Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer and peace activist also known for her avant-garde art, music and filmmaking. Ono was married to John Lennon until he died in 1980. She was born in 1933 and is now 82 years old. Ono brings feminism into a lot of her work by focusing on the way society perceives them and tends to challenge the way her spectators think and often does performances with audience interaction.

“This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed, and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and woman we have created for ourselves; the image has nothing to do with the reality of people.” – Yoko Ono

Washington Post interview with Ono: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000410.html

Cut Piece by Yoko Ono: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJ3dPwa2tI

“We’re here on this earth to unravel the mystery of this planet. The planet is asking for it.” – Yoko Ono

I like the idea of Ono’s film where she asks audience members to one by one join her on stage and cut off a part of her clothing. Eventually she is sitting basically naked. To me this represents the way society picks at women and ends up leaving them with nothing. I find this a really great concept and brings in audience participation as well as bringing to light serious issues such as the way women are treated within our society. I think that this piece is very strong and really does speak volumes. I love that Ono got the audience involved really making it an event to remember. Ono has some really great work which would be interesting to respond to as means of public participation and performance photography. One thing in particular that I enjoy about the film ‘Cut Piece’ is that Ono just has a neutral facial expression, she isn’t sharing her inner emotions with any participants or with the audience. I like that as this allows the audience and spectators to make up their own mind of what is going on and their own personal opinions and views on what is going on. This project shows the vulnerability of women with the audience cutting up her clothing piece by piece. She is motionless throughout possibly showing passiveness and how women are expected to be that way and just allow others to use them and take things away from them, more mentally than physically. This is a really strong body of work and shows true vulnerability in a completely great and artistic way which is something that I really like about Ono.

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream, A dream you dream together is reality.” – Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono and John Lennon blog: http://imaginepeace.com

Recently I have seen quite a few videos of women going into the streets wearing nothing but underwear and a sign, holding a pen in each hand. The signs invite the public to draw a heart anywhere on her body showing that all shapes and sizes of women are beautiful no matter what society tries to imply is right. I think that these videos are very moving and really does show how accepting we can be as a society and that we just need that little push with movements such as feminism and artistic movements in order to gain support and understanding of current social issues of the way men and women are expected to be. This reminds me of Ono’s work as she completely relies on public participation and cooperation within a lot of her work. I really love these kinds of videos as they make me happy and feel less self-conscious of my body knowing that people will accept you no matter what you look like. Through public acts like these we as a society realise that focusing on the way someone looks physically is wrong and can really damage a person mentally. It’s things like these that make me happy to be a part of this generation as we have come so far, with so far to go, and are constantly finding more creative ways to show people that everyone should be accepted and self love is not something to be ashamed of.

More recent work of Yoko Ono. This is mainly to do with music but has a creative meaning and concept behind it which is actually very interesting to watch. Some of the stuff that Ono has created seems very strange and random but then she turns it almost comical and funny, I really like that about her she doesn’t take herself too seriously but does come up with good meanings behind her work with good concepts.

Article on Yoko Ono ‘Cut Piece’:  http://www.reactfeminism.org/entry.php?id=121&e=

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist born in 1945. Much of her work is done in black and white overlaid with declarative captions. These captions are written in white on red backgrounds with phrases in her works often including pronouns such as ‘you’, ‘your’, ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ really personalising her messages towards the spectators. Her messages address cultural constructions of power, identity and sexuality. I like the concept of Kruger’s work as she brings clear messages to the spectator and tells them what they should see in the image. Kruger is a conceptual and feminist artist.

Kruger’s website: http://www.barbarakruger.com/

Krugers MoMA portfolio:  http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/3266

I think that I will take inspiration from Kruger in my own work and add this kind of Dada style written text and imagery in my own photographs. This style also reminds me of propaganda and really sends out clear messages. It mainly reminds me of the Second World War when they would try to get women into the factories to help in the war effort and how they would influence people to become soldiers. I find this a very interesting concept and can be highly influential and effective if it is actually done well.

The Guardian article on Kruger:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/06/barbara-kruger-modern-art-oxford-review

“one of the best artists of the 1980’s without actually doing much that is new.” – Roberta Smith review

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is an influential movement that first emerged in the mid 1960s. It brought up ideas over the formal or visual components of traditional works of art. Conceptual artists will often challenge old concepts of things such as beauty, they question the conventional means by which the public consume art. Artists will often reject the conventional arts and use ranges of medias including maps, diagrams, texts and videos. Kruger is constantly making new images, she will find old archive images of something and stick a text in front of it with a clear meaning.

Feminist art

Feminist art emerged around the same time as conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s. This came about so artists could explore questions of sex, power, the body and how gender categories seem to structure the way we see and understand the world. This art also frequently involves text and performance elements. Kruger will often use staged photographs as backgrounds for her text and manages to find great photographs to make her images stand out even more.

Whose Values? project by Kruger and 400 students: 

I do enjoy looking at Kruger’s work as a lot of it holds strong social messages. She tends to make her messages very clear and easy for anyone to understand as she has blatantly written them in found photographs. I think that I will use the idea of this within my work and incorporate it into my own work as well as experimenting with other works too. I want to be able to broaden my skills within photography and be able to make more artistic links within different forms of art and not just in the photographic sense. I think that I will be able to make quite a few different responses to Kruger’s work as I find this very interesting and unique in the photography world yet it seems so simple. Kruger took inspiration from magazines and made it her own, she believed that if they could do it and hold so much influence then she could do exactly the same thing. I am excited to respond to this body of work.

The Atlantic review of Kruger: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/the-unsettling-text-driven-world-of-barbara-krugers-belief-doubt/261348/

This image particularly interests me as the background image is a woman looking through a magnifying glass. The text fits with the photograph as it states that the world isn’t small if ‘you have to clean it’. I think that this is really effective as the woman seems as if she is looking for dirt to clean and that she has to look closely to actually clean up and that there is so much to clean in this massive world. I like the bold font with ‘It’s a small world’ and the rest of the text much smaller ‘but not if you have to clean it’. For some reason this stands out to me and kind of seems like Kruger was saying ‘It’s a small world’ quite loudly and proudly while saying the part in the smaller text under her breath as if making a sly comment. I think that this is a strong image and shows how women are expected to do the cleaning and look after the house etc. There isn’t much to this image as the text is very plain and simple. It is obvious and to the point, it doesn’t just suggest things allowing the spectator to make their own perception it literally tells them exactly what she was thinking and what she wanted the spectator to get from the image. These images aren’t her own but she uses old images to make new ones with her own original text in front of them.

Another image that stood out for me was this one above. I think that this is the perfect image to go with Kruger’s text as it is very bold in itself and stands out to me. I like that one half of the image is in black and white with the other half in negative. This shows two sides to the subject, one pretty and good while the other looks more scary and a little bit sinister. The message that Kruger brought across was ‘Your body is a battleground’, this really interests me as it is in front of a woman’s face and how possibly the struggles that women face every month with having periods and going through cramps and constant bleeding. This could be what Kruger means by ‘battleground’. It could also be through pregnancy and how women often go through the struggle of being pregnant and then having children and being expected to carry on with everyday life almost straight away. I like this image as it is bold and is open for spectators interpretation.

One other image that I like is this one above because it seems as if a little boy is being told that he doesn’t need to grow muscle as his mother pushes him down. The text really works with this image and is effective as it says ‘We don’t need another hero’. This could possibly be a message to young boys that they don’t need to feel that they have to fight in wars to be seen as masculine and they don’t need to conform to societies expectations of having big muscles and being strong and independent. It is almost as if his mother doesn’t want him to be another ‘hero’ because she loves him and doesn’t want to lose him like many other mother’s did during World War II. I think this is one of my favourite images as it is quite powerful and stands out to me. I think that the image and the text blend well together and almost look as though the image was made for the text and that is the way it was broadcast.