Magazine: interview with Yoko Ono. The most famous unknown artist
IN In 1971, Yoko Ono staged a “one-woman show” at New York’s MoMA. Yoko printed a catalog and placed advertisements in The New York Times in which she held a poster with a large F at the entrance to the museum, turning the Museum of Modern Art into the Museum of Modern Fart. She also made a film in which visitors were asked as they left the museum if they had been to the It exhibition. Some answered in the affirmative, others said that they were just planning to go. At the same time, it was impossible to get to the exhibition: at the cash register there was a handwritten announcement: This is not here.
Photo: Pari Dukovic
The Museum of Modern [F]art was one of numerous works of avant-garde conceptual art that Ono created beginning in the 1960s. Today, 44 years after the guerrilla happening at the doors of MoMA, she finally received official recognition from the museum. Opening May 17, Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971 chronicles the artist's first, defining decade, as she pioneered new means of expression and honed her distinctive style. The exhibition's collection of texts, objects, performances, recordings and experimental films demonstrates how powerfully this woman influenced the development of conceptual art.
“Thanks to Ono, the artist received a new status. she herself was often not the creator or performer. She is a generator of ideas."
“Thanks to Ono, the artist received a new status,” says Christophe Chéry, chief curator of graphics at MoMA. – Yoko decided that the role of the artist went beyond creating objects for the audience, because she herself was often not the creator or performer. She is a generator of ideas."
She became interested in “conceptual” art long before this term came into widespread use. Yoko was born in Tokyo but moved to New York in the mid-50s. She was one of the few women among the artists, poets and musicians who joined the then emerging Fluxus movement. Its adherents promoted a messy fusion of different types of expression in art and a do-it-yourself aesthetic. Even before Fluxus, its founder George Maciunas organized the first solo exhibition of Yoko Ono in 1961. Visitors were invited to pour water on a canvas painted with Japanese ink or to walk across the painting, just as in 17th-century Japan they forced suspected Catholics to step on the face of Christ - those who refused were executed. “I was amazed by their courage,” Ono said recently. “I heard this story back in school and thought then that I wanted to be as brave.”
The radicalism of her early works lay in the fact that they were not a subject, but an idea. Her groundbreaking 1964 book Grapefruit consists largely of recipes for making art and music—a set of instructions and ideas that anyone can implement. (“Let people copy or photograph your paintings. Destroy the original,” she wrote in a burst of prescient insight.) In this way, as an artist, she relinquished control over her own work: instead of simply presenting the finished work, she invited the viewer to co-create .
“From the very beginning, Yoko tried to communicate directly with the viewer, tried to change his worldview,” says Sheri. “And this is already politics.” During her Cut Piece performance, first performed in 1964 in Kyoto and later in 1965 at New York's Carnegie Hall, Ono sat silently on stage while the audience, one by one, cut off pieces of her clothing with scissors. Feminism was just coming into fashion, and Ono was already making full use of the female body as an instrument of creativity and protest.
“Like all artists, I prefer control,” Yoko admitted the day after her next birthday. She celebrated her 82nd birthday the day before with a jam session in the studio in the company of her 39-year-old son Sean Lennon and close friends - over the past ten years this has become a good tradition. We sat on white canvas chairs in her flower-filled, spacious kitchen in the Dakota apartment building on Central Park West. Under the high ceilings, Ono, in a tight black sweater, black trousers and cerulean socks, looked like a miniature ball of energy. “One day I decided that I didn’t want people to touch my works. And then I realized: that’s why I have to let them do this.”
Denim shirt, Current/Elliott; jeans, A.P.C.; bra, model's property
In 1966, John Lennon stopped by the Indica Gallery in London, where her exhibition was taking place. Soon the “lone wolf” (as Ono calls herself in her youth) and the musician began to try their hand at creating together, and Ono quickly became, according to Lennon, “the most famous unknown artist in the world. Everyone knows her, but no one knows what she does.”
Yoko's appearance at MoMA shed light on this mystery. The large-scale exhibition includes the acclaimed Film No. 4 (Bottoms) of 1966-1967, in which the bare buttocks of walking people flash like a kaleidoscope; and Half-a-Room, a 1967 installation of household objects cut in two, the artist’s reflection on the inadequacy she felt when she woke up one morning to find that her husband, film producer Tony Cox, had not spent the night at home.
“When John and I staged a protest in bed, only a few supported us. And now the whole world has joined our protest.”
Of course, there were also works created together with Lennon, who at one time attended art college. One of their first discussions, Ono recalls, was about Rene Magritte and Wassily Kandinsky. “John was very popular in his field, but he understood that I had achieved a lot in mine. Therefore, our meeting was an incredible union of two souls.”
Ono and Lennon decided to use their fame to benefit the anti-war movement and during their honeymoon invited journalists to their hotel room, where they spent a week in bed talking about world peace. No other performance could outshine the excitement around the Bed-In event, which took place in 1969 at the Amsterdam Hilton, and then the same year at a hotel in Montreal, where they recorded Give Peace a Chance, the first single of the newly formed group Plastic Ono Band. “The world didn’t understand us,” Ono recalls. - They hated me, but why? Maybe out of jealousy. Because I was with John. Art is the most important thing in my life, and if I cared about other people's opinions, I would not create my works. But the attacks did not stop; John also became their victim. I was worried that his career would be ruined because of love. Of course, it didn’t come to that, but the danger was great.”
Yoko's parents were wealthy and exceptionally educated people: her mother belonged to a family of wealthy Japanese bankers, and her father came from an old noble family. Since childhood, she has been distinguished by an indomitable craving for independence. Her father, a banker, she recalls, translated one of the first works on constructivism into Japanese, and her mother was an excellent artist. At three years old, Yoko was sent to a music school for gifted children, and later became one of the first women to enter the philosophy department of Tokyo's prestigious Gakushuin University. Following their father, the family shuttled between Japan and America. For some time they lived in San Francisco, then in Scarsdale in the suburbs of New York, and in the early 50s Ono entered Sarah Lawrence College. Having joined the New York underground, she "never suffered from excessive self-doubt."
Yoko's fearlessness saved her more than once. In 1971, a month before the opening of the artist's first solo exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, Ono and Lennon were invited to take part in the Dick Cavett show. At the time, Cavett was considered the top intellectual on television, but he was rude to Ono: calling her “one of the most controversial women since the Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson, who stopped the Duke from becoming king” and grinning wryly while listening to Lennon’s impassioned praise of her art. And yet, despite the fact that scandalous fame overshadowed her creative achievements, it was thanks to her that Ono was able to widely announce her exhibition.
At that opening day, a whole crowd of uncontrollable fans gathered: someone started a rumor that The Beatles would reunite to play a concert in honor of the opening. Many of the pieces from that Everson exhibition also subsequently appeared at MoMA.
Ahead of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Vogue sister magazine W asked Yoko Ono to reproduce two of her works. One of them is a new version of a photograph by Maciunas. It shows It peering through a hole in a poster she hand-painted before a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1961. The second is her cult performance Cut Piece, in which she last participated in 2003. This time, however, Yoko chose to play the role of the man with the scissors. “I will be the aggressor, not the victim,” she said. She was inspired to create the performance by the story of Buddha, who was ready to sacrifice everything, even his family, in order to understand the human essence. When you cut with scissors, she explains, you get square cuts that contrast with the natural curves of a woman's body. “I wanted to show the suffering that women experience,” Ono says. “A woman is being deprived of something.”
The filming took place under Ono's complete control, and her every move was bold and precise. She made cuts in the most vulnerable places: collar, knee, bra strap - and a pile of square patches grew on the floor. The long, shiny scissors she chose for the project look menacing in her small hands. “I had no idea that it was such a dangerous instrument,” she admitted after filming. “The scissors were very sharp, I was constantly afraid of cutting someone.”
Yoko has no plans to officially participate in her conceptual performances - unlike, for example, Marina Abramovic - but does not exclude the possibility that at some point she may begin to interact with visitors in one of her works. At the same time, interest in her person does not fade even for a day: she continues to promote world peace through creative projects, recordings and posts on social networks. I asked the artist how her work resonates with the prevailing protest sentiments and ongoing demonstrations in the world. “Strangely enough, when John and I protested in bed, only a few people supported us,” she replied, referring to all the ridicule they had to endure. “And now the whole world has joined our protest.”
Style: Felicia Garcia-Rivera
Hairstyles: Tamara McNaughton for Wella Professionals @ Management + Artists
Makeup: Christine Cherbonnier for Chanel @ The Wall Group; Georgi Sandev for Chanel @ Streeters
Manicure: Honey @ Exposure NY
Scenery: Viki Rutsch
Photographer's assistants: Amy Moore; Fernando Souto; Matthew Kanbergs
Stylist assistant: Hanna Corrie
Decorator assistants: Boaz Tcherikover; Anastasia Dudin
Canvas with cutout (part of decorations): M inoru Nizuma / Courtesy Lenono Photo Archive, New York
Model: Vlada Roslyakova @ Women Management
Yoko Ono Lenon is a Japanese avant-garde artist, singer, writer, widow of one of the most popular musicians of the 20th century. World-renowned peace activist.
Yoko Ono was born on February 18, 1933 in Japan. For the first three years she lived with her mother Isoko Ono in Japan, during which time her father Eisuke Ono lived and worked in San Francisco. He held a senior position in the American office of the Bank of Japan. Soon mother and daughter moved to America, but it turned out not for long. They had to return to their homeland when Eisuke was transferred to the New York branch.
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The girl showed a craving for creativity since childhood. Already at the age of three she was sent to a music school. The girl received her education at the prestigious Gakushuin school. In 1953, Yoko entered Sarah Lawrence College in America, where she studied music and literature for several years. The girl planned to become an opera singer.
Creation
Before meeting John Lennon, Yoko's work was not appreciated by critics. The girl organized strange performances, for example, “Cut a Piece”. The artist sat motionless on the floor of the stage, and the audience had to take turns climbing onto the stage and cutting off a piece of her clothing. This performance lasted until Yoko remained naked. The woman performed this performance more than once. The last time the avant-garde artist appeared before the public in this image was in 2003 in Paris, at that time she was 70 years old.
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But it is not limited solely to the artist. In 1964, the woman published a collection of poetic miniatures, Grapefruit. According to her, it was he who determined her future creative path. The artist embodied these miniatures in installations, films and performances.
But meeting John Lenn changed them both. If at first the musician only occasionally helped organize Yoko Ono exhibitions, he soon realized that they were two halves of the same soul. But many fans of The Beatles blame her for the collapse of the legendary group. In an interview, he stated that Yoko Ono was not to blame for this. According to him, no one inspired Lennon as much as this Japanese woman. And if it weren’t for her, the world would never have heard the great hit “Imagine”.
The artist has always been distinguished by her outrageousness. Perhaps the most famous event of John and Yoko was Bed-In For Peace. Dozens of journalists gathered at the Hilton Hotel to see the birth of a new art movement. It was a peaceful protest against the war - for a week Lennon and Oko lay in bed, answered questions from reporters, and took photographs. Thanks to them, slogans for peace appeared on the front pages of newspapers.
In 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon formed their own group, the Plastic Ono Band. Together the couple released nine albums.
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But the strangest and most provocative was their first album, “Two Virgins.” According to Lennon, it was recorded in one night. But, as it turned out, there were no musical compositions on it. There were some noises, screams, moans. And on the cover there was a naked photo of them.
But perhaps their most famous photograph together was Annie Leibovitz’s work for the cover of Rolling Stone. In the photo, a naked John Lennon hugs and kisses a dressed Yoko Ono lying next to him. This photo was taken on December 8, 1980, just five hours before the musician was killed.
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After Lennon's death, the artist continued her creative path. In Japan, a woman opened a museum where there is a telephone in the center of the hall. Sometimes he starts calling - this is Yoko giving visitors to the exhibition the opportunity to talk with her.
She records albums that become iconic in her musical career: “Starpeace”, “It’s Alright”. She is also releasing John Lennon's unfinished album, Milk and Honey. In 2007, the artist visited Moscow. Her exhibition “The Odyssey of a Cockroach” was held at TSUM as part of the 2nd Moscow Biennale.
Personal life
At the age of 23, Yoko Ono, despite her parents’ prohibitions, marries the Japanese Toshi Ichiyanagi. He was a talented but poor composer. It was a time when the girl sought to earn the love and recognition of the public. She regularly organized exhibitions and performances, which ended in failure. Critics did not take her work seriously. This led the girl to depression. She tried to commit suicide several times, but her husband Tosi saved her every time. When Yoko's parents found out about this, they placed the girl in a psychiatric hospital.
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American film producer Anthony Cox, who was a big fan of Yoko’s work, also found out about this. Anthony went to Japan to support the girl. At the end of treatment, he took Yoko to New York and began producing her projects. At that time, the girl was still married to Ichiyanagi, but, without thinking twice, she leaves her husband and marries Cox. The marriage produced a daughter, Kyoko.
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1966 was a fateful year for Yoko Ono. Her exhibition was held at the London art salon Indica. It was there that she met a member of The Beatles. At that time, Lennon was married to Cynthia Lennon, and Yoko was married to Cox. After this meeting, the artist began to actively seek the singer’s attention.
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The woman could sit outside his house for hours, and one day she got inside. Cynthia let her in so that the artist could call a taxi. She later stated that she allegedly forgot the ring at the Lennons' house. Yoko sent threatening letters and demanded money. As a result, John and Cynthia Lennon divorced in November 1968. The main reason for the breakup was the singer’s betrayal. Cynthia found her husband and Ono in their own bed.
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After this, Yoko Ono breaks up with Anthony Cox, and on March 20, 1969, Yoko and John register an official marriage in Gibraltar. In 1975, their son Sean was born. This happened on John Lennon’s birthday – October 9th. By the way, their son followed in his father’s footsteps. He also became a musician.
But before the birth of their son, the couple had problems. They even separated for a year and a half. The couple moved to New York, but they could not obtain a residence permit. And if Lennon was ready to return to London, Ono was categorically against it. The fact is that her daughter Kyoko lived with her father in America, and the woman did not want to deprive herself of communication with the girl.
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Shortly after Lennon's death, Yoko married antiques dealer Sam Havadtoy; their marriage ended in 2001.
Yoko Ono now
In 2016, 83-year-old Yoko Ono posed for the annual Pirelli calendar. For the photo shoot, the artist wore mini-shorts, a short jacket and a top hat, looking like a cabaret dancer.
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That same year, the artist was urgently hospitalized in a New York hospital with a suspected stroke. But her son Sean denied the rumors, saying that his mother had the flu, and fatigue and dehydration appeared as a result of her illness.
The woman is constantly suing for the rights to her name and the name of John Lennon. In November 2017, she won a lawsuit against the owner of the Hamburg beer hall “Yoko Mono” due to the similarity of the name of the establishment with her name. She also achieved a ban on the sale of Polish lemonade under the name “John Lemon”.
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The artist’s official website presents her latest works, news about exhibitions, photos and videos.
Works
- 1964-2003 – performance “Cut a Piece”
- 1966-2016 – “Mend Piece” (Mirrors)
- 1988 – “Disappearing Piece”
- 1988 – “Painting to Be Stepped On”
- 1994 – “Untitled”
- 1997 – “Vertical Memory”
- 1998 – “Painting to See the Room Through”
- 2009 – “Promise”
- 2011 – “The Doors”
– What are your first impressions of Moscow?
“I’m incredibly glad to be back here again.” I have been to Moscow twice, the last time in the late 1990s, but I have never brought my work. So this visit is special. The city makes a great impression; everyone knows its role in the 20th century, and I’m sure its role in the 21st will be no less great. Recently I was asked what kind of music I associate Moscow with. At first I answered that it was with Schoenberg’s music, but after thinking about it, I decided that it was with Shostakovich.
- Speaking of music. You recently released an album. Are you planning to come to us with a concert?
– If there are such offers, I will come. But for now the exhibition is enough, it took too long to get there. Almost five years have passed since it was shown in New York.
– Judging by the exhibition, the main topic that worries you now is violence and war. Do you believe that an artist can cope with these eternal problems?
– This project is not entirely about war in the usual sense. It is about two human states: about the violence that is next to you, on the streets, and about peace in the same close streets. If you like, we have two industries - the industry of peace and the industry of war. And everyone must choose which one to join. I decided to show this choice through the eyes of a third character - a cockroach (we look at the streets of New York through his eyes). After all, it is believed that cockroaches will survive even after a nuclear war. As banal as it may sound, it’s time for peaceful people to unite.
– Is such a keen perception of the war somehow connected with childhood memories?
- Certainly. Everyone knows that my family and I hid in a bunker during the bombing of Japan. By the way, John (Lennon - “NI”) was born during the German shelling of Liverpool.
– You show scenes of violence quite openly and shockingly. Meanwhile, in Russia the question of whether censorship or at least self-censorship is needed for an artist is now being actively discussed...
– Firstly, everything that an artist does, he does, following his experiences and thoughts. And no one has the right to prohibit him from creating his works. Censorship is a dangerous thing. You can, for example, do your best to protect children from unpleasant scenes and not show them reality. But when they grow up, they will still be faced with reality - and the shock from it will be even stronger and more terrible. As for my installation specifically, scenes of violence in it are only part of the overall plan. Here, as in a movie: a person goes through shock and war in order to get closer to the final note, to the last point of the work - to peace and tranquility.
– The last point of your exhibition, as far as I understand, is a map of the world, where everyone can put a “seal of peace” on the country or city that he would like to see peaceful. Have you noticed that there are many stamps on Russia?
– This is quite natural. After all, everyone wants peace in their own place.
– I’ll ask frankly, do you know about the conflicts in Russia? For example, about the Chechen war?
– I know, but I’m not a politician, but an artist. For example, in one of the parts of the exhibition in Moscow - and this was not in either New York or London - I used helmets of Russian soldiers from the Second World War. So there is a “Russian trace” here.
– With your worldwide fame, do you feel that you can change something in the world?
– Fame in itself is not worth anything, it is a relative phenomenon. I just still have the opportunity to speak widely and openly about issues that concern me. Much more important is the power that the “silent majority” represents. That's his choice.
– The exhibition organizers asked me not to ask you about John Lennon and the Beatles. Are these questions really unpleasant for you?
- No, who told you this? But it seems that I have already said everything I wanted about this. But I don’t want to respond to various nonsense and fiction and the truth.
REFERENCE Yoko ONO born on February 18, 1933 in Tokyo, into a family of Japanese aristocrats. She received her education at a special school in Japan, where the future Emperor Akihito studied at the same time. Even in her youth, under the influence of her aunts - graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory Anna and avant-garde artist Varvara Bubnov - she became interested in art. In 1952 she left for the USA and studied literature and singing at Harvard University. Ono's first husband was Japanese musician Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied in the States, and her second was American jazz musician and film producer Anthony Cox, from whose marriage she had a daughter, Kyoki, in 1963. In 1966, at an exhibition in London, Yoko Ono met John Lennon. Already in November of the same year, Lennon's first album with Ono was released. On March 20, 1969 they got married. In 1970, John finally left The Beatles to work with Yoko. On October 9, 1975, the couple had a son, Sean Ono Lennon. After the murder of her husband on December 8, 1980, Yoko Ono began releasing materials that had not been published during John’s lifetime—music and video recordings and notes. He actively tours with his own exhibitions, records musical compositions, and organizes various PR campaigns. In 1981, Yoko secretly married Hungarian antique dealer and artist Samuel Havadtoi, whom she divorced in 2003. |
After her third husband died and became a legend, Yoko Ono remained forever in his shadow. And, nevertheless, she continued her own path - as a musician, as an artist. For some, she is the one who broke the Beatles, for others, she is the one who created John Lennon. But first of all, she is It.
Good girl Yoko
Yoko was born in 1933 in Japan into a family that was far from bohemian. Her parents are from respectable aristocratic families. Yoko was born in Tokyo and lived there with her mother until early childhood - her father at that time worked in the USA, in San Francisco, as one of the top managers of the American branch of the Bank of Japan. Yoko's mother twice tried to move and live with her husband. The first time she had to return to Tokyo a year later, because Mr. Ono was transferred to New York and needed time to get settled there. The second time, having again lived with her husband and father for about a year, Mrs. Ono and her daughter returned to their homeland due to the outbreak of World War II.![](https://i0.wp.com/fresher.ru/mary/3-2018/joko-ono-muza-legendy-rok-n-rolla/2.jpg)
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Young rebel
To understand the life and work of young Yoko, we must remember how the just ended war affected the world. The wounds that peoples inflicted on each other were terrifying. The Japanese devastated the eastern coast of China, killing people for fun, out of spite, or as part of cruel experiments. The Americans dropped atomic bombs, destroying the large industrial cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With people, of course. People turned to ashes. Every resident of the former USSR remembers perfectly what happened in Europe. Mountains of children's shoes in liberated concentration camps made us ask the question - where are the limits of inhumanity for humanity? After the war, strong opposing vectors operated in all participating countries. Some dreamed that life would become as “pre-war” as possible, conservative, cozy, full of soft sofas and home-cooked dishes. Others believed that humanity needed a radical leap forward into a world that was not ready to break out into war at any moment. Both in art and in social thought, radical conservatism fought with the radical desire for the future - anywhere, but as far as possible from everything that humanity was before. Radically new music (rock and roll), radically new dances. In visual art, an avant-garde movement is being formed - that is, one that strives forward and does so faster than anything else in humanity.![](https://i1.wp.com/fresher.ru/mary/3-2018/joko-ono-muza-legendy-rok-n-rolla/4.jpg)
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The artist is in despair
Yoko organized exhibitions and staged performances, but they did not attract the attention of the general public. Yoko craved fame, but received maximum recognition among fans of the genre. This drove her crazy. Hyper-emotional by nature, she fought in hysterics, made semi-demonstrative suicide attempts - her husband saved her over and over again. But his patience did not last long. Toshi and Yoko's relationship cooled until he finally left for Japan, leaving his wife in the United States. After another suicide attempt, rumors of Yoko's emotional breakdowns reached her parents. They took their daughter and admitted her to an expensive psychiatric clinic for treatment. Then Tosi filed for divorce from her. Yoko felt crushed. It was in this state that her most ardent admirer of her work, American Anthony Cox, found her. As soon as he found out that the artist’s parents had forcibly taken the artist to Japan, he rushed after her. He nursed her in the hospital and then proposed. They returned to the USA together.![](https://i0.wp.com/fresher.ru/mary/3-2018/joko-ono-muza-legendy-rok-n-rolla/7.jpg)
John + Yoko = “The Beatles” - John
Yoko hardly spoke to John about love. Her passion was expressed differently. She shared her views with him, endlessly talked out loud about this or that social injustice, about modern art, about the future of both music and humanity. Everything she said struck Lennon's imagination.![](https://i1.wp.com/fresher.ru/mary/3-2018/joko-ono-muza-legendy-rok-n-rolla/8.jpg)
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Life after death (John)
In 1980, John returned to the music world with a new album, Double Fantasy. The cover featured John and Yoko kissing. The songs inside were also recorded jointly: for each Lennon composition there was a recording from Ono. The return could not be called triumphant, but it nevertheless pleased the fans. The couple again rushed to ask for interviews and autographs. After one of the interviews, John and Yoko walked hand in hand under the arch of their house. At that moment, five shots rang out. John fell, bleeding, and Yoko began to call for help. A police car immediately arrived, and in a matter of minutes the singer was taken to the hospital. But he was hit by four bullets and died of blood loss as soon as he was in the hands of doctors. Yoko turned out to be a very strong woman. Well into her 80s, she is creatively active and continues to be a vocal voice on social and political issues.![](https://i2.wp.com/fresher.ru/mary/3-2018/joko-ono-muza-legendy-rok-n-rolla/10.jpg)