Historical Figure
Yoko Ono
b. 1933
Japanese artist and activist (born 1933)
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Biography
Yoko Ono is a Japanese artist, musician, activist, and filmmaker. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
In Their Own Words (5)
John and I felt that we were like people in an H. G. Wells story. Two people who are walking so fast that nobody else can see them.
25 Things Even My Best Friends Didn’t Know Until Now (1 October 2009) , 2009
A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
A line written by Ono many years before, and quoted by Lennon in December 1980, as quoted in All We Are Saying : The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (2000) by John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, p. 16. , 2000
If your judgement is clouded, you must be carrying too many things which are being a burden to you.
9 October 2009. , 2009
The opposite of love is fear, not hate.
2 July 2010. , 2010
I usually stay away from being carried away, But one day I saw a silver horse. I thought he might take me to that somewhere high, I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings. No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around And run on the ground in the morning. And that's the story of a wandering soul, A story of a dreamer.
"Silver Horse" on Season of Glass (1981). , 1981
Timeline
The story of Yoko Ono, told in moments.
Becomes part of New York's downtown art scene and the Fluxus movement. Performance art. Conceptual works. "Cut Piece," where audience members cut her clothing off while she sits motionless onstage. She's a serious artist before she's famous for anything else.
Marries John Lennon in Gibraltar. They use their honeymoon for a bed-in for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton. Spend a week in bed. Invite the press. The press comes to mock them. They stay in bed anyway. "Hair Peace. Bed Peace." The photographs become icons of the antiwar movement.
John Lennon is shot and killed outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. They'd just returned from a recording session for Double Fantasy. The album wins the Grammy for Album of the Year. She raises their son Sean alone. She never leaves the Dakota.
Funds the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, directly across from the Dakota. A single word in mosaic: Imagine. She also funds the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, a column of light that shines every year from Lennon's birthday to the anniversary of his death.
Named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard. She has 12 number-one US Dance chart singles. She's 83. The woman half the world blamed for breaking up the Beatles turns out to have had her own career all along. Twelve number ones. Nobody can argue with twelve.
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