In 1964, two years before a
chance encounter turned her into an instant celebrity and altered many people’s
perceptions of her art, Yoko Ono performed for the first time what has probably
become her most famous work. In Cut Piece
Ono sat on a stage in a traditional Japanese female pose with a pair of scissors
next to her and invited members of the audience to step forward and using the
scissors cut parts of her clothing from her. She repeated the performance in
2003. The films of these two performances are currently on show at the
Serpentine’s Ono retrospective facing each other in a small room alone. It is
striking when viewing these two films together how time and circumstance can
alter a performance as outwardly simple as this.
The 1964 film is black and white
and has the look of being filmed by a (talented) amateur. The woman seated on
stage is young and beautiful and looks vulnerable and unnerved. She gazes
blankly into the mid-distance passive and immobile. To view the film is an
uncomfortable experience. As a viewer (voyeur) we are complicit in the
sexualised violation of a young woman. The glee with which some of the male
participants literally cut strips off her is incredibly disturbing. Cut Piece (1964) is a powerful work of
feminist propaganda. Ono once said of it: “this is what all women go through
every day.” It discusses sex, gender and power relations brutally and
explicitly. It is a stunningly successful work of art.
By contrast, Cut Piece (2003) is a very different performance. Professionally
filmed and in colour the subject is a completely different woman. Ono is now
old, famous and very powerful. The vulnerability has all but gone. Only through
the strange transgressed taboo of seeing an elderly woman being stripped nearly
naked does the work retain any emotional power. Ono is at all times strong and
in control. The performance is more a celebration of Ono’s celebrity than a
radical work of art. It has become the equivalent of an aging rock band playing
their greatest hit to a stadium of devotees. You can take nothing away from the
artist for having written such a classic song, but you really wish you’d seen
it performed in a small club back when it was fresh and exciting and youthful.
