The Embodied and Disembodied Performances of Yoko Ono

University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive) Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 1-1-2012 Instructing, constructing, deconstructing: the embodied and disembodied performances of Yoko Ono Vera Mackie University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Mackie, Vera, Instructing, constructing, deconstructing: the embodied and disembodied performances of Yoko Ono 2012, 490-501. https://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/1197 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] INSTRUCTING, CONSTRUCTING, DECONSTRUCTING: THE EMBODIED AND DISEMBODIED PERFORMANCES OF YOKO ONO Vera Mackie Modernism, Postmodernism and the Avant-Garde Modernism has been described as ‘either a time-bound or a genre- bound art form’.1 In generic terms. modernist art has been described as ‘experimental, formally complex, elliptical, contain[ing] elements of decreation as well as creation, and tend[ing] to associate notions of the artist’s freedom from realism, materialism, traditional genre and form . ’.2 Modernist art forms have further been described as those which are ‘ . aesthetically radical, contain striking technical innova- tion, emphasize spatial or “fugal” as opposed to chronological form, tend towards ironic modes, and involve a certain “dehumanization” of art’.3 Modernist art deploys the techniques of montage, collage, mixed-media assemblages, genre-crossing, generic indeterminacy, formalism, anti- realism and fragmentation. One could also, however, ask whether modernism is rather a matter of reading strategies. Th e same work might, at diff erent times, be read as modernist or postmodernist.4 New works are constantly being claimed for the ‘modernist’ canon.5 1 Peter Childs, Modernism, London: Routledge, 2008 [2000], p. 2 2 Childs, Modernism, p. 2. 3 Malcolm Bradbury, in Peter Childs and Roger Fowler (eds) A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, London: Routledge, 2005, 4 Fredric Jameson, ‘Aft erword’, in Stephen Ross, (ed.) Modernism and Th eory: A Crit- ical Debate, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 250–251. 5 For recent rethinking of modernism in Japan, see William Gardner, Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1930s, Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006) Aaron Gerow, A Page of Madness: Cinema and Moder- nity in 1920s Japan (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies/University of Michigan, 2008; Th omas Lamarre, Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and ‘Oriental’ Aesthetics, Ann Arbor: Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005; Seiji M. Lippit, Topographies of Japanese Modernism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Jackie Menzies (ed.) Modern Boy Modern Girl: Modernity In Japanese Art 1910-1935, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998; Miriam Silver- berg, Erotic, Grotesque Nonsense: Th e Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; Elise Tipton and John Clark (eds) Being Modern instructing, constructing, deconstructing 491 If we attempt to identify the timeframe of modernism, most would identify the period between the two world wars as the peak of modernist culture. Th e question of the ‘end’ of modernism is controversial, as is the relationship between modernism and postmodernism. We could also ask whether modernism has diff erent temporalities in diff erent localities.6 Is the Second World War a point of rupture, or are artistic developments autonomous from political and social developments? Rather than positing a decisive break in 1945, many would rather see the 1960s as a time when modernist and postmodernist cultural forms co-existed.7 If modernist art forms are mainly identifi ed according to time frame rather than particular generic features, however, there is also the danger of circularity. Th ere has also been a shift in the connotations of the term ‘modernism’ from the early twentieth century to the present. ‘Modernism’ originally referred to a style which was new and diff erent from what had come before. A century later, the term is now largely historical, referring to particular artistic styles of the past. A similar point could be made about the term ‘avant-garde’, which originally referred to art which was at the cutting edge of new trends, in a meaning which was borrowed from military terminology.8 While the term avant-garde can still be used in that meaning, it is now oft en used, rather, to refer to particular styles of the past. in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s, Sydney: Australian Humani- ties Research Foundation (AHRF) with Fine Arts Press in association with Gordon and Breach Arts International, 2000; William J. Tyler, Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913–1938, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008; Vera Mackie, ‘Modern- ism and Colonial Modernity in Early Twentieth Century Japan’, in Peter Brooker (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 996–1011. 6 Tyler places Japanese modernism in the years 1910 to 1940. Tyler, Modanizumu, p. 19. 7 Th e question of the endpoint of artistic modernism is complex for several reasons, particularly so in the case of Japan. All of the arts were subject to increasing censorship and repression in the late 1930s and the wartime period. With respect to artists who collabo- rated with the state-sponsored cultural organizations during the war, critics of the postwar period have oft en been reluctant to deal with their artistic practice, which has been seen to be tainted with militarism and ultranationalism. Th e careers of some individual artists, however, do cross over into the postwar period. Echoes of early twentieth century artistic practices can also be seen in the avant-garde movements of the 1960s. John Clark, ‘Artistic Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde’ in Alexandra Munroe (ed.) Japa- nese Art aft er 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: Harry N. Abrahams, 1994), p. 50. 8 Richard Schechner, Th e Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance, London: Routledge, p. 6. Some of the diffi culties in applying this terminology are illustrated in Alexandra Munroe’s introductory essay in Scream Against the Sky. 492 vera mackie Th ere has been much controversy about the defi nition of postmodernism, particularly focusing on the meanings to be attached to the prefi x ‘post’. Does this mean a break with modernism, a continuation of modernism, or something which is beyond modernism?9 Postmodern cultural forms are said to be characterized by parody, irony, pastiche, quotation and deconstruction. With respect to theories of modernity and postmodernity, some energy has been expended on a consider- ation of the extent to which Japanese society measures up to, or even exemplifi es, an abstract standard of modernity or postmodernity. Th ere has also been extensive discussion on the presence of postmodern features in Japanese culture. Similarly postmodernist, or, more precisely, poststructuralist strategies of reading and critique have been deployed in the reading of cultural forms in Japan.10 Th e Performances of Yoko Ono In this chapter I will focus on some of Yoko Ono’s artworks from the mid-1960s.11 I will be asking what reading through the prism of modernism and postmodernism tells us about Ono’s work. I am also inter- ested how a focus on the body might change our reading of these works, and am intrigued by Peter Childs’ comment that in modernism, there is Although the title of the book refers to ‘Japanese Art aft er 1945’, it is clear from the intro- duction that the book is actually devoted to ‘avant-garde art’ from 1945. Th e term avant- garde is used by Munroe to refer to both the art of the Taishô period (1912–1926), when the term ‘avant-garde art’ was translated literally as ‘zen’ei bijutsu’, and art of the period aft er the Second World War. She also refers to an exhibition in Paris which had dealt with ‘Japon des avant-gardes, 1910–1970’. Alexandra Munroe, ‘Scream against the Sky’, in Mun- roe (ed.) Japanese Art aft er 1945: Scream Against the Sky, pp. 19–25. 9 For defi nitions of these terms, see: Linda Hutcheon, Th e Politics of Postmodernism, London: Routledge New Accents, 1989; Margaret Rose, Th e Post-modern and the Post- industrial: A Critical Analysis; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Andrew John Miller, ‘Fables of Progression: Modernism, Modernity, Narrative’, in Stephen Ross (ed.) Modernism and Th eory: A Critical Debate, London: Routledge, 2009. 10 On narratives of modernization and theories of modernity applied to Japanese society, see Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto, eds. Modernization and Beyond: Th e Japanese Trajectory; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; on postmodernity and postmodernism, see Masao Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, eds. Postmod- ernism and Japan; Durham: Duke University Press, 1989; Johann Arnason and Yoshio Sugimoto Arnason, eds. Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity. London: Kegan Paul International, 1995. 11 As Ono is so well-known in English-language circles as ‘Yoko Ono’ (that is, given name followed by family name rather than the usual Japanese-language order of family name followed by given name) I will refer to her as ‘Yoko Ono’ except when citing her Japanese-language publications. instructing, constructing, deconstructing 493 a greater interest ‘in the workings of the mind than of the body’.12 Ono’s art works and performance works aspire to a high degree of abstraction. Th is raises the question of whether there are limits to such abstraction, and whether it is possible to conceive of an abstract body. Yoko Ono was born in 1933 near Tokyo. In her early life she moved between Japan and the USA, and she experienced rationing and evacuation during the Second World War in Japan.

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