Historical Figure
Yoko Ono
b. 1933
Japanese artist and activist (born 1933)
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"Interview at St. Regis Hotel" — September 11, 1971
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Biography
Yoko Ono is a Japanese artist, musician, activist, and filmmaker. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Timeline
The story of Yoko Ono, told in moments.
Becomes part of New York's downtown art scene and the Fluxus movement. Performance art. Conceptual works. "Cut Piece," where audience members cut her clothing off while she sits motionless onstage. She's a serious artist before she's famous for anything else.
Marries John Lennon in Gibraltar. They use their honeymoon for a bed-in for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton. Spend a week in bed. Invite the press. The press comes to mock them. They stay in bed anyway. "Hair Peace. Bed Peace." The photographs become icons of the antiwar movement.
John Lennon is shot and killed outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. They'd just returned from a recording session for Double Fantasy. The album wins the Grammy for Album of the Year. She raises their son Sean alone. She never leaves the Dakota.
Funds the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, directly across from the Dakota. A single word in mosaic: Imagine. She also funds the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, a column of light that shines every year from Lennon's birthday to the anniversary of his death.
Named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard. She has 12 number-one US Dance chart singles. She's 83. The woman half the world blamed for breaking up the Beatles turns out to have had her own career all along. Twelve number ones. Nobody can argue with twelve.
In Their Own Words (16)
I thank Pussy Riot for standing firmly in their belief for Freedom of Expression, and making all women of the world proud to be women.
As quoted in "Scores of musicians urge Russia to release Pussy Riot" at Amnesty International (22 July 2013), 2013
The opposite of love is fear, not hate.
2 July 2010., 2010
Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world. Power works in mysterious ways. You don’t have to do much. Visualise the domino effect And just start thinking PEACE. The message will circulate faster than you think. It’s Time For Action. The Action is PEACE. Spread the word. Spread PEACE. I love you!
9 October 2009., 2009
In a day, sometimes I feel so much love for the world, I think my heart is bursting. Sometimes, I feel so scared, I want to shrink myself even further. I think that’s what happened to us gods and goddesses. Like the dinosaurs, we realized that it’s too dangerous to be so large. So we kept shrinking ourselves to what we are now. We might get even smaller. I see the sign in the engineers making smaller gadgets, smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, our fingers will be too large to operate them. So what are we doing? I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know…. Well, even my best friend didn’t know until now that I was thinking of crazy things like this.
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009)., 2009
John and I felt that we were like people in an H. G. Wells story. Two people who are walking so fast that nobody else can see them.
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009), 2009
Artifacts (15)
The actor Onoe Matsusuke I as Matsushita Mikinoshin
Tōshūsai Sharaku
13/CC2 (Onobject / Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress) - Fotografía analógica
Oiticica, Hélio (Lugar de nacimiento: Rio de Janeiro, 1937 - Lugar de defunción: Rio de Janeiro, 1980) d´Almeida, Neville (Lugar de nacimiento: Belo Horizonte, 1941)
The Poetess Ono no Komachi
Suzuki Harunobu
Ono no Komachi Washing the Book
Suzuki Harunobu
Ono no Komachi Praying for Rain
Suzuki Harunobu
Ono no Komachi Praying for Rain
Suzuki Harunobu
Joseph Ducreux (French) - Self-Portrait, Yawning - Google Art Project
Joseph Ducreux
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