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Sunday, Jul 7, 1991
7:30 pm
The Museum of Modern Art Show and No. 4 (Bottoms)
The Museum of Modern Art Show (Yoko Ono, 1966, 7 mins, Color) documents Ono's no-show at MoMA (a show about the spectator) by interviewing patrons as they leave the Museum. It's “a whole entire entity type of thing,” in the words of one. No. 4 (Bottoms) (Yoko Ono, Great Britain, 1966, 80 mins, B&W) expands upon a five-minute film Ono made as a member of the Fluxus group. In the feature-length version, Ono filmed the naked buttocks of some 365 subjects, walking in place, each for approximately 15 seconds. The derrière-in-motion fills the frame; there is nothing else to look at. What is on the screen becomes resolutely what it is, and something abstract as well; the film plays with this inevitable wafting between the spheres, the cerebral and the other. The soundtrack consists of the wry comments of the models, who were recruited from among the London avant-garde community. The result is a provocative discussion of issues in the avant-garde (“people expect more than they get”), with Yoko not as naive as would seem as against her rather more cynical subjects. “Your behind is defenseless” is both her defense and her offense.
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