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Curator Alexandra Munroe always give a tour of the exhibit for the invited media and guests.
Here's a transcript of what she said : .......East Asian tour last June 2003 at Samsung Museum of Modern Art in Seoul and we toured the exhibition to Japan, opening the tour at Mito Art Tower last October and from Mito it traveled to Hiroshima.
From the inception of the exhibition's development, we very much wanted to bring the exhibition to Japan. YES Yoko Ono is the first major museum retrospective in all media ever organized in the world and is the first museum exhibition ever granted to Yoko Ono in Japan.
The aim of the exhibition is twofold. The number one, we have an export and research. We are aiming to position, to establish Yoko Ono as a seminal artist in the development of the postwar international avant-garde. Over and over again, we see Yoko Ono's invention of the new forms of art, the invention of the new media beginning in her involvement with Fluxus and a kind of conceptional art that developed from the Fluxus, certain types of minimalism and minimal art, performance art, feminist art, avant-garde film-making, avant-garde music, um, as we hear here (of the?) Cough piece, this is a music piece from Yoko Ono's that (verbal??) into. Oh, it'sYoko. (The telephone rings.) (And Installation art.)
The second main purpose of the exhibition is to explore Yoko Ono as a transmitter, as a catalyst of East Asian esthetics and thought and artistic practice and international avant-garde. So throughout the exhibition, we are identifying certain forms of art. For example, the primacy of language, the use of paradox, the focus on a kind of poetic visualization. These I am arguing are a kind of East Asian, almost bunjin, almost literary sensibility that Yoko is translating and transmitting to international avant-garde. We know that that encounter was historic for the development of Fluxus and conceptional art and performance art. It is usually credited to John Cage or Nam June Paik. This transmission of a kind of Zen thinking to the international avant-garde and we are arguing that Yoko Ono was an equal transmitter, had an equal position in this historical encounter of East Asian thought and international avant-garde.
The third ambition for the exhibition has particular relevance and is so unique to Japan. We are also positioning Yoko Ono as a major artist in Japanese avant-garde and in Japanese modernism and contemporary art. A position that she has not been accorded in the conventional histories of Japanese art written here. But, in fact, much of her work was produced in Japan, in Tokyo in the sixties and she came back in the seventies and her connection with the artists of course such as her husband, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Akasegawa Genpei, Hi Red Center, And these encounters inlight need of(??) the relationships that developed in Japan, (i.e.) her relationship to Sogetsu-kaikan in 1960's is extremely important not only for Yoko's history but also for the history of postwar Japanese avant-garde.
I just want to take a moment and introduce Japan Society's president, Frank L. Ellsworth and the vice president, John K. Wheeler who have come from New York for this historical opening here in Tokyo. So thank you again.
So let's go look at some arts. .....that are arranged both chronologically and also by medium covering over 40 years of Yoko Ono's prolific creativity in many different media. This work of art, this series of works, ah, is called instructions for paintings. They were first exhibited at Sogets-kaikan in 1962 and they are extremely historic and valuable in the history of conceptional art. It is the first time at Sogetsu-kaikan that an artist has display language alone on the gallery wall as a "sakuhin", as art. Not only that but in this case, she has taken the instructions for paintings to be constructed in your headand asked her then-husband, Ichiyanagi Toshi to actually write out the instructions (in Japanese). So she is removing the artist from the art of so-called "creation".
In the history of conceptional art, the use of language is of course central. If you look at the work of Rose Arena, or Joseph Kosuth or On kawara, their works that also use language you see, they are in the service of language, occur around 1965, '66, '68. So in '62, this is highly radical. So I just want to emphasize the importance of this historically , and as the concept that we will return to over and over again in Yoko's art is the idea that the work of art is completed in the mind of the viewer. Prior to that, we had abstract expressionism, we had high orthodox art, we had paintings on the wall that are considered to be complete and the viewer was simply invited to appreciate that work of art. Yoko introduces the whole concept like music,..... that music,.... the art is to be completed and appreciated in the mind of the viewer. This is the second radical concept that Yoko introduces to art-making.
And let's look at this work, which is the title of the concept of the exhibition. This is the famous YES painting or YES work(Ceiling Painting) first exhibited in 1966 at Indica gallery in London. And it is a common ladder which Yoko has painted white and here is a magnifying glass, and if you look at the three tight letters in the frame of your head, it is Y.E.S. or YES. YES is an instruction. Yoko's art is about instruction (instructions). It's a score. And she is asking us, inviting us, requesting us to think "YES", to wish, to imagine.
......... (He=John Lennon) Read and he said that YES, that is positive, that made me stay. So it....this is a very historic piece for the encounter between John and Yoko, as well.
.....political dimension to Yoko's art because she feels that the experienceof art, encounter of art can transform the viewer and by transforming the viewer you can one by one transform society. If each one of us thinks YES, it will be a very different society.
....participatory objects. Ah, I'd like to focus on this extraordinary work which is also very representative of Yoko's esthetics and which also has a very important link to Japanese postwar avant-gardehistory. And this is called "Morning piece."
One of the basic concept of conceptional art is of course that a single concept can be performed,...er,... in many different places over many different periods of time. This is an event score that Yoko first presented in Tokyo in 1964 at Naiqua gallery, a very famous gallery in post war avant-grade history, and later presented in New York. And the idea is, she took the milk-bottles, glass milk-bottles and attached to them typed dates that were very much in the future. For example, you have August 3rd, 1995. This is written in 1964. So 1995 seemed impossibly in the future. These are all future mornings, futuredawns, future sunsets. And she is selling them for different prices. And this event at Naiqua gallery was attended by Takehisa Kosugi,Shigeko Kubota, Yasunao Tone, Chieko Shiomi, Genpei Akasegawa, Sho Kazakura. I mean the entire who's who of Japanese art-world, er, came to this event which shows how important Yoko was and how important her events were in transmitting certain ideas, er, to the Japanese avant-garde here.
The idea is, er, .....Mazu dozo. ( = Okay, please do.) (= Please translate what I said now.)
....artists working certainly at that time in Tokyo, Hi Red Center, neodaro(???) organizers were very much interested in breaking down those kind of orthodoxies, challenging the system of the art-market in order to ask us to bring art back into daily life, to bring art back into a common everyday practice.
Installation works, er, ever created in the history of, er, postwar art. You can compare the work of Yayoi Kosama working in New York at the time of these installations, Look some earth (????) and others about for 67 once again you see Yoko Ono at cutting edge at the forefront of the development of new artform namely "Installation Art". Of course, "Installation Art"is now the mainstream medium for contemporary artists.
The telephone rings. (It was not Yoko.)
......also now we're moving into section, three of the exhibition which is events, performances and films. We don't have time to go into each of the major film rooms, but I invite you later to please, see "Cut Piece" which is a historic documentary film of Yoko's performance event which is considered iconic in the history of performance art and feminist art.
We also have "Fly", very famous film and sound track for 1971, positioning Yoko at forefront of experimental film and "Bottoms"which is produced in London in 1966, and also along with Warhol and other experimental film makers positions Yoko at the, again, forefront of new film-making, experimental avant-garde film-making.
......the gallery as we explained. And they became creative partners almost immediately and were married in 1969. 1969 represents the height of the Vietnam war, the height of the civil rights movements in America, and the height of the students protest movements in Japan, in America, and in France. Ah, it's also remarkable to recognize that Yoko Ono was a Japanese woman, working our preying (???) now at forefront of International media with her marriage to the Beatles' star, John Lennon. That was a radical idea. They used John and Yoko, this notion of interrelation marriage. This is only 25 years after the end of World War 2. There were still manymany lingering resentments in the attitudes, er, about World War 2,about Japan in the West. This marriage was very political on some levels as they were perceived by the mass public. And Yoko and John used that in order to advance the concept of interrelation peace and love.
The development and invention of public art, um, again later we have artists in America like Bob Cooger and, er, others working in taking over advertising space and public space, er, as art, but in this case, Yoko Ono once again is the first to use media as an arena for art-making and therefore social transformation.
Um, we are now in the final section of the show which is the work from 1990's and temporary. And I really want to acknowledge and thank Watanabe-san and Seki-san of the Geijutsu Bijutsukan(=The Tokyo Museum) because of their concept to include this work for their installation of the exhibition in Tokyo. So this work is only on view in Tokyo. It is unique to the Geijutsu Bijutsukan.
.......certainly in your mind in many of the works here including Wish Tree.If you were, is invited to participate in this case to write your wish and hang on the tree, please make your wish, make your onegai(=wish).
The chess set, all white chess set is also interactive, "Play It By Trust". Play it for as long as you can remember who is your opponent and who is your own self. It is again one of the pieces conceptual thatYoko uses two kinds of confound logic again paradoxical.
The last section between see your own(???) is Document Section we brought together many a familiar and many syugyo (????) from Yoko Ono's life for you to enjoy. That's the end by Gallery and Auditorium. (???) And I want to thank you very very much for your kind attention.
Yoko Ono + Japan 2004 report ~ intro and books ~ presstour ~ pressconferencetranscript ~ officialceremony ~ lecture ~ events
