Yoko Ono London Exhibit: Dirt Piles In Serpentine Gallery

Newsoxy ^ | June 20, 2012 | John Lester

[Vince Ferrer]

Yoko Ono has unveiled her latest art for the first time in a decade called “To The Light” in the Serpentine Gallery, but some might be confused on what it actually means.

For example, in one work of art on display there are three identical mounds of earth labeled “Country A,” “Country B,” and “Country C,” in front of the classic “War Is Over” poster she made with John Lennon.

There are also suspended World War II helmets hanging on clear wire from the ceiling and inside there are blue jigsaw puzzle pieces.

The Daily Mail reported that it includes new and existing installations, films and performances, as well as archive material relating to several key early works.

There are several screens on a wall and one of six videos includes her 1968 slow-motion of John Lennon smiling.

It is part of the London 2012 Festival, a 12-week UK-wide celebration featuring internationally-renowned artists from Midsummer’s Day on 21 June to the final day of the Paralympic Games on 9 September 2012.

Yoko Ono has worked as an artist, film-maker, poet, musician, writer, performance artist and peace activist for over five decades.

Alongside her exhibition staged inside the Gallery, Yoko Ono has also put together a largescale participatory project, called #smilesfilm in Kensington Gardens.

Visitors from all over the world can drop in to a specially-designed photo booth installed outside the Serpentine Gallery and record their smiles.

These images will then be collected to make #smilesfilm, which will be exhibited in a physical form on a screen at the Serpentine Gallery and presented globally in digital form on a dedicated website, smilesfilm.com, and apps for iPhone and iPad.

“Ono’s project at the Serpentine will tap into the transformative potential of the smile, which can change an individual’s view, but also radiate out into the world. Ono associates this transmission of positive energy with healing and peace,” the gallery said.

[driftless2]

"modern art"

Pretty much my views on the subject. Art ran out of ideas more than one hundred years ago. Modern artists couldn't duplicate the fantastic works by artists from centuries previous, so they had to come up with some kind of gimmick. Abstract art emerged (or oozed to the surface), and we're stuck with it. You're supposed to look at those globs of paint on the wall and see beauty...or something. If you don't, you're just an uncultured, troglodyte philistine who has no appreciation of the finer things in life.

However, the artist and his ally in crime, the art critic, will tell you what is good and what is not. Please have your checkbook open and be ready to pay the millions this dreck er art is worth.

[freekitty]

There’s always been that possibility. She looks mean and totally self centered.

[Joe 6-pack]

I'm generally no fan of modern art, but you're art history is a bit off.

"Modern artists couldn't duplicate the fantastic works by artists from centuries previous, so they had to come up with some kind of gimmick."

Picasso said something to the effect that, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." If you look at his early work, it supports that. Picasso painted this when he was 14...

...and this when he was 15:

His foray into cubism was an deliberate and contrived effort to simultaneously depict objects from multiple perspectives. I'm not a huge fan of cubism, but certainly, some of the pieces are not unaesthetic:

Furthermore, cubism was not without precedent and was a natural progression of the post-impressionist style of Cezanne and others...

"Abstraction," in and of its own right is not a bad thing. Some of the most highly regarded painters of the 19th Century dabbled with abstraction, giving their paintings titles in order to make them appear to be something real...

James Whistler -Nocturne Westminster Place

Joseph Turner - Steamer in a Snowstorm

Again, I'm not putting up any kind of defense of a lot of the crap that calls itself modern art, I'm merely saying that abstraction, in and of itself should not be immediately discounted. If we dismissed anything that was not rigidly representational we'd have to write off such things as the Book of Kells...

Having said all that, and bringing the discussion back home to the topic of this thread, if three piles of dirt is "art", my dog is on the cutting edge of the aesthetic scene in the 21st century :-)

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

She could crap on a Ritz Cracker and some “enlightened artisan” will pay her six-figures for the “privilege” of displaying it in his gallery.

She had a display at the Contemporary Arts Musuem in Cincinnati about twenty years which consisted of an old rotary dial phone on a stand in a white room. She would occassionally dial it up and chat with whoever answered.

[driftless2]

Sorry, Picasso should have stuck with his 14 yr. old vision. My view of modern art remains the same. Just call me Mr. Philistine.