The article reviews the exhibition Yes Yoko Ono at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Bowen, Dore

English

SJSU ScholarWorks

San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksFaculty Publications Art and Art History & Design DepartmentsJanuary 2002Into the Looking GlassDore BowenCalifornia College of the Arts, dore.bowen@sjsu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/artdesign_pubPart of the Contemporary Art Commons, and the Photography CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History & Design Departments at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contactscholarworks@sjsu.edu.Recommended CitationDore Bowen. "Into the Looking Glass" Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts (2002): 34-35.Yes Yoko Ono San Franc1sco Museum of Modern Art, 06 22.02 10.08.02 Exh b1t1on rev1ew by Dore Bowen Into "unfinishedness . " 1 _the_Looking Ono's retrospective, Yes Yoko Ono, now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an array of the artist's work-~ncludirtg sculpture, photography, painting, word scores, and ephemera-from the I950S to the present. One element 3 the photograph help bring an object to its appropriate viewing distance. Yet each tool has no distinct identity in itself, existing only in relation to a view-er. This becomes clear in the last phrase, "to be blown up photographically, until it becomes readable." For Ono, visual art unfolds in the viewer's imagi-nation, yet images must also enter the social realm to become "matter." Ono writes that "conceptual reality, as it were, becomes a concrete matter only when one destroys its conceptuality by asking others to enact it, as, is intentional. Early in her career, Ono otherwise, it cannot escape from staying imaginary." a name for her strategy, calling it the i'in.stnllCtlllre." Based loosely on fohn Cage's ~n!>tntctiion.al approach to musical composi-the instructure is "something that from instruction and yet not quite ren1erl!:ec1-not quite structured-never structured . .. like an unfinishe church a sky ceiling." The instructure that the interpreter fill in its struc-mind-work more than Ono's Instructions for Photographs (I 96 I -7 I) are short word exercises that demonstrate the way images are actively created. These short instructions gnaw away at the illusion of the image as an objective, isolated entity and, hence, empower the viewer to see through the phantom images that haunt the contemporary landscape. By highlighting the physical and mentallaborthat we each invest in images, Ono reveals the way we both make and unmake photographs. Only when we forget this do images seem to make us. • • I I indeterminacy. This aspect is readily appar- r st stanza Make a photo 1n wh 1ch ent in Ono's Painting to Be Constructed in Your 2nd stanza the color comes out only Head(r962). Theinstructionreads:"Observe 3rdstanza under a certain light, at a certain t1me of the day. three paintings carefully. Mix them well in your head." Many of Ono's instructures play with our understanding of the image by making the viewer an integral element in the comple-tion of the work. A "time photo" doesn't exist as an aesthetic object but is the viewer's experi-ence oflight, color, and image. The viewer may notice how a photograph looks in the soft blue tint of morning, for instance, or against a colored wall. Ono's text further instructs its reader to make a photo that only emerges "in a certain light." This is, in a metaphorical sense, its optimal moment of viewing-this moment can be thought of as the intersection of photograph, environment, and viewer. A Poem 1n Three Stanzas To be read under a magn1fy1ng glass. To be read under a microscope. To be blown up photographically, unt1l1t becomes readable A Poem in Three Stanzas(r967) suggests that the magnifying glass, the microscope, and 34 CAMERAWORK A HJURNAL OF P 10T IGRAFHI ART Ono's approach to the photograph, although metaphysical, has a bit of the revolutionary in it as well. In Kite Piece(r963),for example, the reader is instructed to make kites out of photographs, fly them, and then ask others to shoot them down. In her installation Horizontal Memory (r 997 ), the viewer must step over, and on, anonymous family photographs in order to enter the gallery. Such works call for the viewer to act upon images, even destroy them, rather than simply absorb them. The point is to set up a situation where you s1mulate , , , , , , , , , , , , , -,,,,,,, what you are doing 1n l1fe, ard make people observe 1t at This destruction of"thf. image" makes possible a new understanding of the relationship between "the viewer" and "the viewed." The two are, for Ono, intertwined. A good example of this is her well-loved Ceiling Painting(rg66). Unfortunately, the restrictions of the current exhibition dimin-ish the resonance of this work by preventing viewer interaction. But we can imagine. The lad-der is intended to be mounted, whereby the traveler's journey is rewarded with a card inscribed with the word "yes," hanging within arm's reach of the ladder's top rung. A magnify-ing glass attached to the frame can be grasped and held aloft in order to read the minute text. These simple acts remind the viewer that her desire carries her to this moment of affirmation. And what is found at journey's end? What is anticipated is discovered, for what is revealed in the text is less a secret at the work's conclusion than a confirmation of the quest itself. "Yes ... you are, you will, you can, you already have." In Ceiling Painting, Ono directly interrogates the alliance between viewer and lens. Although the lens brings the outside world closer to the human eye, the viewer's mind also casts itself out into the world via the lens, thus "finding" the answer to its own question. In other words, the lens is a permeable boundary between inner self and outer world. Ceiling Painting challenges our understanding of the lens as l'objectif, as enabling an objective view. Besides being interdependent, the relationship between viewer and lens is also reversible. In Ceiling Painting the viewer comprehends the text via the lens, while the text alters its meaning with each reading. This work further accentuates its reversibility by encouraging the viewer to travel up the ladder toward the lens like film through a camera. At the top of the ladder, the viewer undergoes a shutter like exposure to the external message-"yes." In photography, this moment of contact is preserved by a fixing agent, whereas, in Ceiling Painting, it is recorded only in the same time, like you observe your face in the mirror. YokoQn,, the viewer's mind. The photograph is believable because it preserves this ephemeral reflection of the outer world on an impressionable surface. The lens gathers light's rays, the shutter slices the moment, the film receives the imprint, and chemistry develops and preserves the resulting image. In this way, photography captures light, which is also to say that it arrests time. The rays oflight that strike the film travel a distance and carry information from their journey. When one gazes at a star, for instance, one views a speck of the cosmos that left its source before the existence of the human race. By recording light's constellation, the photograph suspends time, enabling nostalgic rumination. But light's journey is not actually captured in the photo-graph- it turns, momentarily, to reflect upon itself, not unlike the shiver one feels at the top of Ono's ladder. Because light is temporal, the photograph is not still; it is always reflecting on its past and project-ing forth toward its future. Ono exploits photography's temporal dimension in Film No.5 (Smile)(rg68)-a sr -minute film depicting John Lennon in a garden. This film was created "in t he spirit of home movies ... we were mainly con-cerned about the vibrations the film sends out-the kind that were between [John and myself]." The viewer, standing in for Ono, receives the "vibrations" sent from one lover to another. This uncanny tone is heightened by the fact that Ono prolongs Lennon's smile, accentuating the slow transformation of his lips by filming the scene at 333 frames per second while screening it at the standard 24. Ultimately, Film No.5 casts itself out toward a future viewer by exploiting film's projective dimension. At the same time, it is not necessary that the film be seen for it to have an impact. Ono states that "regarding Film No.5, even if it weren't shown, even if you haven't seen the film, it is affecting you." In this sense, then, the film's optimal moment of viewing is a tempo-ral arc that is initiated by the work itself. At Yes Yoko Ono, the viewer can survey Ono ephemera, such as the invitation to her exhibit This IsNotHere(I97I), at the Everson Gallery in Syracuse, New York. The invitation was printed on a sheet of photographic paper that was par-tially fixed and then folded. Once the invitation was opened and exposed to the light, the photo-graphically printed information faded, leaving only Ono's name and a telephone number on the reverse side. Thus, the viewer is left looking at blank sheet of paper and an afterimage of its contents. This piece photographically plays upon the fact that "invitations" are transitory extensions from one being to another. Grasping after permanency ultimately fails. Although the photograph is a tool with which to picture our world, ruminate on the past, and project our hopes, it too exists in time. The photograph is a crystallized speck of time, which, like all things, exists in time. When looking at a photograph, the viewer dips into this temporal current in an instant of existential recognition; this is a confrontation with what Ono calls "wonderment." In the process of completing Ono's instructures, the common understanding of the photograph as an eternal imprint of time is shattered so that the complex process of view-ing might be experienced.• '' E 1 iuk) 11 < On hl<>'ruLtur , v v k.1 ( )Jp ' JC ctv n Ha1 r~ \r nm ").('+ Yot.o ), < J'f( \\01 1 [d1t J·abr at(W, 1 ')< k On1 , R ,. Yoko lJ < 'lltc v ""' " h th a11t or Jne 1 h>KO 01 < Y Y k l ( Til), I ~· h YaK On or, lJnated lt tr l )-.~J aP S<n .. Ilt'y o1 t 1 Y, i\ev .. Y TK r ere n an1 uJt r d 1 • VIS! http .J\ ""W. ( lTII I l r Dore Bowen 1 a 1~ ua 1 ll utst c Jrre 1t 11 hing at hL hforu C<lkgcof\,t 1ndt raft 1 SanFr c.::: .. J.shll mpl tm htr 1 ertat on, f11e.\lom wtt \t ll1l:rhenomenotr1Y 11dt ~\. 1 otog,:tph, 1 the' mve •, ll t<. hr 'H ko On1 I' ra11 by Ia1 :\.1.11 11ilan. Y , ( OH \ IV " rK 

Into the Looking Glass

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&amp;context=artdesign_pub

Into the Looking Glass

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

SJSU ScholarWorks