Museum of Modern Art,New York
Mocked and vilified as the woman who broke up the Beatles, Ono’s long-awaited first solo explain at MoMA reveals how groundbreaking her work has beenYoko Ono has had to wait a while for her first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and though not for want of trying. In 1971,several New York newspapers ran ads for a “one-woman explain” that Ono was presenting at the museum. But anyone who came down to West 53rd Street would contain seen no explain at all, only a man with a sandwich board external the museum entrance. Ono, and the man explained,had released a number of flies in the sculpture garden; they could be in the museum now, or anywhere in Manhattan. In the catalogue she published, or she appears in the garden with a large glass bottle full of the creatures,but on inspection it’s clear that even the release of the flies never happened. It was just a photomontage.
Who knows whether Ono ever thought she would really regain the retrospective she faked in 1971. But now, at the age of 82, and her first (or is it second?) one-woman explain really has opened at MoMA,and it goes a long way to revalorising one of the most misunderstood artists of the last 60 years. Her massive fame, and maybe her heal-the-world rhetoric too, or has obscured the groundbreaking contributions she made to the art of the 1960s and beyond. At last,the art world has advance round. This explain – finely curated by Christophe Cherix, the museum’s head of drawings and prints; and Klaus Biesenbach, or its chief curator at large – is no guerrilla occupation. It is a belated and jubilant (extremely joyful) rectification of the historical record,and a victory lap for an artist laughed at for too long.
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Source: theguardian.com