I remember being fifteen or so and watching some trivial music news segment where this guy interviewed a whole bunch of people on the street asking them who the most feared woman in music was. Courtney Love narrowly lost to Yoko Ono. I didn’t really know anything about Yoko Ono at the time. I just knew she was old, Japanese, John Lennon’s widow, and often accused of breaking up the Beatles. This hardly seemed more intimidating than the coked-up mess that was Courtney Love. I mean, at least Yoko was never a suspect in her late husband’s death.
Five years later, I’m older and wiser and even more confused about the results of that survey. Yoko Ono is the biggest hippie ever! Forty years ago, during the Vietnam War and following their marriage, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two week-long “Bed-Ins for Peace” where the press was invited into their hotel room every day between 9am and 9pm in an effort to promote world peace. The first Bed-In was held in Amsterdam, and the second in Montreal. I visited Montreal recently and was pleased to see that The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is hosting a commemorative exhibit, “Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko”.

The exhibit started off with biographies of Yoko Ono and John Lennon on opposite walls, describing their roots and displaying childhood photos. The next room contained more photos, including a striking full-length portrait of Yoko, making her much more intimidating than her 5’4 stature suggests. There was also a looped video of one of my favourite performances by Yoko, “Cut Piece”, where audience members were requested to go on stage and cut away a piece of her clothing.

Just as the exhibit is somewhat a recreation of the original Bed-In event, many of the pieces within the exhibit were also recreations. Yoko Ono’s “Apple” (a green apple atop a Plexiglas podium), “Ceiling Painting” (a magnifying glass, the word ‘YES’, and a ladder), “Painting to Hammer A Nail In” (a white board with nails stuck in it), “Play It By Trust aka White Chess Set” (a chessboard with only white pieces) were all originally displayed at the Indica Gallery in London, 1966 and recreated for the Imagine exhibit.

The interactiveness of the exhibit was mostly embraced by museum-goers who were typically of the “shh!” and “don’t touch!’ variety. I saw visitors gently hammering in a nail or two in “Painting to Hammer A Nail In” and sheepishly climbing up the ladder to read “YES”. In another room, there was a blur of iPhones and digital cameras as people climbed into the Bed-In display, eager to preserve the moment. Near the end of the exhibit was a semi-circular set of bookshelves that contained everything from the philosophy of Lao Tzu to some outdated, more-than-a-little-racist copies of Tintin.

Now, I know what one unnamed friend of mine would say to pieces like “Apple” and “Painting to Hammer A Nail In”. She would say “I could have done that”. This is actually my favourite complaint about avant-garde art because it’s not really a complaint at all, it’s sort of a strange combination of arrogance and self-disvaluement. “I could have done that” is an arrogant enough statement that suggests she is comfortable comparing herself to the great Yoko Ono yet is a complete defeatist because anything she is capable of doing can’t possibly be valuable enough to be shown in a gallery. So no, I’m not going to deny that there is nothing inherently remarkable about putting an apple on a pedestal. If you say “I could have done that”, I completely believe you. Now stop complaining and go out and do it. We’ll both be happier.

But back to the exhibit ... The most visually striking room by far was the one with little television boxes and a backdrop of “WAR IS OVER (if you want it)” posters.  I will admit that it was a little intimidating, even Orwellian at first. Compared to the other rooms, it was significantly dimmer and all those boxes just made me feel like the government was after me. Honestly, if the museum ever wanted to do a dystopian exhibit, all they would have to do is replace the peace conference videos with scenes from Equilibrium and the posters with “Four legs good, Two legs bad”.

But no, it wasn’t a dystopian exhibit, it was a utopian exhibit. In fact, here is the Lennon/Oko declaration of Nutopia (which I can only assume is some delicious combination of Nutella and Utopia).

The Imagine exhibit will be displayed until June the 21st, 2009. Admission is FREE so if you find yourself in downtown Montreal, I highly encourage you to pay a visit. Otherwise, check out this virtual tour  MMFA set up.