Fluxus
Manifesto:
"Purge the world
of dead art,
abstract art,
illusionistic art"










































Yoko moved back to Tokyo, toured with John Cage briefly (the critics weren't pleased) and spent another period of time dealing with intense loneliness.  While Toshi went to parties with other artists he had become friends with, Yoko would stay behind and attend a movie or play by herself.  Depression set in and Yoko became despondent.  After an overdose of pills, she found herself in a hospital for the mentally ill.  She was literally being held prisoner there, heavily sedated.

While this was happening, back in New York, Yoko's friend, LaMonte Young, was telling fellow-musician, Anthony Cox about Yoko.  The stories he was hearing intrigued him, and he decided to visit Japan   - partly to further his study of calligraphy and partly to meet the woman he'd heard so much about.

When Cox arrived in Japan, he discovered that Yoko was locked away in the hospital.  Cox wrote in a church newsletter some years ago: "I found her to be heavily drugged. She could barely talk. By a strange coincidence, the drug they were giving her was one I had just recently read up on, and I found out that they were giving her an abnormally high dosage. "  Toshi, who Yoko was still married to, asked Cox to help liberate Yoko from the prison-hospital.  Cox agreed and, being a master of smooth-talking his way past obstacles, met with the director of the hospital, told him he was a colleague of Yoko's who wrote art criticism and that Yoko was a highly respected artist in New York.  Cox threatened to write about how she was being treated in the hospital. Soon after, Yoko was released.

Toshi and Yoko's marriage had been over for some time, but they had not made the break legal yet.  For a time, Toshi, Tony Cox and Yoko all lived together in Tokyo...an arrangement that was certain to fail.  After one particularly unpleasant argument, Toshi and Yoko separated and although there was a reconcilation, the two drifted further apart.  When Yoko became pregnant by Tony,  Toshi filed for divorce and the marriage was officially ended.

On August 8, 1963, Kyoko Chan Cox was born.

Tony became Yoko's artistic assistant, and as friends from that period told Jerry Hopkins, he waited on Yoko hand and foot.  It was during this time that it was decided to publish Yoko's instruction pieces in book form. The first printing of 500 copies of Grapefruit, which she planned to sell at future concerts and happenings, was delivered to their Tokyo apartment on July 4, 1964.

Yoko and Tony's relationship was a stormy one, and they separated in 1964.  First Tony returned to the States, then in the fall of 1964, Yoko made the return trip to New York City as well.

FLUXUS
 (Brief description by Peter Frank)
While Yoko was in Japan, Yoko's friend and colleague, George Maciunas and his group of NYC artists had acquired the name Fluxus.  Literally translated from Latin, the name means "insistent change, or flux." There are also definitions dealing with purging the bowels, which Maciunas refers to in his Fluxus Manifesto. Maciunas called the Fluxus movement "a fusion of Spike Jones, vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp."  Whatever it was, it was already in flux by the time Yoko arrived back in NYC.  Some of the members were unhappy with Maciunas' pro-Communist politics and the group was splintering.  



Clive Phillpot, in a piece about Maciunas in FLUXUS: Selections From the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection (image left)  wrote that even though Maciunas himself referred to the years 1963-1968 as the "Flux Golden Age,"  Fluxus did not come to an end until the death of Maciunas in 1978.

Yoko On Fluxus:

Fluxus is Flux: the act of continuous flow and change. During the exhibition, do not let the artists' statements about Fluxus stay on the wall like words carved on stone. Paint over the wall with the color you like. Keep painting." YO 96

Written for Prima fest di un altro mondo, 1996
From YES Yoko Ono Chapter, 
Yoko Ono and Fluxus by Jon Hendricks
YOKO, TONY AND KYOKO IN NEW YORK

Yoko reunited with Tony Cox and while he stayed home and took care of Kyoko, Yoko became her own promotions agent.  She was booked into the Carnegie Recital Hall on March 21, 1965 to perform some of her new pieces.   It was at this event, that Yoko performed "Cut Piece" - the rather shocking interactive performance during which Yoko sits on the stage with scissors in outstretched hands, and invites audience members to come onstage and cut pieces of her clothing off.

Yoko was again living on the poverty level - the family would move to a different apartment every few months.  "Bag Piece" was created during this time and Yoko and Tony also opened a conceptual art gallery they called the IsReal Gallery.  The concept for "Bottoms" was also dreamed up in the mid-60's.

In early September 1966 Yoko was invited to London for the Destruction in Art Symposium.  Yoko's concept art received great reviews by The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.  The Financial Times called her work "uplifting."  Yoko's art became a big hit in England, and her association with Barry Miles, one of the DIA's organizers and part owner of the Indica Gallery with John Dunbar, is what eventually led to her first encounter with John Lennon. John and other musicians of the era were regular customers at the gallery.

Because of her burgeoning popularity, Yoko was given free rein to put on any type of show she wished at the Indica. Her show there in November of 1966 was spread over two floors and featured many of the pieces that have become so familiar to Yoko fans.

On November 9, John arrived at the gallery with his friend, Terry Doran. The two were greeted by Dunbar, then left to look around.  John stopped at a pedestal and picked up "Box of Smile."  When he looked in and saw his own face looking back at him, he did smile.

Then he found the white ladder.  On the ceiling he could see only a white dot on a black canvas, with a magnifying glass hanging from a chain nearby.  John told Rolling Stone years later, "I climbed the ladder, looked through the spy glass, and in tiny letters it said, 'Yes.'  So it was positive. I felt relieved.  I was very impressed."

John and Yoko would not get together for several more months, during which time, Tony and Yoko were creating interest in the British press and completing Bottoms.  The film features the naked buttocks of 365 friends, associates and volunteers who answered an ad in a magazine.

Yoko on the Bottoms Concept:

"People's behinds have right and left and top and bottom.  And each part moves separately. I thought it would be visually interesting to film close-up.  Conventional movies have a background and part of the picture moves. In other words, there's always a stationary part in it. If  you have close-ups of bottoms, the whole picture should move. Moreover, you can't control how your bottom moves, unlike your face, regardless of your intelligence. Cabinet ministers and laborers, beautiful women and ugly women are all equal when they take their clothes off. Their bottoms all have innocent looks beyond their control.  I put an ad n the paper saying, 'Intelligent-looking bottoms wanted for filming. Possessors of unintelligent-looking ones need not apply.' "

More events followed the Bottoms debut, including one of the most famous:  Yoko, wrapped in cloth, tied herself to the statuary lions in London's Trafalgar Square.  The media was eating up these events and Yoko was getting the attention for her art that had been so elusive in the past.

In the summer of 1967, Yoko sent John Lennon a copy of Grapefruit. She also discovered his two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.  Friends say she was in awe of Lennon's writing and impressed by his intellect.. and she was becoming attracted to him in other ways as well.


Coming Soon..Yoko's story continues as The Ballad of John and Yoko..