Yoko Ono says, she constructs her compositions—visual and musical–with the intention of leaving them incomplete in order to involve the audience. 
The audience is an essential component of the art itself. This comes out of a Romantic sensibility. We don’t find this respect for the audience in Classical art, where a fixed idea, myth or dogma determines the approach and the outcome. The Classical and the Romantic form two polarities that are already evident in our earliest cultural documents. The Classical sensibility dominated for most of Western history—until about 1800, when Romantic movements in all the arts changed the conversation. Or rather, the relationship between artist and audience changed so that the artist no longer delivered a sermon but engaged the audience in a conversation.
This is not to say, that the Romantic idea fell out of the blue. Rembrandt and Velazquez, in the 17th century, are Romantic sensibilities. But we can trace this sensibility all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Socrates, specifically. He was a philosopher and teacher and he made an art out of teaching, an art in the Romantic sense. The Socratic Method of getting a point across is to not get the point across at all, but to pose a question. The student then delves into the question which leads to deeper questions and through this “conversation” the student reaches insight and understanding. Socrates, the teacher withholds the information deliberately, all the while pretending he doesn’t know the answer. This withholding is called Socratic Irony.
Romantic Irony is similar. The Romantic artist exposes the process by which the work came about. Or rather, comes about, since it is never finished. The Romantic poets around 1800 left their poems unfinished. The “truth” of the art work was not given (as by inspiration) but an open question and a matter of infinite longing. This Romantic sensibility is also the Modern sensibility. This is why Shakespeare and the mature Michelangelo speak to us so immediately– as if they were our contemporaries.
John Lennon walked into a gallery one day and had to climb a ladder if he wanted to see the art that was attached to the ceiling. He felt he had to meet this artist, who engaged him in conversation this way. That was Yoko Ono.
Yolo Ono’s birthday was February 18th. See also “Fluxus,” posted January 11.
Images shown:
Yoko Ono. Caricature by Katherine Hilden, 2011
Rembrandt, Self-portrait, 1626
Michelangelo, Rondanini Pieta, 1552.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjl7QZc_GYM&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI7bSY6LwJc&feature=related
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 