Glean

Yoko Ono’s Instruction Art

Glean 4, Summer 2024

Essay by Gunnar B. Kvaran

Tate Modern and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20), Düsseldorf, have organised one of the most comprehensive surveys to date on the work of Yoko Ono. On the occasion of the exhibition at Tate, Gunnar B. Kvaran revisits Ono’s groundbreaking ‘Instruction works’ and considers their influence on the development of conceptual art in Europe.

‘A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.’
— Six Film Scripts by Yoko Ono, Tokyo, June 1964.

Yoko Ono is a leading experimental and avant-garde artist. She has been associated with conceptual art, performance, Fluxus and the happenings of the 1960s (she was one of the few women artists involved in these movements to gain wider recognition), but above all she has been a pioneer who has questioned the concept of art and the art object (…)

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