ESSAY
The
Remembering
Rope
by Polly Devlin
For new readers and seasoned ones ...
This is the seventh episode in the loose
concoction called The Remembering Rope
a series of memories describing the fruits
of my travels and my addiction to collecting
an addiction which skewed my life as
all addictions do. As I move through my
house past the pictures and objects I also see
my past life in geographical detail and in
memorable panorama. I try not to be like
a priestess guarding a shrine but theres an
element of that in it. So I also try to cull
and its difficult. I still slightly mourn the
ones that get away.
A
cold coming WE had of it. 1971. Two hundred miles north of New
York. Syracuse. I remember it as being in January because there was
snow everywhere, but it was in October, and a blizzard had come
blasting in. (FYI Syracuse city receives the most annual average snow
of any metropolitan area in the United States. Bet you didnt know
that?) So suddenly WE were all bedded down in a small hotel in Syracuse which
didnt know what had hit it. What had hit it was an art exhibition many voluble
critics thought was something other and less than art. The artist in question?
Yoko Ono.
She ignored criticism and her work thrived on a multitude of stylistic
possibilities. There was nothing ambiguous or shifting about her. She was
steadfast in her belief in her genius. Fair play to her.
So the WE here, in this unready hotel, are Yoko Ono, of course, and John
Lennon, who never left her side, and a raggle-taggle band of journalists, liggers
and hangers-on. Oh, and me. WE had all rushed up from New York for her
first semi-retrospective exhibition. (1971! semi-retrospective! and shes still
going strong.) The show was called This is Not Here, revisiting and recreating
more or less concrete work conceived by her from the beginning of her days in
New York as an avant-garde artist. She was a sort of member of Fluxus, that
interdisciplinary community of artists, composers and poets who were dedicated
to the intangible rather than the specific in the true bohemia that was the vivid,
vigorous and almost anarchic artistic life of Greenwich Village in the 1950s.
They invented and performed the impromptu art Happenings of the 1950s and
1960s. If you dont know I cant explain here, but for example in Cut Piece,
Yoko, on stage, had her dress cut off piece by piece with sharp scissors by random
30 February 2021 THE GLOSS MAGAZINE
members of the audience inviting trouble
you might say, as she did. Or it arrived,
whether she invited it or not.
WE were joined on opening day by over
6,000 Beatles fans who hoped the event
might actually be a secret concert. Blissful
ignorance all round. Ringo was in there
somewhere, lurking as usual.
I was with them because I was in New
York for over a week doing a long interview
with John. We were staying in the St Regis
hotel, and as I remember they had taken a
whole floor there. One morning I walked
down the corridor looking for them and found myself in a room devoted solely
to accessories. Belts. Many many belts. Handbags. Many many handbags. Hats?
Hats. Many. Oh and, and bracelets and Ill stop there but it was obvious someone
didnt know how to stop shopping. Someone after my own heart. (Now her vast
wardrobe is kept in dedicated rooms in her multiple apartments in the Dakota
Building on Central Park West where the annual service charges of one apartment
would buy a small house.)
So when John and Yoko, probably the most fabulously famous and derided couple
in the world, set off for her first ever exhibition, in the Everson Museum of Art in
Syracuse naturally enough, I followed. I
already sort of knew about the museum,
SHE IGNORED
built only a couple of years before, and
designed by IM Pei (most famous now,
CRITICISM AND
HER WORK THRIVED I think, for the Louvre Glass Pyramid).
It was/is a brutalist masterpiece which
ON A MULTITUDE
made other museums look archaic and
elitist, which of course they were/are.
OF STYLISTIC
Now
an architectural landmark, then the
POSSIBILITIES.
building was a matter of controversy.
THERE WAS
I was full of anxious anticipation. It
NOTHING
was no barrel of laughs being with those
two I can tell you ... egos the size of the
AMBIGUOUS
museum. No-one seemed to have much
OR SHIFTING
idea about the show and its contents and
ABOUT HER.
fake spontaneity seemed the key. But far
PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS / HAPPY WITH WHAT WE HAVE / FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWDS / TALKING POINTS MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2021 with THE IRISH TIMES www.thegloss.ie DRESSING DOWN CHANGING THINGS UP
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ESSAY The Remembering Rope by Polly Devlin For new readers and seasoned ones ... This is the seventh episode in the loose concoction called The Remembering Rope a series of memories describing the fruits of my travels and my addiction to collecting an addiction which skewed my life as all addict
ESSAY from it. When it was finally up and running, it was organised and captivating. It bridged minimalism and conceptualism and she wasnt a stranger to drollery. Yoko liked to play with conceits, ideas and concepts and of course, words. (Her book Grapefruit in 1964 was eye and brain-opening and su
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