Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
Eternal Time (Bronze, cast of 1965 version), 1988
Bronze stethoscope, clock on pedestal
Stethoscope length: 24 in (61 cm)
Clock: 4 3/4 x 4 x 2 in (12 x 10.15 x 5 cm)
Edition 3 of 9 with 2 APs (#5/9)
(GP1804)
Yoko Ono
Revolution: Object in Three Parts, 1966 / 1988
Signature and edition engraved on reverse of plate
Bronze
24 x 8 x 1 3/4 in (61 x 20.3 x 4.4 cm)
Edition 4 of 9 with 2 APs
(GP1806)
Yoko Ono
Cleaning Piece, 1966 / 1988
Signature and edition engraved on reverse of plate
Bronze
6 1/4 x 15 x 10 in (15.9 x 38.1 x 25.4 cm)
Edition 2 of 9 with 2 AP
(GP1807)
Yoko Ono
Disappearing Piece, 1965 / 1988
Signature and edition number engraved on reverse
Bronze
1 1/4 x 7 x 4 in (3.2 x 17.8 x 10.2 cm)
Edition 6 of 9 with 2 AP
(GP1808)
Yoko Ono
Painting to Be Stepped On, 1966 / 1988
Title, date, and artist initials engraved at bottom
Bronze
18 x 14 x 1 1/2 in (45.7 x 35.6 x 3.8 cm)
Edition of 9 with 2 AP
Galerie Lelong & Co. is pleased to present at the 34th edition of ADAA The Art Show with a solo presentation by Yoko Ono, titled The Bronze Age.
Perhaps best known for her performance art, music, and social activism, Yoko Ono is indisputably one of the most important artists working today. She is a pioneering artist in movements ranging from Fluxus to Feminism, and in recent years, has been increasingly reappraised for her centrality in many artistic movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On view at The Art Show are several works that were first conceptualized in the 1960s, and then reimagined as bronze objects in 1988. Doubly conceptual in their content and meaning, works such as Painting to Be Stepped On separate painting, or more specifically, artmaking, into two different functions: the instructions and the realization. According to Ono, such work becomes a reality only when others participate with the work, and such instructions can be realized by different people in a variety of ways. What results are infinite transformations of the work that even the artist cannot foresee, bringing the intangible concept of time into painting.
Many of these bronze works were first presented in Ono’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1989, Yoko Ono: Objects, Films—the artist’s first major exhibition following a hiatus from solo presentations in galleries or museums for nearly 20 years. For the exhibition, Ono placed the more fragile earlier versions in dialogue with the heavy bronze casts. In an interview for the New York Times, the artist commented: “There seemed like a shimmering air in the 60s when I
made these pieces, and now the air is bronzified. Now it's the 80s, and bronze is very 80s in a way—solidity, commodity, all of that. For someone who went through the 60s revolution, there has of course been an incredible change. . . I call the pieces petrified bronze. That freedom, all the hope and wishes are in some ways petrified.'' Displayed on our booth’s walls, visitors are welcome to peruse photographs from the historic exhibition.
Alexandra Munroe, art historian and curator of the groundbreaking survey YES YOKO ONO (2000) observed in its accompanying catalogue that the bronze works reflect the cultural attitudes of Reagan’s America marked by psychological and social violence and Ono’s enduring aspirations for a world without war. Exhibited in 2022, almost six decades from when they were first conceptualized, Ono’s vision has only grown with urgency.
As a conceptualist with work that encompasses performance, instructions, film, music, and writing, the artist has maintained an active practice and in 2022 staged a global intervention by broadcasting her powerful, universal mantra “IMAGINE PEACE” on the world’s most prominent digital screens every evening in Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo through March 2022. Ono also created a new time-limited edition silkscreen print which raised over £250,000 for United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).