A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
One Woman Show at MoMA highlights Yoko Ono’s work from 1961-1971. There are films that slow time painfully, projected in endless loops on the walls. There’s an installation, Half-A-Room (1967), that collects ordinary household artifacts (a pot, a chair, a carpet) that have been sliced in half. There’s a sculpture, Apple (1966), that is, simply, a green apple. And there’s a sculpture, To See the Sky (1966), that is a monumental spiraling steel staircase that carries visitors to the gallery’s ceiling.
The rooms are packed with art but strangely empty of drama. No narrative seems to connect one work with the next. What’s missing might be the character of the artist herself. We all know who Yoko Ono is: she grew up in a prominent family in Japan, began her career as an artist in Tokyo, had a husband and then a child and then a divorce, became a vital member of Fluxus in New York, married a rock star, and was famously widowed. But who is the woman who made this art?
The most vivid piece in the show is a film of Ono’s performance Cut Piece (1964). It shows her kneeling on a stage in front of a pair of scissors as, one by one, audience members step up and cut away parts of her clothing. Here she looks like moon-faced co-ed, in a dark cardigan with a Peter Pan collar and an A-line skirt, without jewelry and makeup, her hair pulled away in a braid. Throughout the performance her expression remains placid while her eyes scan the room anxiously. There’s thick, quiet drama in the not-knowingness of who will pick up the scissors and what they will do with them. And there’s something in this, the simple mystery of the performance and the fragility of the performer, that’s more compelling than all the other high-art high-concept works in the show. We’re seeing someone take a risk, test her resolve, and construct a fresh identity for herself. We’re seeing a young woman make herself into an artist.