Smoke Painting

until summer 1960

Meeting John Cage

Through Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cage’s student, Ono joins Cage’s experimental composition class at the New School for Social Research. There she meets Cage’s unconventional neo-Dadaism at first hand, and through his New York protégés Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, Al Hansen and the poet Dick Higgins.

December 1960 – June 1961

The Chambers Street loft: a series of events

Ono rents an inexpensive loft in downtown Manhattan at 112 Chambers Street and uses it as a studio and living space, while the composer La Monte Young organises concerts there. The series is attended by people such as Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim; Ono herself presents work only once.

1961

First major concert at Carnegie Recital Hall

Ono gives her first major public performance: a concert of radical experimental music and performances at the 258-seat Carnegie Recital Hall, smaller than the Main Hall.

1961

First solo exhibition at the AG Gallery

George Maciunas, who promotes her work, gives Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York. In July 1961 “Painting to Be Stepped On” and other instruction-based works are shown there again.

1962

Divorce from Ichiyanagi and a clinic in Japan

After several years of living apart, Ono and Ichiyanagi file for divorce. Ono returns to live with her parents in Japan and, suffering from clinical depression, is briefly placed in a mental institution; Anthony Cox, an American film producer and art promoter and her future husband, helps secure her release.

2 maggio 1962

Married: Anthony Cox