by Brendan Carroll, The Jersey Journal Midori Yoshimoto is a professor of art history, gallery director, and curator. As a former employee of Jersey City Museum, I had the good fortune of working alongside Midori on several occasions. Midori routinely brought her students to the museum to visit its permanent collection, temporary exhibitions, artist talks, film [...]
Yoko Ono still wants to reconnect humanity with its long-lost id. From Fluxus to songstress, the 77-year-old has used every free-associative vocal, literary, and visual avant-garde tool at her disposal to help resuscitate the uncensored thoughts of audiences around the world. Born in 1933 in Japan, Ono was the first female artist to market experimental primal wails as legitimate music at a time when demure vulnerability was prized over a woman’s angst-ridden screams. Her proto-feminist punk, often orgasmic vocals were inspired by childbirth; musically, her spawn includes bands like Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill and the whole riot grrrl gang- who owe their flagrant embrace of the loud and the absurd to Ono’s radical displays of freedom.
An international art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Fluxus—whose name was based on the Latin word flux, meaning constant flow or change—brought together artists working in music, poetry, film, theater, and the visual arts. The movement challenged the commodification of art and favored nontraditional modes of expression, such as collective performances, inexpensive publications, and [...]
INTERNATIONAL FLUXHIBITION #3: Thinking Inside Of The Box Fluxus Boxes, Cases, Kits and Containers by Contemporary Fluxus Artists from the Permanent Collection – July 2009 by Cecil Touchon Since most of the contributing artists won’t be able to make it to the show, I have tried to make a very detailed tour around the exhibit [...]
How would you describe the current stage in your artistic practice? What’s the relationship between art and life? My life is art. Art is my life. Any hobby besides art? Do you treat art practice as your work? All that entails in life is my hobby. How would you describe change in your practice from [...]
Ben97, Jean-Patrick Berthiaume and Serge Grenier of the Neorhino party pushed their idea for a bed-in at Parliament Hill Friday. (CBC) A Quebec-based fringe party is calling on the public to protest for peace by staying in bed for a week this spring to commemorate the anniversary of a similar protest by ex-Beatle John Lennon and [...]
John Lennon was shot 28 years ago this month, but his widow, now 75, travels the world preaching peace and love in his name – and in her art. Here she tells Miranda Sawyer about begging for food as a child in wartime Japan, her two husbands before John, and the daughter who was hidden from [...]
Snapshots of a revolution Fluxus was a daring movement that spread art anarchy around the globe. Can its spirit really be captured in an exhibition? By Adrian Searle, The Guardian. Bandaged Orchestra during the Fluxus Festival arranged by Yoko Ono at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965. Photograph: Getty Images In the gloom of the [...]
Ben Patterson, Eric Andersen, Shigeko Kubota, Al Hansen, Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono, Wolf Vostell, Jean Jacques Lebel, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins & Wilhelm de Ridder. // Share|
Street Art, Street Life at Bronx Museum of Art (New York) September 14, 2008–January 25, 2009 Wandering through “Street Art, Street Life,” I’m reminded of the title of a 1971 film by Shuji Terayama, Throw Away Your Books, Let’s Go into the Streets. That phrase seems to capture the sensibility that curator Lydia Yee has zeroed in [...]
These film excerpts are courtesy of www.jonasmekas.com, where longer versions can be downloaded, some of which are free. Click on the title of the film (under its QuickTime) to link to the relevant page. Thursday June 7th, 2007 (from 365 Films) 3 min. 14 sec. On a visit to Girona, Spain, we stumble on a surprise – [...]
Fort Worth Community Arts Center 1300 Gendy St, Fort Worth, TX 76107, USA 1 Oct 2008 – 30 Oct 2008 t: (817) 738-1938 // Share|
INTERNATIONAL FLUXHIBITION #2 Fort Worth Community Arts Center 1300 Gendy St, Fort Worth, TX 76107, USA [map} Tel: (817) 738-1938. 1 Oct 2008 – 30 Oct 2008. Classic and Contemporary Scores, Instructions & Artifacts by Fluxus Artists from the FLUXmUSeum’s Permanent Collection – including works by: Marchel Duchamp, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, Ken Friedman, John Lennon, Cecil Touchon, [...]
HIGH CONCEPT by John Robinson, The Guardian, 23 April 2005. Described by her husband John Lennon as ‘the world’s most famous unknown artist’, Yoko Ono discusses her most creative moments with John Robinson The 1960s had already been fairly eventful for Yoko Ono. She’d published a book of “instructional poems”, and submerged herself in the [...]
Since the early 1960s, initially as an important if orbital member of the Fluxus movement, Yoko Ono has been making subtle and challenging works of art across a range of media. After meeting John Lennon in 1966 she was placed in a position of global celebrity that no member of the avant-garde had ever experienced [...]
MB: What was your earliest experience of making music? YO: My father, who wanted me to be a pianist, made me start practising when I was two and a half years old. At the age of four or thereabouts I was sent to Jiyu-Gakuen, where they gave you a formal music training. Up till then, [...]
After a touring retrospective and the reissue of eleven albums, it’s time to take Yoko Ono seriously While Yoko Ono is still regarded by many as the Beatles’ persona non grata, a quiet re-evaluation of her art and music has been underway for some time. A sort of subcultural logic has dictated that anyone [...]
