Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind brilliantly reframes Yoko Ono
The retrospective spotlights the ambitious, participatory works of one of the greatest conceptual artists of the last half-century…
By
Adam Wells
February 19, 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
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This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
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The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
‘This room moves at the same speed as the clouds’, reads an inscription on the entrance to Tate Modern’s Music of the Mind. As visitors walk down the hall into the first room, they are greeted by the sound of a ringing phone and a follow-up greeting (“Hello? This is Yoko”), before turning the corner to be met with super-slow-motion footage of a matchstick burning to completion - an experience either excruciating or exhilarating depending on the viewer.
Yet, listening to the introduction from curators Juliet Bingham and Andrew de Brún, this almost seems to be the point. Frequently treated either as a pop-culture punchline for the supposed vapidity of conceptual art or relegated to a supporting player in the history of another artist, it is safe to assume that many will approach Yoko Ono’s retrospective with some scepticism. Perhaps for this reason, Music of the Mind dedicates a decent portion of the exhibition to the artist’s pre-Lennon works, offering a full look back over a career spanning seven decades.
One concept which comes up a lot in the curators’ talk is that of Ono’s generosity; newly digitised photos highlight her Chamber Street Loft shows, in which the 27-year-old artist selflessly gave the apartment space over to a series of artists to spotlight and celebrate their work. The same room in which these never-before-seen photographs are projected is lined by her ‘instruction paintings’, written works which invite the viewer to conceptualise their own unique, private works in their head. In focusing on these early works, designed specifically to elicit a personalised response, the show’s themes - and even those of the artist’s entire career - are laid out. These are not works to be observed, considered, and discarded, but ones that require active engagement and consideration: conceptual art in which the viewer is also invited to conceptualise. Visitors will likely get from the exhibition what they are willing to put into it, but these early rooms go a long way in easing hardcore sceptics into the essence of Ono’s work.
Despite this - and despite its title - many visitors seemed initially reluctant to engage with Painting to be Stepped On, taking pains to walk around the cut canvas as it lay on the ground. Only once a child (after double-checking, “Can I really stand on it?”) walked across did visitors relax, engaging with the artwork and doing as instructed. From here, the floodgates opened for a show in which the audience is a key, active component, encouraged not only to interact with the artworks on display but with each other too; Painting to Shake Hands prompts visitors to reach through a torn canvas to greet the unseen stranger on the other side, while White Chess Set invites two participants to play a game with identical pieces for ‘as long as you can remember where all of your pieces are’ in perhaps the most elegant anti-war metaphor of the artist’s career.
As we make our way into Ono’s later works, the artist’s preoccupation with fragmentation takes over. The artworks aren’t completed through the participation of a single person, but are instead cumulative; visitors hammer a nail into a canvas, distorting the blank space more and more as they do, while the opportunity to have their silhouette traced onto a wall full of outlines allows them to become a fixture of the exhibition even after leaving. The exhibit inviting the most open collaboration - a pristine, white room, the walls of which visitors are encouraged to fill with their own visions for peace - is perhaps the most openly political of the works on display. A matching white boat in the centre of the room deliberately evokes the migrant crisis which inspired the piece, with the political, environmental and humanitarian calls for peace added by visitors reminding us of the causes and contexts of this human suffering.
This same section showcasing Ono’s later works also demonstrates a commendable degree of self-reflexiveness; while video footage of her infamous ‘Bed-ins for Peace’ with John Lennon is projected onto a big screen, the walls are lined with various newspaper clippings reporting the ire of the British public. As presented here, the events are transformed from performance to participatory art, in which the responses of the audience are just as much a part of the piece as the actions of those on-screen. This self-awareness goes a long way in defining Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right, bringing her out from the shadow of John Lennon which is all too often used to define her.
The medium of participatory art is perhaps the most perfectly suited to Ono’s vision of the individual as part of a fragmented whole. As visitors leave the exhibition and are invited to contribute memories and descriptions of their mothers to an ever-growing series of canvases, the exhibition succeeds in blending the personal with the communal. If the role of career retrospectives at major galleries is to provide as many people as possible with a greater understanding of the artist, then we can hope the Music of the Mind ushers in a more widespread appreciation for Yoko Ono as one of the most influential figures in participatory art.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is showing at Tate Modern until 1st September 2024
