Yoko Ono and Romantic Irony

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 18^th. 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

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

Read Full Post »

Fluxus

Fluxus art flourished, or should we say “flowed,” abundantly in the 1960’s.  The word Fluxus comes from Latin “to flow.”  Like its grand-daddy  Dada, Fluxus celebrates chance occurrences and simple everyday objects and events.   It reminds us to pay attention—to see and to listen.  Not just to look and label, but to, errrm,( what other word is there) to see.  Ditto in the auditory department.  Listen!  Wherever you are, you can go into a state of seeing and listening.  Waiting for a bus, waiting for the light to change, waiting for the recitation of the menu to be over, waiting for the water to run hot…take a moment to notice what’s happening in your senses.  Needless to say, this involves a sense of humor.

A great Fluxus moment is presented to us by a snow fall. When you’re done with the shoveling, treat yourself to a walk around the block or just a look around the yard.  Take the camera, it helps you see.  Ten minutes and your optic nerve will tingle and your brain will hummmmm.  Dried grasses and plants take on the look of brush strokes, like calligraphy.

I particularly love what an overnight snow fall does to my back yard sculptures, my lessons of earlier years, cast in stone.  It’s as if they were melting.

Some well-known artists who have worked in the Fluxus mode are John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Yoko Ono.

For a useful article on Fluxus turn to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Read Full Post »