“She was the first artist, in 1964, to put language on the wall of the gallery and invite the viewer to complete the work. She was the first artist to cede authorial authority to the viewer in this way, making her work interactive and experimental. That was the radical move of art in the 1960s.”...Here's the 9-minute video of "Cut Piece."
A key work was her book Grapefruit, first published in 1964, which has artworks framed as sets of instructions, or “event scores”; as such it is an important early example of conceptual art. (One example, entitled Painting to Exist Only When It’s Copied Or Photographed, runs: “Let people copy or photograph your paintings. Destroy the originals.”)
Another significant work of this period was Cut Piece, a performance work in which Ono invited the audience to take scissors and snip away her clothes as she sat, silent and still....
June 11, 2012
"What is so extraordinary is that her work chimes with the times we live in now. Her activism is immensely relevant for today, in the age of Occupy."