Cut Piece
Yoko Ono
YOKO ONO, 1964.
Sat alone on a stage robed in black, with a pair of scissors placed beside her, Yoko Ono invited the audience to come up and cut away pieces of her clothing one by one. The resulting performance piece is now regarded as a pioneering work for the genre, and one of the foundational artworks of both the Fluxus movement and contemporary performance art. In ‘Cut Piece’, the distinction between audience and artwork disappears, no longer can we passively look at a piece of art, instead we have to be an active player in its creation. In this case, Ono makes the audience engage in a violent disrobing, using shears to reveal the female body and as such questioning our passivity when looking at painted or photographed nude works. Ono challenges us to become responsible viewers across all art, to no longer see a separation between the canvas and ourselves but understand that our viewership is inherent to art's existence.