YOKO ONO: Artist or Bodhisattva or Both?
By Daniel Rothbart
Trusting Fifty Strangers
The concept of trusting a roomful of strangers with a sharp instrument to cut away all the clothing from one’s body, in all its vulnerability, seems as radical today as it must have forty years ago. Ono’s work challenges the relationship between artist and public and establishes a powerful, nonverbal dialogue based on trust. The artwork becomes a collaborative project which grows out of touch and the elimination of garments that usually obscure the true nature of all the participants in the room.
Whenever there is a situation based upon trust, a person can choose to violate it. This happened during a performance of Cut Piece in Kyoto, when a man raised the scissors above Ms. Ono’s head and began to threaten her with it. Instead of feeding this man’s negative energy with fear, she overcame his base approach and the piece continued without incident.
I am less drawn to interpretations of Cut Piece that are based on the sadomasochistic relationship between participants. The threat of castration or violation with the scissors intensifies the experience while reinforcing the need to respect the safety of others in the room through a communion of trust. Rather, Ms. Ono demonstrates that with grace and simplicity people can confront such inner demons as fear, distrust, and violence, and vanquish them from daily life through the force of will. Yoko Ono’s body has a powerful sexual, sensual, creative manna, which certainly becomes part of the piece. However, Ono has stipulated that the work can also be performed by a man.
The Buddha and the Tigress
In one of his previous lives as a bodhisattva, the Buddha was born as Prince Mahasattva. One day he and his two brothers were out walking and they came upon a starving tigress, surrounded by her cubs. The three princes were very troubled and Mahasattva asked his brothers to leave him for a while. Mahasattva then lay down before the tigress and slit his throat with a piece of bamboo so that the tigress could feed upon his flesh.
Cut Piece can be looked upon as an act of symbolic sacrifice, in which the clothing represents a surrogate flesh. The tiger manifests itself within each member of the audience in the form of fear, subterranean urges and desires. From the pascal lamb to Abraham and Isaac to Jesus Christ in the Western tradition, this theme of redemption through sacrifice recurs many times. Perhaps today the concept manifests itself in a more powerful, universal way, through art in a common, direct experience of Cut Piece.
