Awards
2008 Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono at the 2008 CAA Annual Conference (photograph by Teresa Rafidi)
The jury is pleased to present this year’s Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work to Yoko Ono for the exhibition Yoko Ono, Gemälde/Paintings, 1960–1964, mounted by the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany (June 13–August 5, 2007). Confounding simple categorization, Ono’s work spans diverse genres and media, including hybrids of conceptual art, poetry, music, and performance. Since the 1960s, she has produced text compositions framed as series of often mysterious and provocative directives to her audiences. Thirty of those works, entitled Instructions for Paintings, were gathered for this recent exhibition. Together with event scores by George Brecht and La Monte Young, these Instruction Paintings are among the most distinctive achievements associated with the legacy of Fluxus. Instructions for Paintings were translated into German for the first time on the occasion of this world-premiere exhibition. The texts are transposed onto handwritten paper by the artist and accompanied by an English version comprising photocopies, a Japanese variant, a poster entitled Fenster (Window) designed especially for public spaces throughout Bremen, and other related works. Simultaneously closing down and opening up the limits of artistic “originality,” the exhibition pays homage to one of Ono’s earliest Instruction Paintings, a 1964 composition that reads:
PAINTING TO EXIST ONLY WHEN IT’S PHOTOGRAPHED OR COPIED
Let people copy or photograph your paintings.
Destroy the originals.
As a body of work, Ono’s Instructions affirm the agency of the imagination, encouraging viewers to use her suggestive poetry as a point of departure to envision their own versions of reality. Indeed, their participation is foundational to the realization of the work. Ultimately these pieces convey a spirit of hopefulness and belief in the transformative power of thought, both for individuals and for society at large.
Jury: Patricia Failing, University of Washington, chair; Jonathan Fineberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Margo Machida, University of Connecticut, Storrs; and Kevin Consey, Harriet and Esteban Vicente Trust.