Last Sunday, for Father’s Day, Carla took me to The Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles to see “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” a major retrospective of her work. Most of it is from before she met and married John Lennon — her early days in Japan and New York, her involvement with the Fluxus movement, the conceptual art scene of the early 1960s.
I didn’t know much about Yoko Ono’s art before going. I’d seen the famous video of Cut Piece, filmed by the Maysles brothers at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965 — she sits on a stage with a pair of scissors next to her, and people from the audience walk up and snip away pieces of her clothing. But that was about it.
A lot of the work in the exhibition surprised me. Many of the pieces are just small cards with typed instructions for creating art. They come from her 1964 book Grapefruit, which has over 200 of these instructions organized into categories like music, painting, events, and poetry. She never intended to make the art herself, and I don’t think she really cared whether anyone physically carried out the instructions. Some of them would be impossible to make, anyway. The idea is that by reading the card, you imagine the process, and the art takes place in your mind.
Some examples:
“Listen to the sound of the Earth turning.”
“Draw a map to get lost.”
“Put your shadows together until they become one.”
“Step in all the puddles in the city.”
“Steal a moon on the water with a bucket. Keep stealing until no moon is seen on the water.”
I loved this part of the exhibit. Each card opens up a whole scene in your head.
Since this was a museum show, it also included some of the physical artwork Ono actually built — including the piece that made John Lennon fall in love with her. It’s called Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting (1966). A white ladder stands in the middle of the room with a magnifying glass chained to the top. You climb up, look through the lens at a tiny word printed on a panel suspended from the ceiling, and it says: “YES.” Unfortunately, no one was allowed to climb up the ladder. This time we had to observe it from a safe distance I guess the museum didn't want anyone falling off and suing them.
Lennon saw this at a preview of Ono’s show at the Indica Gallery in London in November 1966. He later said, “I climbed the ladder, looked through the spyglass, and in tiny little letters it said ‘yes.’ So it was positive. I felt relieved.” If it had said “no” or something negative, he said, he would have walked out. Instead, it was the beginning of their romance.
My favorite thing in the exhibition was Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961/1966). The original instruction is:
PAINTING TO HAMMER A NAIL
Hammer a nail into a mirror, a piece of glass, a canvas, wood or metal every morning. Also, pick up a hair that came off when you combed in the morning and tie it around the hammered nail. The painting ends when the surface is covered with nails.
y.o.
At The Broad, they’ve set up a big piece of wood with hammers and nails, and visitors just go at it. But most people didn’t bring anything on purpose to nail to the board, so they nailed whatever they had on them. I took photos because it was fascinating to see what people had been carrying: photographs, paper money, keys, little toys. I had a big Band-Aid I keep in my wallet for blisters on long walks, and I nailed that to the board. (I didn't bring “a hair that came off when I combed in the morning” because my hair is not long enough and I don't have a comb.)
The one thing I forgot to do was to step back and take a picture of the entire artwork. Whoops! Oh well, now you will have to go and see it for yourself.
“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” runs through October 11, 2026 at The Broad, 221 S. Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles. Tickets are $21. Free admission every Thursday evening from 5–8 pm, and free all day on the Fourth of July.
Thank you. I wasn't very familiar with her work before.
She was a fantastic conceptual artist, part of the Fluxus group. Check them all out!