Yoko Ono photo: Iain MacMillan

Education CLASS: COMPLEAT SCHOLAR WAITING FOR YOKO WEDNESDAYS, APRIL 11, 18, AND 25, 2001, 6:30-8:30 PM $78 ($70.20 WALKER MEMBERS AND SENIORS) LECTURE ROOM

In 1995, Yoko Ono made an appearance on the television show Mad About You. Lead character Paul Buchman, a documentary filmmaker, is introduced to the artist when she asks him to make a film about the wind (an assignment he never completely understands). Nervously waiting to meet Ono for the first time, he repeatedly tells himself, "Don't ask her about breaking up the Beatles." In this course, offered in conjunction with the exhibition Y E S YOKO ONO, students will have to try not to ask about the Beatles, but instead focus on Ono's prolific and remarkable career. Offering tools to help students engage more confidently with conceptual, performance, and video art, the course focuses on Ono's relationship to these media, including her involvement with the Fluxus movement and the interpretation of her work relative to other women artists of her generation. Through slide- and video-illustrated lectures and a gallery tour, the course explores important themes in Ono's work, including war and violence, nature, conceptualism and meditation, art and commodity culture, language and image, and yes, the wind.

Offered as part of the University of Minnesota's Compleat Scholar Program and taught by Jane Blocker, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota and author of Where Is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity, and Exile.