What is Yoko Ono? Is she the artist whose “Music of the Mind” concept was honoured with a major exhibition by the Tate in 2024? Or the author of Wrapping Piece in 1965, in which she swaddled an orchestra’s members in gauze? Or the maker of the experimental film Bottoms, in 1967? Or the woman who said “I was a rebel even in the avant-garde”, and whose paintings came with numbered instructions? The Ono of three husbands, each of whom added to her myth? The widow of fame and fortune? (With John Lennon, she ended up in tabloid hell.)
A further worry: is she even knowable? How seriously does she want to be taken? To approach her life and work is to enter a forcefield that will send the critic or biographer’s navigation spinning, with warning lights from every instrument panel: Love! Magic! Power! Danger! Bliss!
