Cut Piece was performed by Yoko Ono five times in Japan, New York and London during the 1960s, this essay intends to argue that Zen Buddhism has initially inspired its creation. It will first analyse the form and presentation of this work compared to other Zen-inspired artworks in the Fluxus Art Movement. Secondly, I explore it further based on Ono’s own explanation of the performance that shows the impact of Buddhist allusions and Zen koan behind the work mainly in relation to Ono’s ambition. Although made during the period of the 1960s, with its complicated social-political environment, Cut Piece, in its initial form was interpreted as having a individualistic position at the beginning—rather than a reference to society as a whole. Furthermore, the fertile and multiple layers of the meanings of this work were gradually developed, especially after the performance was conducted in Western countries and the re-enactments. In connection to this I set out the initial influence of John Cage. Thus, the essay argues that Cut Piece can be interpreted as initially influenced by Zen ideas, but then, in its interpretation was seen to embody the hybrid fusion of the East and the West, yet, Ono conceived and created this work from a highly personal standpoint in the early 1960s.
Figure 1. Cut Piece. Performed by Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, 1965. Photo by Minoru Niizuma
Emptiness, Minimalism and ‘Giving’
Yoko Ono is an artist born in Japan and was active in avant-garde with the Fluxus Art Movement from the late 1950s to the early 1960s when she was exploring experimental and conceptual art. She has published her book Grapefruit during that period (the first version in 1964), and certain performance pieces are based on the scores contained in the book, including Cut Piece. The discussions of Cut Piece have occurred since that time. Generally, Cut Piece is considered to be one of the representatives of early feminist art, but this opinion is mentioned in some later monographs like Barbara Haskell and John Hanhardt’s Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects (1991) instead of the early publications in the 1960s (Concannon, 2008). Certain research demonstrates this performance is related to violence and further hints at wars, race and history (Bryan-Wilson, 2003). Youjin’s (2011) article argues that Cut Piece includes Zen method, but Ono failed to act as meditation.
During the performance of Cut Piece (Figure 1) in the 1960s, Ono usually knelt in seiza-style—a manner of sitting in Japanese daily life—on the stage where a pair of scissors was posited in front of her. Audiences were invited to the stage to cut a portion of Ono’s clothes and take it with them while Ono kept silent, and the performance ended until the artist was almost naked. Looking at Cut Piece on the stage, the form and the presentation embody some characteristics of Zen art, such as emptiness and minimalism, reflected in the ‘silence’ presented in this work and the simple tools it uses. More specifically, there were only a pair of scissors and an artist sitting without saying anything during the whole process on the stage, no extra decoration.
Similarly, in John Cage’s classic performance (1952) 4’33”, which is regarded as a creative application of spatial silence associated with the emptiness central to Buddhism, Cage sat in front of a piano in silence as well (Quasha, 2012). The appearance of ‘emptiness’ presented was an empty space, a silent discourse, which pointed to ‘nothing’ but invoked multiple layers of meaning. In this performance, Cage intended to ask the audience to pay attention to the environment and sounds surrounding them. Dick Higgins a co-founder of Fluxus, explained his perspective on Zen, by pointing out that ‘a verbal framework’ in Zen was less important than that the thought should open to ‘all these other sensory zones’ (Kaplan, et al, 2000). With regard to both 4’33” and Cut Piece, the audiences could open their mind to other sensory feelings, such as listening to other persons’ whispering or the sound of others’ actions in the space. Other comparable artists in Fluxus, such as Nam June Paik, also used a simple way to express his understanding of Zen. In his Zen for Film (Figure 2, 1965), Paik presented only a blank screen in a white wall, and what the audience could see was nothing but a projector and the space around them, or, in other words, which is ‘a processual interaction between form and emptiness’ (Lushetich, 2011). In this way, the ‘emptiness’ encourages people to experience time and to see things from a different angle, such as the shadow of the viewer appearing on a blank screen.
Figure 2, Nam June Paik, Zen for Film, 1965
Similar to the Zen-inspired works mentioned above which embrace ‘emptiness’ and minimalism, Ono partly wanted to share the idea of ‘giving’ with audiences in Cut Piece, which was specifically inspired by Buddhist thought. In an interview, Ono emphasised that people could choose what they wanted, and she also must give the best to them—she was wearing her best suits in every performance even she was not rich at that time—with a sublimation as she thought that she was willingly sacrificing herself at that moment (Concannon, 2008). ‘Giving’ and ‘sacrificing’ are related to a Jātaka tale of Prince Mahasattva in Buddhism, who gave and sacrificed his body and life for the starving tigers. Also, some persons cherished Ono’s ‘gift’; for instance, a Japanese avant-garde artist, Hayashi, who was less known by the public, kept the piece of Ono’s suit from the second performance of Cut Piece in Japan, and Hayashi produced the work Event We’re going into… in 1971 which was inspired by Ono and Fluxus (Yoshimoto, 2006: 30). However, the things that Ono wanted to share were far more than a piece of the best ‘clothes’ she had. She stated that she always felt that she had to give something to the world: “I am the one to bring on the new world” (Munroe, 2013). It shows the ambitious nature of Ono, but she is a person who has impacted the world using her Zen-inspired thinking.
Behind the Experimental Spirit and Zen Koan
Tracing back to the early 1960s, Ono, as a Japanese woman who came to North America, wanted to combine the East and the West. One of her significant books, Grapefruit, partly hints to this combination, as she writes, the grapefruit is ‘a hybrid of lemon and orange’ (Ono, 2000). The text called ‘TRUE/FALSE’, has humour as do other texts in the book, to foreground the meaning of ‘hybrid’ largely because of her experience arriving in the West (Yoshimoto, 2005).
First of all, based on her wider understanding of Eastern philosophy from her education, Ono, in the 1950s and 1960s, also took from the avant-garde movement and Fluxus and constantly developed her works since her arrival in America. Ono is from a wealthy family and has been trained in Japanese music and art since she was a child. Her musical training was part of the Zen Buddhism culture (Munroe, 2013). In the late 1950s, Ono met John Cage and she admitted that Cage was the person who gave her the confidence to insist on her ideas (Boutoux, 2003). The confidence made her face up to her own ‘madness’ and show it in the book Grapefruit: this ‘madness’ came from her magical thoughts, including the idea of thinking things in her mind as creation, which was related to Zen practice (Pfeiffer, 2013). As one of the early series of performances and her participation in Fluxus, Cut Piece was one of the experimental works showing her ‘madness’ in public. The first performance of Cut Piece in 1964 was part of the event of ‘Contemporary American Avant-Garde Music Concert’, and some elements were similar to Cage’s performance but further developed by Ono’s ideas with Zen Buddhism thought. Compared to 4’33’’, where the audience could only passively watch the artist, the participatory process of Cut Piece became essential and significant. Even certain Japanese audiences could not understand Ono’s work since it was not the concert as they expected. Ono was excited and thought it was a great work because she could feel ‘everyone was holding their breath’ and took it as a serious thing (Concannon, 2008). In this way, the innovative spirit and the Buddhist thought of ‘giving’ and paying attention to the sound in daily life through ‘Zen way’ combined.
More specifically, the ‘Zen way’ shown in Cut Piece was the way Ono told people something through action and interaction without speaking directly, which is related to Zen koan—Ono’s work was a paradoxical public encounter dialogue used to provoke an intuitive enlightenment. The Japanese scholar Suzuki (1964:102) who spread Zen in Western countries in the 20th century, explained that koan can denote a dialogue put forward as the means for opening the mind to the truth of Zen. Pfeiffer (2013:32) described koan as ‘a practice of Zen monks in which students are motivated to contemplate and meditate by contradictory, paradoxical, and illogical statements and thus led along the way to enlightenment.’ Given this, the main point of koan is to guide people to the truth of Zen, to achieve enlightenment (satori) via a dialogue or statement. As Munroe (2000) points out, the instructions or poetry in Grapefruit are also ‘haiku-like’ and use a ‘Zen-like’ language, which combines ‘Duchampian poetics and irony with haiku and the Zen koan. In particular, as a score (Figure 3, 1966), Cut Piece is a statement related to Zen koan which does not tell any truth directly but prompts people to think further–to think further about ‘giving’ as well as Ono herself.
Figure 3. Yoko Ono, Cut Piece. Document of Strip Tease Show in January 1966
Furthermore, it seems that the personal standpoint is the initial intention behind Cut Piece. In the 1966 biography/statement, Ono paradoxically compared her interiority to a stone: “People went on cutting the parts they do not like of me finally there was
only the stone remained of me that was in me but they were still not satisfied and wanted to know what it’s like in the stone” (Ono, 1966). This statement was based on an individual’s position and the action of ‘cutting’ was not simply about ‘giving’ but exploring the things inside Ono. In Cut Piece, what was exposed to the public was the naked body of Ono and what Ono wanted to convey at that period was an ambition to stand up as a person out of the constriction of Japanese norms and the Western countries’ bias. In fact, after her re-enactment of Cut Piece in 2003, Ono explained that the work performed in the 1960s was ‘out of anger’ (Chuang, 2011). She was ‘indignant’ partly because her concerts in Japan could not be understood and widely received as the Japanese interviews showed (Concannon, 2008). This resistance can also be reflected in her attitude of leaving her husband Toshi, which disappointed their friend Cage, but Ono said: “I was not a traditional Japanese woman.” (Munro, 2013) It shows that Ono as a Japanese woman artist felt a restriction in Japan and wanted to get rid of the traditional social norm. Thus, Ono took Zen thought as a starting point to keep developed her magical and illogical thinking combined the experimental spirit from avant-garde and Fluxus to find her position in the broader and higher level. Ono’s ‘Grapefruit’ has grown up, which guides to the conclusion of this essay on the multiple observations on the development of her art.
Cut Piece in Different Contexts
Although the analysis above mainly reveals the importance of Eastern thought for Ono’s experimental creation in the Fluxus, it is hard to ignore the social and political environment at that time. It was the World War Two instead of Peace that was born from the aftermath of the Cold War, and the American civil rights movement happened from 1954 to 1968, while the Vietnam war started in 1955. In 1966, Cut Piece was part of the event of the ‘Destruction in Art Symposium’ (DIAS) at the Africa Centre in London. DIAS explored auto-destructive art and the influence of war and technology. The method of ‘destroying’ mainly points to protest against the war. However, Ono’s understanding of ‘destructive art’ was different from DIAS’s organisers like the artist Gustav Metzger. The organisers thought Ono’s Cut Piece was connected to their theme of this symposium, but Ono said that she did not understand the ideas about ‘destructive’ because she thought destruction was for reconstruction. Ono explained her understanding of taking Japanese monks’ story as an example. She mentioned that the monks burned their temples to prevent them from deteriorating were destructive. Also, she said: “people have to take off their pants before they fight, such disrobing is a form of destruction” (Stiles, 2005). ‘Burn’ and ‘take off’ are similar to ‘cut’ and ‘take away’ because they are suggested to ‘losing’. However, it is obvious that Ono was not part of auto-destructive art and her ‘destruction’ was for healing and ‘rebuilding’, yet, since there would be nothing left after ‘destruction’, but something developed after cutting and ‘giving’.
Ono’s Cut Piece gained its iconic status in the history of performance art for its proto-feminist conceptualism after DIAS (Munro, 2000). Also, the second-wave feminism movement began in 1960s, but Ono denied that she had a notion of feminism at that time in a 1994 interview (Enright, 1994). Similarly, Shigeko Kubota’s Vagina Painting (Figure 8, 1965), which seems like that the artist posited the brush into her vagina, was also regarded as feminism art but denied by the artist herself. Laura Mulvey (1999: 833-44) in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (First published in 1975) points to the construction of ‘gaze’ from a different gender angle, where there is a phenomenon that the female body is seen passively as an erotic object under the male gaze. Thus, the interpretations that regard Cut Piece as a feminism work are partly based on the perspective of ‘male gaze’. This essay does not deny this argument while exploring the initial idea of Ono in the early 1960s, but it is also interesting to see the enactment by a male, Noga (Figure 4). A female body is different from a male body when we are watching even only through the pictures and documentation. When we watch the video of Ono’s Cut Piece in 1965 online, we can still feel strongly about the sexuality of a woman especially her body was gradually exposed in the public, while it was peculiar to watch same performance by male.
Figure 4. Cut Piece. Performed by John Noga, 2007.
In the re-enactment by Ono herself in 2003 (Figure 5), Ono asserted that now she was doing it for love (Chung, 2000). Thirty-nine years after her first performance of the work, she told Reuters News Agency that she did it “against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence” (Concannon, 2008). Furthermore, looking back to the performance in the 1960s, there is obviously something that changed – in the 1960s, Ono was sitting in seiza-style, but during the re-enactment in 2003, she sat on a chair. The artist has not discussed the changing of this behaviour, but from the re-enactment, no matter whether the performer is Ono herself or other people (even male), the social-cultural meaning of Cut Piece is changing and developing. As Munroe (2013) said: ‘her being born Japanese does not make her art forever “Japanese”.’
Figure 5. Yoko Ono, Cut Piece. 15th September 2003, Le Ranelagh, Paris.
Conclusion
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Zen Buddhism inspired Ono’s Cut Piece at the beginning and even now the Zen-attitude elements of ‘giving’, ‘emptiness’ and ‘silence’ are still significant for the work. Combining the Zen Buddhist thoughts and avant-garde experimental spirit, Ono, with her specific identity and situation in Western countries, created Cut Piece mainly from her individuality position in the 1960s which included her ambitions and anger from social constraints. Although the political background like wars impacts certain artists who concentrated on destructive art, Ono’s idea was mainly based on the Eastern philosophy about reconstruction, and she did not foreground feminism in her performance Cut Piece at the beginning either. Through time, the meaning of it keeps developing and changing in terms of the re-enactments of Cut Piece no matter by Ono herself or others, which is one of the reasons that this work is classic and intriguing.
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List of Illustrations:
Figure 1. Cut Piece. Performed by Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, 1965. Photo by Minoru Niizuma Courtesy of Yoko Ono.
Available at: https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/15/373 Figure 2, Nam June Paik, Zen for Film, 1965.
Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/128108 & https://www.bgc.bard.edu/files/15F_Revisions_PressBrochure.pdf
Figure 3. Yoko Ono, Cut Piece. Document of Strip Tease Show in January 1966. Figure 4. Cut Piece. Performed by John Noga, 2007. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mickeyono2005/8460878848 Figure 5. Yoko Ono, Cut Piece. September 15, 2003, Le Ranelagh, Paris, France.
Photograph: Ken McKay. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/yoko-ono-cut-piece/508 5520
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