
• Vito Acconci's Seedbed (1972)
• Valie Export's Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969)
• Gina Pane's The Conditioning (1973)
• Joseph Beuys's How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965)
• Abramović's own Lips of Thomas (1975)
• Abramović's own Entering the Other Side (2005)

[edit] The Artist Is Present, March–May 2010

Abramović performing in "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art, March 2010.

From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history.^[12] During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.^[13] A support group for the "sitters", "Sitting with Marina", was established on Facebook^[14] as was the blog "Marina Abramović made me cry".^[15] In September 2011, a video game version of Abramović's performance was released by Pippin Barr.^[16]

Later life[link]

Marina Abramović purchased a theater two hours north of Manhattan in Hudson, NY, intending to establish a nonprofit organization, Marina Abramović Foundation for the Preservation of Performance Art. She will use the space to work and develop ideas with video and post-production equipment and there will be a second property to house resident artists.^[17]

In 2009, Abramović was featured in Chiara Clemente's documentary Our City Dreams and a book of the same name. The five featured artists – also including Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, and Nancy Spero – "each possess a passion for making work that is inseparable from their devotion to New York," according to the publisher.^[18]

Abramović is also the subject of an independent feature documentary movie currently titled "MARINA" that is based on her life and performance at her retrospective "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The film will be broadcast in the United States on HBO.^[19]

In January 2011, Abramović was on the cover of Serbian ELLE, photographed by Dushan Reljin.

Prizes and awards[link]

• Golden Lion Award, XLVII Venice Biennale, 1997
• Niedersächsischer Kunstpreis, 2003
• New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies), 2003
• International Association of Art Critics, Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Award, 2003
• Honorary Doctorate of Arts, University of Plymouth UK, 25 September 2009
• Cultural Leadership Award, American Federation of Arts, 26 October 2011
• Honorary Doctorate of Arts, Instituto Superior de Arte, Cuba, 14 May 2012

See also[link]

• Avant-garde
• Experimental theatre
• Fluxus
• Richard Foreman
• Happening
• Dick Higgins
• Intermedia
• Allan Kaprow
• Elizabeth LeCompte
• Ontological-Hysteric Theater
• Performance art
• Richard Schechner
• Speculations: An Essay on the Theater
• The Flea Theater
• The Wooster Group
• Mac Wellman

Bibliography[link]

Works by Abramović and collaborators[link]

• Artist Body: Performances 1969–1998, artist, Abramović; authors Abramović, Toni Stooss, Thomas McEvilley, Bojana Pejic, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chrissie Iles, Jan Avgikos, Thomas Wulffen, Velimir Abramović; English ed. (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-88-8158-175-7.
• The Bridge / El Puente, artist Abramović, authors Abramović, Pablo J. Rico, Thomas Wulffen (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-84-482-1857-7.
• Performing Body, artist Abramović, authors Abramović, Dobrila Denegri (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-88-8158-160-3.
• Balkan Baroque, (Pierre Coulibeuf, 1999)
• Public Body: Installations and Objects 1965–2001, artist Abramović, authors Celant, Germano, Abramović (Charta, 2001) ISBN 978-88-8158-295-2.
• Marina Abramović, fifteen artists, Fondazione Ratti; co-authors Abramović, Anna Daneri, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Lóránd Hegyi, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Angela Vettese (Charta, 2002) ISBN 978-88-8158-365-2.
• Student Body, artist Abramović, vari; authors Abramović, Miguel Fernandez-Cid, studenti; (Charta, 2002) ISBN 978-88-8158-449-9.
• The House with the Ocean View, artist Abramović; authors Abramović, Sean Kelly, Thomas McEvilley, Cindy Carr, Chrissie Iles, RosaLee Goldberg, Peggy Phelan (Charta, 2004) ISBN 978-88-8158-436-9; the 2002 piece of the same name, in which Abramović lived on three open platforms in a gallery with only water for 12 days, was reenacted in Sex and the City in the HBO series' sixth season.^[20]
• Marina Abramović: The Biography of Biographies, artist Abramović; co-authors Abramović, Michael Laub, Monique Veaute, Fabrizio Grifasi (Charta, 2004) ISBN 978-88-8158-495-6.
• Balkan Epic, (Skira, 2006).
• Balkan Erotic Epic, as producer and director, Destricted (Offhollywood Digital, 2006)
• Seven Easy Pieces, artist, Abramović; authors Nancy Spector, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Sandra Umathum, Abramović; (Charta, 2007). ISBN 978-88-8158-626-4.

Critical and academic studies[link]

• Laurie Anderson, “Marina Abramović,” Bomb Summer 2003: 25–31.
• Patrick Anderson, "How to Stage Self-Consumption," So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. pp. 85–109.
• Klaus Biesenbach (ed.), Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, Exhibition Catalog with essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, and Jovana Stokić, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010
• Aline Brandauer,. "Marina Abramović: Double Blind." Sculpture, July/August 1995, pp. 23–27.
• A Daneri, et al., (eds.), Marina Abramović, (Charta, 2002)
• Jovan Despotovic, Marina Abramović, ’Fin de siecle’ – Balkans way, Borba, Belgrade, September 6–7, 1997, p. 17
• Jennifer Fisher, “Interperformance: The Live Tableaux of Suzanne Lacy, Janine Antoni, and Marina Abramović,” Art Journal 56 (1997): 28–33.
• Charles Green, “Doppelgangers and the Third Force: The Artistic Collaborations of Gilbert & George and Marina Abramović/Ulay,” Art Journal 59.2: 36–45.
• Shogo Hagiwara, “Art Hurts: Blood and Pain are Abramović’s Media,” The Daily Yomiuri April 1, 2004 p18.
• Janet Kaplan, “Deeper and Deeper: Interview with Marina Abramović,” Art Journal 58:2 (1999):6–19.
• Zoe Kosmidou, “A Conversation with Marina Abramović,” Sculpture Nov. 2001: 27–31.
• Tom Lubbock, “Visual Arts: Caught In the Act; It’s Video But Not As We Know It,” The Independent September 2, 2003.
• Thomas McEvilley, “Performing the Present Tense,” Art in America April 2003: 114–117; 153.
• Thomas McEvilley, "Art, Love, Friendship: Marina Abramović and Ulay, Together & Apart," book, Documentext (McPherson & Company), 2010.
• Asami Nagai, “Art in Harmony with Nature,” The Daily Yomiuri July 24, 2003, p. 13.
• Anna Novakov, “Point of Access: Marina Abramović’s 1975 Performance Role Exchange,” Woman’s Art Journal Fall 2003/Winter 2004: 31–35.
• Jennifer Phipps, “Marina Abramović/Ulay/Ulay/Marina Abramović,” Art & Text 3 (1981).
• Theresa Smalec, “Not What It Seems: The Politics of Re-Performing Vito Acconci's Seedbed,” PMC: Postmodern Culture 17 (1) 2006^[21]
• “Writing Art,” Art Monthly 1999 230:13–17.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiversity has learning materials about Performance art

• Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present at MoMA
• Artfacts.Net profile with major exhibitions and public collections.
• Coulibeuf, Pierre. Balkan Baroque 1999 (video). "The autobiography, both real and imaginary, of Marina Abramović...."
• Interview with Bernard Goy for Journal of Contemporary Art, June 1990
• Marina Abramović, The Hero (for Antonio) – 2001. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain: NMAC Foundation.
• Marina Abramović, Human Nests – 2001. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain: NMAC Foundation.
• Marina Abramović Institute, San Francisco, California, USA.
• Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces, November 9–15, 2005, 5PM to 12AM. New Way: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
• Mediateca Media Art Space documentary archive with biography, works, and references.
• Rosenberg, Karen. Provocateur: Marina Abramović (interview). New York magazine, December 4, 2005.
• Lisson Gallery Marina Abramović artist page. Including works, bio, exhibitions and catalogues
• Sean Kelly Gallery artist page with biography, works, press, exhibitions, and catalogues.
• Spector, Nancy. Marina Abramović, Rhythm 5, 1974, published 1994. Guggenheim collection online.
• "Marina" the feature documentary film
• Interview, March 2010, with Robert Ayers at A Sky filled with Shooting Stars.
• Arthur C. Danto, "Sitting with Marina", New York Times, 2010/05/23
• Vice magazine interview, November 2010.
• 2011 James T. Demetrion Lecture: "How Performance Art is Entering the History of Art", press release, March 9, 2011, Hirschorn Museum, Washington, DC, USA; lecture April 5, 2011.
• Conversation: Marina Abramovic, interview with Jeffrey Brown, PBS Newshour Art Beat, April 8, 2011; transcript and video. Link: The Hirshhorn conducted a Twitter forum with Abramovic in late March; Q&A here.
• Tate: Meet the Artist: Marina Abramovic The artist talks about her performance practice. January 29, 2009.
• | EAI Artist biography and list of video works.

Yoko Ono 小野 洋子
Yoko Ono at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, Brazil
Background information
Born	(1933-02-18) February 18, 1933 (age 79) Tokyo, Japan
Genres	Avant-garde, rock, pop, electronica, Shibuya kei, Fluxus, dance
Occupations	Artist, film director, peace activist
Instruments	Vocals, piano
Years active	1961–present
Labels	Apple, Geffen, Polydor, Rykodisc, Astralwerks, Chimera Music
Associated acts	John Lennon Plastic Ono Band

Yoko Ono (オノ・ヨーコ（小野 洋子）, Ono Yōko^?, born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese^[1] artist, author, and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon. Ono brought feminism to the forefront in her music which prefigured New Wave music and is known for her philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace and AIDS outreach programs.

Early life[link]

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933 to mother Isoko Ono, the great-granddaughter of Zenjiro Yasuda of the Yasuda banking family, and to father Yeisuke Ono, a banker and one-time classical pianist^[2] who was a descendant of an Emperor of Japan.^[3] The name "Yoko" means "ocean child".^[4][5] Two weeks before she was born, her father was transferred to San Francisco by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank.^[6] The rest of the family followed soon after and Yoko met her father when she was two.^[2] Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936. In 1937, her father was transferred back to Japan and Ono was enrolled at Tokyo's Gakushuin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan.^[6]

In 1940, the family moved to New York City, where Ono's father was working. In 1941, her father was transferred to Hanoi and the family returned to Japan. Ono was then enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo through the great fire-bombing of March 9, 1945. During the fire-bombing, she was sheltered with other members of her family in a special bunker in the Azabu district of Tokyo, far from the heavy bombing. After the bombing, Ono went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family.

Ono has said that she and her family were forced to beg for food while pulling their belongings in a wheelbarrow; and it was during this period in her life that Ono says she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status when children taunted her and her brother, who were once well-to-do. Other stories have her mother bringing a large number of goods with them to the countryside which they bartered for food. One famous anecdote has her mother bartering a German-made sewing machine for sixty kilograms of rice with which to feed the family. Her father remained in the city and, unbeknownst to them, was believed to have been eventually incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp in China. In an interview by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman on October 16, 2007, Ono explained, "He was in French Indochina which is Vietnam actually... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp."

By April 1946, Gakushuin was reopened and Ono was enrolled. The school, located near the imperial palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Akihito, the future emperor of Japan.^[7] She graduated in 1951 and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University, the first woman to enter the department. However, after two semesters, she left the school.^[6]

Education and marriages[link]

Ono's family moved to Scarsdale, New York, after the war. She left Japan to rejoin the family and enrolled in nearby Sarah Lawrence College. While her parents approved of her college choice, they were dismayed at her lifestyle, and, according to Ono, chastised her for befriending people they considered to be "beneath" her. In spite of this, Ono loved meeting artists, poets and others who represented the "bohemian" freedom she longed for herself. Visiting galleries and art "happenings" in the city whetted her desire to publicly display her own artistic endeavors. La Monte Young, her first important contact in the New York art world, helped Ono start her career by using her Chambers Street loft in Tribeca as a performance space. At one performance, Ono set a painting on fire; fortunately John Cage had advised her to treat the paper with flame retardant.

In 1956, she married composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. They divorced in 1962 after living apart for several years. On November 28 that same year, Ono married an American named Anthony Cox. Cox was a jazz musician, film producer and art promoter. He had heard of Ono in New York and tracked her down to a mental institution in Japan, where her family had placed her following a suicide attempt. Ono had neglected to finalize her divorce from Ichiyanagi, so their marriage was annulled on March 1, 1963, and Cox and Ono married again on June 6. Their daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, was born two months later on August 8, 1963.^[8]

The marriage quickly fell apart, but the Coxes stayed together for the sake of their joint career. They performed at Tokyo's Sogetsu Hall with Ono lying atop a piano played by John Cage. Soon the Coxes returned to New York with Kyoko. In the early years of this marriage, Ono left most of Kyoko's parenting to Cox while she pursued her art full-time and Tony managed publicity. After she divorced Cox on February 2, 1969, Ono and Cox engaged in a bitter legal battle for custody of Kyoko, which resulted in Ono's being awarded full custody. However, in 1971, Cox disappeared with eight-year-old Kyoko, in violation of the custody order. Cox subsequently became a Christian and raised Kyoko in a Christian group known as the Church of the Living Word (or "the Walk"). Cox left the group with Kyoko in 1977. Living an underground existence, Cox changed the girl's name to Rosemary. Cox and Kyoko sent Ono a sympathy message after Lennon's 1980 murder. Afterwards, the bitterness between the parents lessened slightly and Ono publicly announced in People Magazine that she would no longer seek out the now-adult Kyoko, but still wished to make contact with her. In 1994, Kyoko made contact with Ono and established a relationship.^[9]

Artwork[link]

Wish Tree for Washington, DC by Yoko Ono. Live tree and mixed media, 2007.

Ono was a sometime member of Fluxus, a loose association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists that developed in the early 1960s. Fluxus founder George Maciunas, a friend of Ono's during the 1960s, admired her work and promoted it with enthusiasm. One of Ono's well known examples is when she took a fly as her alter ego and was inspired by this for her work.^[10] Maciunas invited Ono to join the Fluxus group, but she declined because she wanted to remain an independent artist.^[11] John Cage was one of the most important influences on Ono's performance art. It was her relationship to Ichiyanagi Toshi, who was a pupil of John Cage's legendary class of Experimental Composition at the New School, that would introduce her to the unconventional avant-garde, neo-Dadaism of John Cage and his protégés in New York City.

Almost immediately after John Cage finished teaching at the New School for Social Research in the summer of 1960, Ono was determined to rent a place to present her works along with the work of other New York avant-garde artists. She eventually found a cheap loft in downtown Manhattan at 112 Chambers Street that she used as a studio and living space.^[12] Composer La Monte Young urged Ono to let him organize concerts in the loft, and Ono agreed.^[12] Both artists began organizing a series of events in Ono's loft, and both Young and Ono claimed to have been the primary curator of these events,^[13] but Ono claims to have been eventually pushed into a subsidiary role by Young.^[14] The Chambers Street series hosted some of Ono's earliest conceptual artwork including Painting to Be Stepped On, which was a scrap of canvas on the floor that became a completed artwork upon the accrual of footprints. Ono suggested that a work of art no longer needed to be mounted on a wall, inaccessible, but an irregular piece of canvas to be completed by being stepped on by viewers

Ono was an explorer of conceptual art and performance art. An example of her performance art is "Cut Piece" (this instance of performance art is also known as a "happening"), first performed in 1964 at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. Cut Piece had one destructive verb as its instruction: "Cut." Ono executed the performance in Tokyo by walking on stage and casually kneeling on the floor in a draped garment. Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting until she was naked. Ono performed this piece again in London and other venues, garnering drastically different attention depending on the audience. In Japan, the audience was typically shy and cautious, while London participators were a bit more zealous.

An example of her conceptual art includes her book of instructions called Grapefruit. First published in 1964, the book includes surreal, Zen-like instructions that are to be completed in the mind of the reader, for example: "Hide and seek Piece: Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies." An example of Heuristic art, Grapefruit was published several times, most widely distributed by Simon and Schuster in 1971, and reprinted by them again in 2000. Many of the scenarios in the book would be enacted as performance pieces throughout Ono's career and have formed the basis for her art exhibitions, including one highly publicized show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, that was nearly closed when besieged by excited Beatle fans who broke several of the art pieces and flooded the toilets.^[15]

In addition to conceptual art, Ono has also created participatory art, including her 1996 project entitled "Wish Tree" in Japan.

"Wish Piece by Yoko Ono (1996)

Make a wish

Write it down on a piece of paper

Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree

Ask your friends to do the same

Keep wishing

Until the branches are covered with wishes".^[16]

Ono was also an experimental filmmaker who made sixteen films between 1964 and 1972, and gained particular renown for a 1966 Fluxus film called simply No. 4, but often referred to as "Bottoms."^[17] The film consists of a series of close-ups of human buttocks as the subject walks on a treadmill. The screen is divided into four almost equal sections by the elements of the gluteal cleft and the horizontal gluteal crease. The soundtrack consists of interviews with those who are being filmed as well as those considering joining the project. In 1996, the watch manufacturing company Swatch produced a limited edition watch that commemorates this film. (Ono also acted in an obscure exploitation film in 1965, Satan's Bed.)^[18]

Contributions to Yoko Ono's Wish Tree

John Lennon once described her as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does."^[19] Her circle of friends in the New York art world has included Kate Millett, Nam June Paik, Dan Richter, Jonas Mekas, Merce Cunningham, Judith Malina, Erica Abeel, Fred DeAsis, Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Rollin, Shusaku Arakawa, Adrian Morris, Stefan Wolpe, Keith Haring, and Andy Warhol, as well as Maciunas and Young.

In 2001, YES YOKO ONO, a forty-year retrospective of Ono's work, received the prestigious International Association of Art Critics USA Award for Best Museum Show Originating in New York City, considered one of the highest accolades in the museum profession. In 2002 Ono was awarded the Skowhegan Medal for work in assorted media.^[20] In 2005 she received a lifetime achievement award from the Japan Society of New York.^[21]

Ono received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Liverpool University in 2001. In 2002, she was presented with the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Bard College.^[22]

In 2008, she showed a large retrospective exhibition, Between The Sky And My Head, at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK.

In 2009, she showed a selection of new and old work as part of her show "Anton's Memory" in Venice, Italy.^[23] She also received a Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009.^[24]

Wish Tree, her installation in the Sculpture Garden – Museum of Modern Art, New York (since July 2010), has become very popular with contributions from all over the world.

In 2012, Ono was the winner of the 2012 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's highest award for applied contemporary art.^[25]

Life with John Lennon[link]

Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. According to the first, on 9 November 1966 Lennon went to the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar.^[26] Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono had supposedly not heard of The Beatles, but relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in."^[27] The second version, told by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on called Notations. McCartney declined to give her any of his own manuscripts, but suggested that Lennon might oblige. When asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".^[28]

Ono began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit".^[29] In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn."^[30] When Lennon's wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi."^[31] Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968,^[32] a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.^[33]

During Lennon's last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry,^[34] so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance".^[35] They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in The Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko".^[36] Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth.^[37] After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on The Beatles' last album, Abbey Road.^[38]

Ono and Lennon collaborated on many albums, beginning in 1968 when Lennon was still a Beatle, with Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, an album of experimental electronic music. That same year, the couple contributed an experimental piece to The White Album called "Revolution 9." Ono also contributed backing vocals (on "Birthday"), and one line of lead vocals (on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill") to The White Album. Many of the couple's later albums were released under the name the Plastic Ono Band. The couple also appeared together at concerts. When Lennon was invited to play with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore on June 5, 1971, Ono joined in as well.

Lennon and Yoko recording "Give Peace a Chance".

In 1969, the Plastic Ono Band's first album, Live Peace in Toronto 1969, was recorded during the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival. In addition to Lennon and Ono, this first incarnation of the group consisted of guitarist Eric Clapton, bass player Klaus Voormann, and drummer Alan White. The first half of their performance consisted of rock standards, and during the second half, Ono took the microphone and along with the band performed an avant garde set, ending with music that consisted mainly of feedback, while Ono screamed and sang.^[39]

Ono released her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in 1970, as a companion piece to Lennon's better-known John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The two albums have almost identical covers: Ono's featured a photo of her leaning on Lennon, and Lennon's had a photo of him leaning on Ono. Her album included raw and quite harsh vocals that were possibly influenced by Japanese opera, but bear much in common with sounds in nature (especially those made by animals) and free jazz techniques used by wind and brass players. The performers included Ornette Coleman and other renowned free jazz performers. The personnel was supplemented by John Lennon, Ringo Starr and minor performers. Some songs consisted of wordless vocalizations, in a style that would influence Meredith Monk, and other musical artists who have used screams and vocal noise in lieu of words. The album peaked at No. 183 on the US charts.

In 1971, Ono released Fly – a double album. On this release Ono explored slightly more conventional psychedelic rock with tracks like "Midsummer New York" and "Mind Train," in addition to a number of Fluxus experiments. She also received minor airplay with the ballad "Mrs. Lennon". Perhaps the most famous track from the album is "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)," an ode to Ono's kidnapped daughter.

In 1971, while studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Majorca, Ono's second husband, Anthony Cox, accused Ono of abducting their daughter Kyoko from his hotel. A large number of accusations were then made by both parents toward each other and the matter of custody. Cox eventually moved to Houston, Texas, and converted to Evangelical Christianity with his new wife, who was originally from Houston. At the end of 1971, a custody hearing in Houston went against Cox. In violation of the order, he took Kyoko and disappeared.^{[citation needed]} Ono then launched a search for her daughter with the aid of the police and private investigators.^[40] Ono wrote a song about her daughter, "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)," which appears on Lennon and Ono's album Live Peace In Toronto 1969 and her album Fly. Both versions feature Eric Clapton on guitar. Kyoko is also referenced on the first line of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" when Yoko whispers "Happy Christmas Kyoko" followed by Lennon whispering "Happy Christmas Julian."

John Lennon & Yoko Ono by Jack Mitchell, 1980

Both the press and the public were critical of her. She was blamed for the breakup of The Beatles and repeatedly criticized for her influence over Lennon and his music. Her experimental art was not popularly understood.^[2] After the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono cohabited in London and then in New York. Their relationship was strained by the threat of deportation Lennon faced (due to drug charges filed in Britain), and Ono's separation from her daughter. The couple separated in 1973 and the two began living separate lives, Ono pursuing her career in New York and Lennon living in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang in a period commonly referred to as his "lost weekend."

In 1975, the couple reconciled. Their son, Sean, was born on Lennon's 35th birthday, October 9, 1975. After Sean's birth, the couple lived in relative seclusion at the Dakota in New York. Sean has since followed in his parents' footsteps with a musical career, doing solo work and also forming a band The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.^[41]

John Lennon retired from music to become a househusband caring for their child, until shortly before his murder in December 1980, which Ono witnessed at close range. Ono has stated that the couple were thinking about going out to dinner (after spending several hours in a recording studio), but were returning to their apartment instead, because John wanted to see Sean before he was put to bed.^[42] Following the murder, Ono went into complete seclusion for an extended period.

Following Lennon's murder, Cox and Kyoko sent a message of sympathy to Ono, but did not reveal their location. Ono later printed an open letter to Kyoko saying how she missed her, but that she would cease her attempts to find her.^[43] Kyoko would later appear on the 1987 title track of American English by the British pop band Wax.

Memorials[link]

Yoko Ono delivering flowers to Lennon's memorial in 2005.

Ono funded the construction and maintenance of the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York City's Central Park, across from where they lived and Lennon died. It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985, what would have been his 45th birthday. In 1990, Ono collaborated with music consultant Jeff Pollack to honor what would've been Lennon's 50th birthday with a worldwide broadcast of "Imagine". Over one thousand stations in over fifty countries participated in the simultaneous broadcast. Ono felt the timing was perfect considering the escalating conflicts in the Middle East as well as Eastern Europe and Germany.^[44] In 2000, she founded the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Saitama, Japan. On October 9, 2007, Ono dedicated a new memorial called the Imagine Peace Tower, located on the island of Viðey, 1 km outside the Skarfabakki harbour in Reykjavík in Iceland. Each year, between October 9 and December 8, it projects a vertical beam of light high into the sky. In 2009, Ono created an exhibit called John Lennon: THE NEW YORK CITY YEARS for the NYC Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. The exhibit uses music, photographs and personal items to depict Lennon's life in New York. A portion of the cost of each ticket to the exhibition is donated to Spirit Foundation, a charitable foundation set up by Lennon and Ono.^[45]

Musical career[link]

Ono collaborated with experimental luminaries such as John Cage and jazz legend Ornette Coleman. In 1961, years before meeting Lennon, she had her first major public performance in a concert at the 258-seat Carnegie Recital Hall (not the larger "Main Hall"). This concert featured radical experimental music and performances. She had a second engagement at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965, in which she debuted "Cut Piece."^[46]

In early 1980, Lennon heard Lene Lovich and The B-52's' "Rock Lobster" in a nightclub, and it reminded him of Ono's musical sound. He took this as an indication that her sound had reached the mainstream.^[47] Indeed, many musicians, particularly those of the new wave movement, have paid tribute to Ono (both as an artist in her own right, and as a muse and iconic figure). For example, Elvis Costello recorded a version of Ono's song "Walking on Thin Ice," the B-52's who drew from her early recordings^[2] covered "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" (shortening the title to "Don't Worry") and Sonic Youth included a performance of Ono's early conceptual "Voice Piece for Soprano" in their experimental album SYR4: Goodbye 20th century. One of Barenaked Ladies's best-known songs is "Be My Yoko Ono", and Dar Williams recorded a song called "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono." The punk rock singer Patti Smith invited Ono to participate in "Meltdown," a two-week music festival that Smith organized in London; Ono performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

On December 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were in the studio working on Ono's song Walking on Thin Ice. When they returned to The Dakota, their home in New York City, Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan who had been stalking Lennon for two months. "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" was released as a single less than a month later, and became Ono's first chart success, peaking at No. 58 and gaining major underground airplay. In 1981, she released the album Season of Glass with the striking cover photo of Lennon's bloody spectacles next to a half-filled glass of water, with a window overlooking Central Park in the background. This photograph sold at an auction in London in April 2002 for about $13,000. In the liner notes to Season of Glass, Ono explained that the album is not dedicated to Lennon because "he would have been offended—he was one of us." The album received highly favorable reviews^[2] and reflected the public's mood after Lennon's assassination.^[48]

Four months after her husband's murder, Ono began a relationship with antiques dealer and interior designer Sam Havadtoy, which lasted until 2001. She had also been linked to art dealer and Greta Garbo confidante Sam Green, who is mentioned in Lennon's will.^[49] In 1982, she released It's Alright (I See Rainbows). The cover featured Ono in her famous wrap-around sunglasses, looking towards the sun, while on the back the ghost of Lennon looks over her and their son. The album scored minor chart success and airplay with the singles "My Man" and "Never Say Goodbye".

In 1984, a tribute album titled Every Man Has a Woman was released, featuring a selection of Ono songs performed by artists such as Elvis Costello, Roberta Flack, Eddie Money, Rosanne Cash and Harry Nilsson. It was one of Lennon's projects that he never got to finish. Later that year, Ono and Lennon's final album, Milk and Honey, was released as an unfinished demo.

Ono's final album of the 1980s was Starpeace, a concept album that she intended as an antidote to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. On the cover, a warm, smiling Ono holds the Earth in the palm of her hand. Starpeace became Ono's most successful non-Lennon effort: the single "Hell in Paradise" was a hit, reaching No. 16 on the US dance charts and No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 as well as major airplay on MTV.

In 1986, Ono set out on a goodwill world tour for Starpeace, mostly visiting Eastern European countries.

Ono went on hiatus until signing with Rykodisc in 1992 to release the comprehensive six-disc box set Onobox. It included remastered highlights from all of Ono's solo albums, as well as unreleased material from the 1974 "lost weekend" sessions. There was also a one-disc "greatest hits" release of highlights from Onobox, simply titled Walking on Thin Ice. That year, she agreed to sit down for an extensive interview with music journalist Mark Kemp for a cover story in the alternative music magazine Option. The story took a revisionist look at Ono's music for a new generation of fans more accepting of her role as a pioneer in the merger of pop and the avant-garde.

In 1994, Ono produced her own musical entitled New York Rock, featuring Broadway renditions of her songs. In 1995, she released Rising, a collaboration with her son Sean and his band, Ima. Rising spawned a world tour that traveled through Europe, Japan and the United States. The following year, she collaborated with various alternative rock musicians for an EP entitled Rising Mixes. Guest remixers of Rising material included Cibo Matto, Ween, Tricky, and Thurston Moore.

In 1997, Rykodisc reissued all her solo albums on CD, from Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band through Starpeace. Ono and her engineer Rob Stevens personally remastered the audio, and various bonus tracks were added including outtakes, demos and live cuts.

2001 saw the release of Ono's feminist concept album Blueprint for a Sunrise. In 2002, Yoko joined The B-52's in New York for their 25th anniversary concerts. She came out for the encore and performed Rock Lobster with the band. Starting in 2002, some DJs remixed other Ono songs for dance clubs. For the remix project, she dropped her first name and became known as simply "ONO," as a response to the "Oh, no!" jokes that dogged her throughout her career. Ono had great success with new versions of "Walking on Thin Ice", remixed by top DJs and dance artists including Pet Shop Boys, Orange Factory, Peter Rauhofer, and Danny Tenaglia. In April 2003, Ono's Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes) was rated No. 1 on Billboard Magazine's "Dance/Club Play Chart", gaining Ono her first number one hit. On the 12" mix of the original 1981 version of "Walking on Thin Ice", Lennon can be heard remarking "I think we've just got your first No.1, Yoko." She returned to No. 1 on the same charts in November 2004 with "Everyman...Everywoman...," a reworking of her song "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him", in January 2008, with "No No No," and in August 2008, with "Give Peace a Chance." In June 2009, at the age of 76, Ono scored her fifth No. 1 hit on the "Dance/Club Play Chart" with "I'm Not Getting Enough."

Ono released the album Yes, I'm a Witch in 2007, a collection of remixes and covers from her back catalog by various artists including The Flaming Lips, Cat Power, Antony, DJ Spooky, Porcupine Tree and Peaches, released in February 2007, along with a special edition of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.^[50] Yes I'm a Witch has been critically well-received.^[51] A similar compilation of Ono dance remixes entitled Open Your Box was also released in April of that year.^[52]

In 2009, Ono recorded Between My Head and the Sky, her first album to be released as "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band" since 1973's Feeling the Space. The all-new Plastic Ono Band lineup includes Sean Lennon, Cornelius and Yuka Honda amongst others. On February 16, 2010, Sean organized a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music called "We Are Plastic Ono Band," at which Yoko performed her music with Sean, Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Jim Keltner, for the first time since the 1970s. Guests including Bette Midler, Paul Simon and his son Harper, and principal members of Sonic Youth interpreted her songs in their own styles.^[53]

During her career, Ono has collaborated with a diverse group of artists and musicians including John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada, Naoki Shimizu and Yoko Araki), Frank Zappa, Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda, Jim Keltner, Earl Slick, Peaches, John Cage, David Tudor, George Maciunas, Ornette Coleman, Charlotte Moorman, George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, Jonas Mekas, Fred DeAsis, Yvonne Rainer, La Monte Young, Richard Maxfield, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Yo La Tengo, and Andy Warhol (in 1987 Ono was one of the speakers at Warhol's funeral). As a dance music artist, Ono has worked with re-mixers/producers such as Basement Jaxx, Pet Shop Boys, Cat Power, Bill Kates, Tricky, Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino, Nick Vernier Band, Cibo Matto, Billy Martin, DJ Spooky, Apples In Stereo, Damien Price, The Flaming Lips, DJ Chernobyl, Bimbo Jones, DJ Dan, Craig Armstrong, Jorge Artajo, Shuji Nabara, and Konrad Behr, among others.

2000s[link]

At the Liverpool Biennial in 2004, Yoko flooded the city with banners, bags, stickers, postcards, flyers, posters and badges, with two images: one of a woman's naked breast, the other of the same woman's vulva. The piece, titled "My Mummy Was Beautiful", was dedicated to Lennon's mother, Julia, who had died when Lennon was a teenager. According to Ono, the work was meant to be innocent, not shocking. She was attempting to replicate the experience of a baby looking up at his or her mother's body: the mother's pudendum and breasts are a child's introduction to humanity. It was created in the spirit of, and seems inspired by Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde.^{[citation needed]}

The Dakota, Ono's residence since 1973

Ono performed at the opening ceremony for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy,^[54] wearing white, like many of the others who performed during the ceremony, to symbolize the snow that makes the Winter Olympics possible. She read a free verse poem calling for peace in the world. The poem was an intro to a performance of the song "Imagine", Lennon's anthem to world peace.

On December 13, 2006, Ono's bodyguard was arrested after he was taped trying to extort Ono for two million dollars, threatening to release private conversations and photographs.^[55]

On June 26, 2007, Ono appeared on Larry King Live along with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Olivia Harrison. Ono headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 14, 2007, performing a full set that mixed music and performance art. She sang "Mulberry", a song about her time in the countryside after the Japanese collapse in World War II for only the third time in her life, with Thurston Moore. Ono had previously performed the song once with John Lennon and once with Sean Lennon and told the audience of thousands that she will never perform it again.^{[citation needed]}

On October 9, 2007 Ono officially lit the Imagine Peace Tower on Viðey Island in Iceland, dedicated to peace and to Lennon.

Ono returned to Liverpool for the 2008 Liverpool Biennial, where she unveiled "Sky Ladders" in the ruins of Church of St Luke, Liverpool (which was largely destroyed during World War II and now stands roofless as a memorial to those killed in the Liverpool Blitz).^[56]

In May 2009, Yoko designed a T-shirt for the second 'Fashion against AIDS' campaign/collection of HIV/AIDS awareness NGO Designers against AIDS and H&M, with the statement 'Imagine Peace' depicted in 21 different languages.^[57]

On March 31, 2009, Yoko Ono went to the inauguration of the exhibition: "Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko" to mark the 40th anniversary of Lennon-Ono bed-in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada from May 26 to June 2, 1969.^{[citation needed]}

Ono appeared on-stage at Microsoft's June 1, 2009 E3 press conference with Olivia Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to promote The Beatles: Rock Band video game.^[58]

Ono appears on the new Basement Jaxx album Scars, featuring on the single "Day of the Sunflowers (We March On)".^[59]

2010s[link]

On February 16, 2010, Ono revived an early Plastic Ono Band line-up with Eric Clapton and special guests including Paul Simon and Bette Midler.^[60] (See "Musical career" above.) On April 1, 2010, she was named the first "Global Autism Ambassador" by the Autism Speaks organization.^[61] Ono appeared with Ringo Starr on July 7, 2010 at New York's Radio City Music Hall in celebration of Starr's 70th birthday, performing "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Give Peace a Chance".^[62] On October 2, 2010, Ono and the Plastic Ono Band performed at The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, California with special guest Lady GaGa.^[63]

On her 78th Birthday, February 18, 2011, Ono took out a full page advert in the UK free newspaper Metro for 'Imagine Peace 2011'. It took the form of an open letter, inviting people to think of, and wish for, peace.^[64] With son Sean, she held a benefit concert to aid in the relief efforts for earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan on March 27 in New York City.^[65] In July 2011, Ono was awarded the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her contributions in art and for peace.^[66] In December 2011, she was awarded the Austrian 20,000-euro ($26,100) Oskar-Kokoschka-Prize.^[67]

Political activism[link]

Since the 1960s, Ono has been an activist for peace and human rights. After their wedding, Lennon and Ono held a "Bed-In for Peace" in their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel in March 1969. The press fought to get in, presuming that the two would be having sex for their cameras, but they instead found a pair of newlyweds wearing pajamas and eager to talk about and promote world peace. Another Bed-In in May 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth Fairmont in Montreal, Canada, resulted in the recording of their first single, "Give Peace A Chance", a Top 20 hit for the newly christened Plastic Ono Band. Other demonstrations with John included Bagism. Introduced in Vienna, Bagism encouraged a disregard for physical appearance in judging others.

In the 1970s, Ono and Lennon became close to many radical leaders, including Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Michael X, John Sinclair (for whom they organized a benefit after he was imprisoned), Angela Davis, Kate Millett, and David Peel. They appeared on The Mike Douglas Show and took over hosting duties for a week, during which Ono spoke at length about the evils of racism and sexism. Ono remained outspoken in her support of feminism, and openly bitter about the racism she had experienced from rock fans, especially in the United Kingdom. For example, an Esquire article of the period was titled "John Rennon's Excrusive Gloupie" and featured an unflattering David Levine cartoon.

In 2002, Ono inaugurated her own peace award, The LennonOno Grant for Peace, by giving $50,000 (£31,900) prize money to artists living "in regions of conflict." Israeli and Palestinian artists were the first recipients. The award is given out every two years, in conjunction with the lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower.^[68]

On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2003, on the eve of the Iraqi invasion by the Americans and the British, Ono heard about a romantic couple holding a love-in protest in their tiny bedroom in Addingham, West Yorkshire. She sent the couple, Andrew and Christine Gale, some flowers and wished them the best.^[69]

In 2004, Ono remade her song "Everyman... Everywoman..." to support same-sex marriage, releasing remixes that included "Every Man Has a Man Who Loves Him" and "Every Woman Has a Woman Who Loves Her."

Relationship with Paul McCartney[link]

In 2005, Ono said, "People like to picture Paul and me in a boxing ring, feuding all the time, otherwise it's not exciting or interesting for them. People need light-hearted topics like me and Paul fighting to escape all the horror of the world, but it's not true anymore."^[70] However, they have publicly disagreed on several issues.

In late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on.^[71] She met McCartney who declined to give her any of his own manuscripts for the book. John Lennon later gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word", which were subsequently reproduced in Cage's book Notations published in 1969.^[28]

Writing credit on Beatles songs was another issue. While the group was together, every song written by Lennon or McCartney was credited as Lennon–McCartney regardless of whether the song was a collaboration or written solely by one of the two (except for those appearing on their first album, Please Please Me, which credited the songs to McCartney–Lennon). In 1976, McCartney released a live album called Wings Over America which credited the five Beatles tracks he included as P. McCartney–J. Lennon compositions. Neither Lennon nor Ono objected. After Lennon's death, McCartney once again attempted to change the order to "McCartney–Lennon" for songs such as "Yesterday" that were solely or predominantly written by him,^[72] but Ono would not allow it, saying she felt this broke an agreement that the two had made while Lennon was still alive. However, McCartney argued that such an agreement never existed. The two other Beatles agreed that the credits should remain as they always had been and McCartney withdrew his request. On the 1998 John Lennon anthology, Lennon Legend, the composer credit of "Give Peace a Chance" was changed to "John Lennon" from its original composing credit of Lennon–McCartney. Although the song was written by Lennon during his tenure with the Beatles it was both written and recorded without the help of the band and released as Lennon's first independent single under the "Plastic Ono Band" moniker. Lennon subsequently expressed regret that he had not given co-writing credit to Ono instead, who actually helped him write the song.^[73] In 2002, McCartney released another live album, Back in the U.S. Live 2002, and the 19 Beatles' songs included are described as "composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon".

In 1995, after the Beatles released Lennon's "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" with demos provided by Ono, McCartney and his family collaborated with her and Sean Lennon to create the song "Hiroshima Sky is Always Blue", which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of that Japanese city. Of Ono, McCartney stated: "I thought she was a cold woman. I think that's wrong ... she's just the opposite ... I think she's just more determined than most people to be herself."

In 1997, Ono compared Lennon to Mozart while McCartney, she said, more closely resembled his less-talented rival Salieri.^[74] This remark infuriated Linda McCartney, who was battling breast cancer at the time. When she died less than a year later, McCartney pointedly did not invite Ono to a New York memorial service for her.^[75]

Accepting an award at the 2005 Q Awards, Ono mentioned that Lennon had once felt insecure about his songwriting, and asked her why other musicians "always cover Paul's songs, and never mine".^[70] Ono had responded, "You're a good songwriter; it's not June with spoon that you write. You're a good singer, and most musicians are probably a little bit nervous about covering your songs".^[76] McCartney responded by saying, "I don’t take any notice of her. She’s John’s wife so I have to respect her for that, but I don’t think she’s the brightest of buttons. She’s said some particularly daft things in her time. Her life is dedicated to putting me down but I attempt very strongly not to put her down."^[77] Ono later issued a statement claiming she did not mean any offense, as her comment was an attempt to console her husband, not attack McCartney; she went on to insist that she respected McCartney and that it was the press who had taken her comments out of context. "^[70] At the June 2006 Las Vegas premiere of Cirque du Soleil's Beatles performance "Love", pictures were taken of her and Paul hugging. They appeared again together in July 2007 for the show's first anniversary.

Relationship with Cynthia Lennon[link]

Ono's relationship with John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Lennon remains strained. In her 2006 biography, John, (London: Hodder; U.S.: Crown Publishing) Cynthia Lennon portrays Ono as a selfish, spiteful woman. In the book, she describes learning about Ono's control over John (who referred to Ono as "mother") in the period in the mid-1970s when Ono chose May Pang to be John's companion. Cynthia hypothesizes that John had a "mother complex," allowing himself to be dominated by strong women and draws a parallel between his relationship with Ono and that with his domineering aunt Mimi Smith in childhood.^{[verification needed]}

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

(number indicates U.S. chart peak positions)

• Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970) No. 182
• Fly (1971) No. 199
• Approximately Infinite Universe (1972) No. 193
• Feeling the Space (1973)
• A Story (1974) (Unreleased until 1997)
• Season of Glass (1981) No. 49
• It's Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982) No. 98
• Starpeace (1985)
• Rising (1995)
• Blueprint for a Sunrise (2001)
• Yes, I'm a Witch (2007)
• Open Your Box (2007)
• Between My Head and the Sky (2009)

Albums with John Lennon[link]

• Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins (1968) No. 124
• Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions (1969) No. 174
• Wedding Album (1969) No. 178
• Live Peace in Toronto 1969 (1969) No. 10
• Some Time in New York City (1972) No. 48
• Double Fantasy (1980) No. 1
• Milk and Honey (1984) No. 11

Compilations, Soundtrack albums and EPs[link]

• Onobox (1992)
• Walking on Thin Ice (1992)
• New York Rock (1994) (Original cast recording)
• Rising Mixes (1996)
• Don't Stop Me! EP (2009)

Tribute albums[link]

• Every Man Has a Woman (1984)
• Mrs. Lennon (2010)

Singles[link]

B-Side appearances on John Lennon singles[link]

• "Remember Love" (on "Give Peace a Chance") (1969)
• "Don't Worry, Kyoko" (on "Cold Turkey") (1969)
• "Who Has Seen the Wind?" (on "Instant Karma!") (1970)
• "Why" (on "Mother") (1971)
• "Open Your Box" (on "Power to the People") (1971)
• "Listen, the Snow is Falling" (on "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)") (1971)
• "Sisters O Sisters" (on "Woman Is the Nigger of the World") (1972)
• "Kiss Kiss Kiss" (on "(Just Like) Starting Over") (1980)
• "Beautiful Boys" (on "Woman") (1981)
• "Yes, I'm Your Angel" (on "Watching the Wheels") (1981)
• "O'Sanity" (on "Nobody Told Me") (1984)
• "Your Hands (あなたの手）" (on "Borrowed Time") (1984)
• "Sleepless Night" (on "I'm Stepping Out") (1984)
• "It's Alright" (on "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him") (1985)

Bibliography[link]

• Grapefruit (1964)
• Summer of 1980 (1983)
• ただの私 (Tada-no Watashi – Just Me!) (1986)
• The John Lennon Family Album (1990)
• Instruction Paintings (1995)
• Grapefruit Juice (1998)
• YES YOKO ONO (2000)
• Odyssey of a Cockroach (2005)
• Imagine Yoko (2005)
• Memories of John Lennon (editor) (2005)

Films[link]

• Satans Bed (as an actress)
• Eye blink (1966, 5 mins)
• Bottoms (1966, 5½ mins)
• Match (1966, 5 mins)
• Cut Piece (1965, 9 mins)
• Wrapping Piece (1967, approx. 20 mins., music by Delia Derbyshire)
• Film No. 4 (Bottoms) (1966/1967, 80 mins)
• Bottoms, advertisement/commercial (1966/1967, approx. 2 mins)
• Two Virgins (1968, approx. 20 mins), a portrait film: superimpositions of John’s and Yoko’s faces.
• Film No. Five (Smile) (1968, 51 mins)
• Rape (1969, 77 mins), filmed by Nick Rowland. A young woman is relentlessly pursued by a camera crew.
• Bed-In, (1969, 74 mins)
• Let It Be, (1970, 81 mins)
• Apotheosis (1970, 18½ mins)
• Freedom (1970, 1 min), a slow-motion film showing a woman attempting to take off her bra.
• Fly (1970 (25 mins), a fly crawls slowly across a woman's naked body. Made with Jonas Mekas and premiered at the Cannes film festival in May, 1971.
• Making of Fly (1970, approx. 30 mins)
• Up Your Legs Forever (1970, 70 mins), a film consisting of continuous panning shots up a series of 367 human legs.
• Erection (1971, 20 mins), a film of a hotel’s construction over many months based on still photographs by Iain McMillan.
• Imagine (1971, 70 mins)
• Sisters O Sisters (1971, 4 mins)
• Luck of the Irish (1971, approx. 4 mins)
• Flipside (TV show) (1972, approx. 25 mins)
• Blueprint for the Sunrise (2000, 28 mins)
• Onochord (2004, non ending loop).^[78]

Notes[link]