
Yoko Ono (b. 1933) wearing her trademark wraparound sunglasses and sporting a tattoo. This photo by Mark C. O'Flaherty was taken in London in 2002, the year before Yoko Ono turned 70 and reprised her once-controversial stage show, "Cut Piece," in Paris.
In 2003, when Yoko Ono turned 70, she celebrated her birthday in much the same way the rest of us do. She put on her best outfit (a little black dress, of course), ordered a cake (chocolate), and invited a few friends to come to her party. And, to make it more fun, she hauled out some family photos to remember the old days and tacked them on the wall.
Sounds normal enough, right ? Hardly. The words “Yoko” and “normal” have never appeared in the same sentence before, until now. Yoko, after all, rose to fame first as an avant garde performance artist before she met and wed Beatle John Lennon. True to her fashion, Yoko staged her February 2003 birthday party to be an attention-getting bash. She invited 200 guests to one of New York’s poshest restaurants, Mr. Chow. The partygoers were an eclectic lot, including creative types like rockers (Lou Reed, Fred Schneider of the B-52s) and writers (Susan Sontag) as well as recording executives and media moguls. As for the decor:
The room was dominated by a blown-up picture of Ono and John Lennon with their words, “War Is Over If You Want It.” Another wall showed Ono’s “Film No. 4, Autumn,” which features 300 bare butts walking. A portion of the floor was covered with white canvas to create a “painting to be stepped on” of footprints. In another part of the party, Ono’s Bagism, a fabric bag big enough to enclose two people, was available for cavorting guests. Guests received goodie bags that contained Ono’s book “Grapefruit” and her “Box of Smile,” a mirror encased in a box.
Yoko has been in the jaw-dropping business since 1964 when she first performed “Cut Piece” at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. At the time she was struggling for recognition as a concept artist. “Cut Piece” was her most provocative piece of that period.
In these first performances [of ‘Cut Piece’] by Ono, the artist sat kneeling on the concert hall stage, wearing her best suit of clothing, with a pair of scissors placed on the floor in front of her. Members of the audience were invited to approach the stage, one at a time, and cut a bit of her clothes off—which they were allowed to keep.” Yoko left the stage completely nude.
Click to see a film of Yoko’s 1965 Tokyo performance of “Cut Piece.” [The music by Yoko Ono was added later.]
“The Japanese audiences’ volative reaction convinced Yoko that she could not stay in Japan if she expected to attract serious attention.” So she took the show on the road – to New York then London for the fateful meeting with Lennon at the Indica Gallery. (1)
Seven months after Yoko held her birthday bash, she decided to reprise “Cut Piece” for a Paris audience, saying that she was doing it for world peace. “Come and cut a piece of my clothing wherever you like the size of less than a postcard,” she offered, “and send it to the one you love.”

Sean Lennon, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, cuts away a piece of his artist mother Yoko Ono's dress as she repeats her 1960s performance "Cut Piece," in Paris. (AP)
Wearing a layered black silk chiffon skirt (Chanel?) and a black blouse (Gucci?), Yoko sat in a chair onstage as audience members, including son Sean Lennon, came forward and snipped off pieces of her clothing. One woman cut a piece of her own jacket and gave it to Yoko.
“There were a few tense moments. One woman hacked rather brutally with the shears….Early on, one woman cut Yoko’s shoe…but Yoko was obviously not pleased and asked her not to do the shoe, but the damage was already done.”
Stripped down to her matching black bra, panties, and shoes, the show ended and Yoko was escorted off stage in a red kimono.
(1) Spitz, Bob. The Beatles: A Biography. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
Wow! I had never seen this footage before. I was impressed by the gutsiness of a woman doing this in 1965, but when I watched the vignette, I noticed that Yoko manifests the same discomfort one WOULD expect from a woman of that time period. As her clothes become more scant, her body language betrays a modest nervousness that was undoubtedly not intended by the artist. Amazing stuff! Thanks Lisa Rogers!
Sincerely,
Shirley K.
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Shirley, I am so glad to hear from you. Here are some notes on “Cut Piece” as described by Yoko:
Discussing the work in a 1967 article in a London underground magazine, Ono
told her interviewers:
It was a form of giving, giving and taking. It was a kind of criticism against
artists, who are always giving what they want to give. I wanted people to
take whatever they wanted to, so it was very important to say you can cut
wherever you want to. It is a form of giving that has a lot to do with Buddhism.
There’s a small allegorical story about Buddha. He left his castle
with his wife and children and was walking towards a mountain to go into
meditation. As he was walking along, a man said that he wanted Buddha’s
children because he wanted to sell them or something. So Buddha gave him
his children. Then someone said he wanted Buddha’s wife and he gave him
his wife. Someone calls that he is cold, so Buddha gives him his clothes.
Finally a tiger comes along and says he wants to eat him and Buddha lets
the tiger eat him. And in the moment the tiger eats him, it became enlight-
ened or something. That’s a form of total giving as opposed to reasonable
giving like “logically you deserve this” or “I think this is good, therefore I
am giving this to you.”
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Any idea why Yoko named a recent tour of John Lennon’s art “Here Comes the Sun,” which is a song that was written by George Harrison?
Info about the event here: http://dcafterfive.com/2009/05/08/here-comes-the-sun/comment-page-1/
and here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/06/AR2009050603911.html
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Hi, Heather, I don’t have that information. I’ll check out the site.
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