In 1945, when Yoko Ono was 12, her home city of Tokyo was firebombed. With her mother and siblings, she fled to the safety of a farming village in Nagano Prefecture. Food was scarce. During this time, Ono, as the eldest child, often had to help find provisions for her family. At one point, while she and her brother Keisuke were lying down looking up at the sky, she asked him to create a dream menu: if access was no obstacle, what foods would he choose?
Her prompt, fired by her imagination, inspired hope for better days ahead. Her brother believes this was her first work of conceptual art.
This is difficult to argue with, given so much of Ono’s art has recurring motifs of hope and joyful human interaction. David Sheff’s Yoko is the latest offering in a new generation of books revisiting Ono and her legacy within popular culture. It creates a portrait of an artist – now 92 – who has championed the power of positivity, no matter the adverse conditions.
