Y E S Yoko Ono (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Yoko Ono (Author), Jon Hendricks (Author), Bruce Altshuler (Author), David A. Ross (Author), Jann S. Wenner (Author), Kevin C. Concannon (Author), Reiko Tomii (Author), Murray Sayle (Author), Edward M. Gomez (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Don't be fooled by the metallic cover: although this extensively documented book finally gives Yoko Ono her due as a protean conceptual and performing artist, YES Yoko Ono is no celebrity bio. It is actually a rigorous analysis--by experts in modern Japanese and contemporary Western art, performance, video, and music--of the innovative approaches that made Ono a seminal avant-garde figure in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and continued to influence her work during the next three decades.

Ono was born in 1933 in Japan to a wealthy and pedigreed family. In her early work, the pan-artistic classical Japanese approach to culture mingles with her Zen-like search for moments of concentrated sensory experience and the anti-heroic stance of the young American artists she would meet in New York upon her arrival (with her first husband, a composer) in 1956. Also significant was her sense of herself as an outsider. She spent her early childhood in the U.S. with her family, only to be snubbed by Japanese schoolmates on her return.

In Secret Piece, from 1953, Ono wrote a musical score consisting of nothing but two half-notes in the bass line and a scribbled notation: "With the accompaniment of birds singing at dawn." It became one of the brilliantly inventive instructions for making art pieces in her 1964 book, Grapefruit, an early conceptual work. Since those heady days, she has continued to explore the possibilities, stumbling sometimes (the inert bronze sculptures of the '80s) but never abandoning her fascination with elemental feeling and observation.

YES Yoko Ono accompanies an exhibition at the Japan Society Gallery in New York (October 18, 2000, through January 14, 2001) that will travel to numerous venues in North America and Asia, beginning with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. --Cathy Curtis

From Booklist

Some, tongue-not-so-firmly-in-cheek, claim that before Yoko Ono met John Lennon, she was an obscure artist, hanging out on the fringes of the New York art world in the early '60s. Still others think of Ono with Lennon only, and their point of reference will be her work as an antiwar activist and then as a composer. But for each of the aforementioned guises one impression is ever present and can be summed up in one word--dilettante. Now comes this stunning catalog of the Ono YES exhibition that opened at the Japan Society Gallery in October and will travel to several venues for the next two years. The exhibition displays Ono's early conceptual paintings and objects, documentary photographs covering her early concert and performance work from 1961, photographs of Ono and Lennon's happenings, and her recent efforts to transform much of her early, ephemeral works into bronze. Japanese art historian Munroe is the curator and provides the introductory essay to the work of a well-trained and productive artist. Bonnie Smothers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810945878
• ISBN-13: 978-0810945876
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 10.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #773,667 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding Yoko Ono in the context of her own art, February 12, 2001

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The price of fame can be extremely high; Yoko Ono came to prominence because of her relationship to super-celebrity John Lennon. Without this association to Lennon, she'd probably be relegated to the rarified world of conceptual art and never be a household name. But the fame came at a high price; she was villified for her influence on the pop-cult Beatles and blamed for their demise. This is unfair; the Beatles would have evolved and changed without any help from Yoko Ono or Linda Eastman McCartney. And then she suffered the cruelest blow of all, to have her husband murdered by a crazed fan.

I became a fan of her art in the 60's when I read about some of her "performance" art; one favorite; she dressed herself in her best dress,gave scissors to members of an audience, sat down in a chair and encouraged them to take snips out of her dress. At first, people were shy to do so, then as one or another became bolder and snipped bits from the dress, the group became practically frenzied and she felt even worried they would go farther than just snipping a dress with the shears. A wonderful elucidation of human behavior and original; it gave new insight into ourselves and thus was truly a work of art. Other works that impressed me were photos of the bottoms of bare feet, from under a glass surface, and of course the film of buttocks, which I personally never did have a chance to see, but loved the idea of.

This book is a tremendous resource of information into Yoko Ono's varied art including her music. (No reason why a CD can't be part of a book, great idea.) This book is a fine retrospective, and I only regret that Yoko Ono will never fully take her place in modern art because of the diluting influence of pop culture on her history, and because conceptual art still has not been given the same validity as other media. (Christo perhaps is the only one to have transcended this barrier, because he sells prints of his monumentally engineered and staged concepts.)

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedia of Ono!, October 3, 2000

By A Customer

A thousand words are not enough and too many. Of the hundreds of art books I've bought, borrowed or stolen, this is the most elegant and *useful* one I've ever had. Munroe writes with economy and humor in language that crosses over boundaries between academia and the language of the gallery -- and everyone else who has wondered what sort of a book would attempt to encompass this wholly original and much maligned multimedia artist. This is the book to have!

And the CD *rocks*. I suspected that was Sean doing some of the background vocals and certainly the bass. There are no credits in the book or on the CD itself. I wonder if that was deliberate.

Buy this book. If you want your kids to know about modern art, read it to them like bedtime stories. The essays are wonderful. The photos and other reproductions of Ono's prodigious works of commercial and fine art showcase her innate sensitivity with typography as demonstrated in Grapefruit and even before that. We have treasured stills from her films, with and without her husband. And thrillingly, CLEANING PIECE, first installed in the Jerusalem Museum this year, is beautifully photographed. Yoko has arrived back at herself, and YES is the best autobiography we could have wished for. Brava Yoko Ono!

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite and thorough "art book" of a diverse artist, November 7, 2000

By	Thomas Lapins (Orlando, Florida USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

If you like Yoko Ono as an artist, poet, musician or as an individual you will find this book priceless. This book covers all the avenues in which Ono created and expressed herself. "Yes Yoko Ono" accomplishes in book form what "OnoBox" achieved on disc (an extensive collection of an extraordinary woman and artist.) The reviews, letters and material covered all provide the reader with an insightful and intelligent look at not only Yoko Ono but, also, into the darkly luminous catacombs of the creative force behind this woman. This book is multi-layered with information and photographs that will need to be read and read again and again. This will be a well in which I draw from for years to come. A book I will keep near my bed for late night readings. As Yoko grows older she reminds me more and more of Georgia O'Keeffe, another extraordinary woman and artist. I truly believe that the history books will one day recognize Ono as being as significant as the Beatles and Dylan were to our culture, except that Ono was a more diversified and cutting edge artist and thinker than her contemporaries.