Katana VentraIP

Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono (Japanese: 小野 洋子, romanizedOno Yōko, usually spelled in katakana オノ・ヨーコ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.[1]

This article is about the Japanese multimedia artist and peace activist. For the Japanese judoka, see Yoko Ono (judoka). For the song, see Yoko Ono (song).

Yoko Ono

(1933-02-18) February 18, 1933

Yoko Ono Lennon

  • Artist
  • singer
  • songwriter
  • peace activist

2, including Sean Ono Lennon

  • Vocals
  • percussion
  • piano
  • keyboards

1961–2021

Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1952 to join her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in the early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles, with whom she would subsequently record as a duo in the Plastic Ono Band. The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lennon remained married until he was murdered in front of the couple's apartment building, the Dakota, on December 8, 1980. Together they had one son, Sean, who later also became a musician.


Ono began a career in popular music in 1969, forming the Plastic Ono Band with Lennon and producing a number of avant-garde music albums in the 1970s. She achieved commercial and critical success in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy, a collaboration with Lennon that was released three weeks before his murder, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To date, she has had twelve number one singles on the US Dance charts, and in 2016 was named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard magazine.[2] Many musicians have paid tribute to Ono as an artist in her own right and as a muse and icon, including Elvis Costello,[3] the B-52's,[4] Sonic Youth[5] and Meredith Monk.[6]


As Lennon's widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan's Central Park,[7] the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland,[8] and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan (which closed in 2010).[9] She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, disaster relief in Japan and the Philippines,[10][11] and other such causes. In 2002, she inaugurated a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace.[12] In 2012, she received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award[13] and co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking.[14]

Biography[edit]

Early life and family[edit]

Ono was born in Tokyo City on February 18, 1933, to mother Isoko Ono (小野 磯子, Ono Isoko) (1911–1999)[15] and father Eisuke Ono (小野 英輔, Ono Eisuke), a wealthy banker and former classical pianist.[16] Isoko's adoptive maternal grandfather Zenjiro Yasuda (安田 善次郎, Yasuda Zenjirō) was an affiliate of the Yasuda clan and zaibatsu. Eisuke came from a long line of samurai warrior-scholars.[17] The kanji translation of Yōko (洋子) means "ocean child".[16][18] Two weeks before Ono's birth, Eisuke was transferred to San Francisco, California, by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank.[19] The rest of the family followed soon after, with Ono first meeting her father when she was two years old.[4] Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936.


In 1937, the family was transferred back to Japan, and Ono enrolled at Tokyo's elite Gakushūin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan.[19] Ono was enrolled in piano lessons from the age of 4, until the age of 12 or 13.[20] She attended kabuki performances with her mother, who was trained in shamisen, koto, otsuzumi, kotsuzumi, nagauta, and could read Japanese musical scores.


The family moved to New York City in 1940. The next year, Eisuke was transferred from New York City to Hanoi in French Indochina, and the family returned to Japan. Ono was enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo throughout World War II and the fire-bombing of March 9, 1945, during which she was sheltered with other family members in a special bunker in Tokyo's Azabu district, away from the heavy bombing. Ono later went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family.[19]


Starvation was rampant in the destruction that followed the Tokyo bombings; the Ono family was forced to beg for food while pulling their belongings in a wheelbarrow. Ono said it was during this period in her life that she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status. Other stories tell of her mother bringing a large number of goods to the countryside, where they were bartered for food. In one anecdote, her mother traded a German-made sewing machine for 60 kilograms (130 lb) of rice to feed the family.[19] During this time, Ono's father, who had been in Hanoi, was believed to be in a prisoner of war camp in China. Ono told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on October 16, 2007, that "He was in French Indochina, which is Vietnam actually.... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp."[21]


After the war ended in 1945, Ono remained in Japan when her family moved to the United States and settled in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent town 25 miles (40 km) north of midtown Manhattan. By April 1946, Gakushūin was reopened and Ono re-enrolled. The school, located near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan.[16][17] At 14 years old, she took up vocal training in lieder-singing.

College and downtown beginnings[edit]

Ono graduated from Gakushūin in 1951, and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University as the first woman to enter the department. However, she left the school after two semesters.[19]


Ono joined her family in New York in September 1952,[22] enrolling at nearby Sarah Lawrence College. Ono's parents approved of her college choice, but disapproved of her lifestyle and chastised her for befriending people they felt were beneath her. In 1956, Ono left college to elope with Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi,[17][23] a star in Tokyo's experimental community, then studying at Juilliard.[24]


At Sarah Lawrence, Ono studied poetry with Alastair Reid, English literature with Kathryn Mansell, and music composition with the Viennese-trained André Singer.[20] Ono has said that her heroes at this time were the twelve-tone composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. She said, "I was just fascinated with what they could do. I wrote some twelve-tone songs, then my music went into [an] area that my teacher felt was really a bit off track, and... he said, 'Well, look, there are people who are doing things like what you do, and they're called avant-garde.'" Singer introduced her to the work of Edgar Varèse, John Cage, and Henry Cowell. Ono left college and moved to New York in 1957, supporting herself through secretarial work and lessons in the traditional Japanese arts at the Japan Society.[25]


Ono has often been associated with the Fluxus group, a loose association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists which was founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas. Maciunas promoted her work, giving Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York in 1961. He formally invited Ono to join Fluxus, but she declined because she wanted to remain independent.[26] However, she did collaborate with Maciunas,[27] Charlotte Moorman, George Brecht, and the poet Jackson Mac Low, among others associated with the group.[28]

(1964)

Grapefruit

Summer of 1980 (1983)

ただの私 (Tada-no Watashi – Just Me!) (1986)

The John Lennon Family Album (1990)

Instruction Paintings (1995)

Grapefruit Juice (1998)

YES YOKO ONO (2000)

Odyssey of a Cockroach (2005)

Imagine Yoko (2005)

Memories of John Lennon (editor) (2005)

2:46: Aftershocks: Stories From the Japan Earthquake (contributor) (2011)

郭知茂 Vocal China Forever Love Song

(2013)[292]

Acorn

Sky TV (1966)

Blueprint for the Sunrise (2000, 28 min)

Onochord (2004, continuous loop)

[293]

Feminist art movement

List of peace activists

An Anthology of Chance Operations

"New York 65–66 Fluxus Films + London 66–67"

Badman, Keith (1999). The Beatles After the Breakup. Omnibus Press.  0-7119-7520-5.

ISBN

Harry, Bill (October 2001). The John Lennon Encyclopedia. Virgin.  0-7535-0404-9.

ISBN

Miles, Barry (2001). . London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-8308-3.

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

Munroe, Alexandra; Ono, Yoko; Hendricks, Jon; Altshuler, Bruce; Ross, David A.; Wenner, Jann S.; Concannon, Kevin C.; Tomii, Reiko; Sayle, Murray; Gomez, Edward M. (October 2000). . New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-81094-587-8.

Yes Yoko Ono

Spitz, Bob (2005). The Beatles: The Biography. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.

"Ono apologises for comment". (November 6, 2005). , p. 29.

New Sunday Times

The Ballad of John and Yoko, by the editors of (Rolling Stone Press, 1982)

Rolling Stone

Ayres, Ian (2004). Van Gogh's Ear: Best World Poetry & Prose (Volume 3 includes Yoko Ono's poetry/artwork). Paris: French Connection.  978-2-914853-02-6.

ISBN

Ayres, Ian (2005). Van Gogh's Ear: Best World Poetry & Prose (Volume 4 includes Yoko Ono's poetry/artwork). Paris: French Connection.  978-2-914853-03-3.

ISBN

Beram, Nell, and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky. Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies. New York: Amulet, 2013.  978-1-4197-0444-4

ISBN

Bocaro, Madeline. In Your Mind - The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono, (Conceptual Books 2021),  978-1-6678-1309-7

ISBN

Clayson, Alan et al. Woman: The Incredible Life of Yoko Ono

. John Lennon: One Day at a Time (Grove Press, 1976)

Fawcett, Anthony

. The Lives of John Lennon

Goldman, Albert

Green, John. Dakota Days

Haskell, Barbara. Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1991.

Hendricks, Geoffrey. Fluxus Codex

Hendricks, Geoffrey. Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects

Hopkins, Jerry. Yoko Ono

Klin, Richard, and Lily Prince, photos. "'I Remembered Carrying a Glass Key to Open the Sky.'" In Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America. (Leapfrog Press, 2011)

Millett, Kate. Flying

John Lennon : the life, 1st ed., New York : Ecco, 2008. ISBN 978-0-06-075401-3.

Norman, Philip

Norman, Philip, Days in the life : John Lennon remembered, London : Century, 1990.  0-7126-3922-5

ISBN

. Yoko Ono's Bashō: A Conversation, published in Yoko Ono: Half-a-Wind Show; A Retrospective. April 14, 2013. Yoko Ono’s Basho: A Conversation with Alexandra Munroe

Munroe, Alexandra

. Spirit of YES: The Art and Life of Yoko Ono, published in YES YOKO ONO, 2000. Spirit of YES: The Art and Life of Yoko Ono Archived March 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

Munroe, Alexandra

. Why War? Yoko by Yoko at the Serpentine, published in Yoko Ono: To the Light. 2012. Why War? Yoko by Yoko at the Serpentine -

Munroe, Alexandra

Obrist, Hans Ulrich. The Conversation Series: Yoko Ono, Walther König, Cologne, 2010.

Rumaker, Michael. The Butterfly

Seaman, Frederic. The Last Days of John Lennon

Sheff, David. Last Interview: John Lennon and Yoko Ono New York: Pan Books, 2001.  978-0-330-48258-5.

ISBN

ed. The Ballad of John and Yoko

Wenner, Jann

. Come Together: John Lennon in His Time (Random House, 1984)

Wiener, Jon

Yoon, Jean. The Yoko Ono Project

Official website

discography at Discogs

Yoko Ono

at IMDb

Yoko Ono

A Piece of Work Podcast, WNYC Studios/MoMA, featuring Abbi Jacobson and RuPaul on Yoko Ono's Cut Piece

MoMA Learning

Yoko Ono in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art

Fluxus Performance Workbook

2013 ART