Get Back has done much to correct this and to expose the pernicious mythologies upon which the general animus against Ono was built. For over fifty years, the public has attempted to sever Ono with the sharp instruments of racism and misogyny. Watching Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary, Get Back, was a little like seeking to know what it’s like inside the stone after the cutters left. 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. In the 1966 artist’s statement on the piece, Ono wrote: Throughout the performance, Ono’s equanimity spoke to another form of being stripped bare, to a form of surrender that is not merely passive and empty but represents an artistic vision and a woman’s integrity that exceed the cutters’ shears. As Julia Bryan-Wilson put it: “the clothing destroyed by the atom bomb and the repeated accounts of children wandering the streets with school uniforms hanging off them burned and torn, submit themselves as visual precedents for the tatters of Cut Piece” (Bryan-Wilson 2003). It also hearkened to images of garments torn asunder after the atomic bombs were dropped on Ono’s native Japan. This performance was a re-enactment of the multiple forms of stripping and fetishizing to which women’s (and particularly Asian women’s) bodies were subjected. Audience members were told they could keep the piece of fabric they had severed from her garment. During the performance, Ono remained still as audience members approached and cut pieces of her suit until she was stripped bare. For Cut Piece, Ono wore a suit and knelt onstage with only a pair of scissors accompanying her. In 1964, two years before she met John Lennon, Yoko Ono exhibited Cut Piece, one of the earliest works of feminist performance art. Get Back, Yoko Ono, and the Art of Performance
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