Westword: Yoko Ono on John Lennon’s Populist Art and the Importance of Giving

Reprinted from Westword

Yoko Ono is a towering figure in the twentieth-century art and music worlds. She was one of the main artists behind the Fluxus movement, and her performance and visual art and sound experiments had made her famous before she ever met her future husband, John Lennon of The Beatles. Lennon was a visual artist as well as a musician; his simple, spare and playful art was as accessible as any of his music and imbued with a similarly unique creative vision. Ono is now exhibiting some of Lennon’s visual art at various art galleries around the country, including Fascination Street Fine Art, where special prints are for sale. We recently spoke with Ono about her late husband’s artwork, its populist sensibility and the importance of giving.

Westword: You’re displaying the art of John Lennon around the country. As someone who was involved in the avant-garde art world early on, including being part of the Fluxus movement, how would you say that John’s work fits in with the history of art?

Yoko Ono: One day, a long, long time from now, maybe [it will fit in with the history of art]. Things go very fast, so I don’t know when that’s going to be. But I think John’s work will be very highly rated because not one artist I see in museums is really fun and has a sense of humor as John does.