A Survey of Yoko Ono's Daring Work and Touching Collaborations at Kunsthalle Krems in Austria
Provocative images abound in “Half-a-Wind,” Yoko Ono’s first comprehensive retrospective in Austria. As early as the mid-1950s, Ono had begun orchestrating conceptual-art performances with her first husband, avant-garde composer Ichiyanagi Toshi. The Kunsthalle Krems museum showcases stills from many of these initial performances—among the pictures on display are a young Ono suspended above the audience in Chair Piece, and the artist stretched across the piano during experimental musician John Cage’s Music Walk.
For all her seriousness—indeed, Ono appears impossibly somber in the photographs from these early works—the artist also imbues her installations with a puckish humor. In 1967’s Half-a-Room, Ono marries whimsy and an acute sense of loss, presenting a plainly decorated bedroom with nearly every furnishing sawed in half, right down to the jacket and hat hanging on the wall.
Ono’s relationship with John Lennon eventually launched her into hypercelebrity, with the couple’s collaborations and publicity stunts making her a household name. A 1969 photograph depicts one of Ono and Lennon’s War Is Over! billboards mounted above a visitor information center in New York City’s Times Square. And, of course, there is visual documentation of the pair holding court during their infamous Bed-Ins for Peace in Montreal and Amsterdam.
In perhaps the most quietly touching work, Ono superimposes a transparent image of her and Lennon relaxing over their morning coffee and cigarettes onto a photo of a shuttered window in a dark room. In the background are Central Park’s dense treetops and the high-rise apartment buildings beyond. The vignette feels very much like a slowly fading reverie, the shared moment between the collaborators and lovers slipping softly into the distance, as if but a dream.
Through February 23, 2014, at Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria; kunsthalle.at