by Michele Bertollo
Yoko Ono’s art has always been an open challenge in the world. A provocation that does not end in the gesture, but invites reflection, participation, transformation. Burn this book after reading it by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Fam) and Daniele Miglietti (Shake Edizioni) is a passionate and deepened tribute to the career and thought of the Japanese artist, a figure who redefined the very sense of art in the 20th and twentieth centuries. The title suggests a radical gesture, but its meaning is revealed only by reading: this book is not destroyed, but it is assimilated, internalizes, because Yoko Ono’s message is of those who do not forget.
Francesca Alfano Miglietti, art critic and curator that has always been attentive to the most experimental forms of expression, flanked by Daniele Miglietti, offers a multifaceted and rigorous portrait of an artist too often misunderstood. The volume is not limited to telling its biography, but explores its thought, cultural influence and revolutionary value of his works. Yoko Ono emerges as an artist who has been able to combine minimalism and conceptualism, poetry and activism, building a unique language of its kind, capable of shaking consciences without ever giving up the delicacy and depth of the message.
An art without borders
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the way the authors reconstruct the artistic parable of Yoko Ono, underlining its originality and innovative flow rate. Unlike many artists who try to leave a mark through the materiality of the work, Ono has always privileged the intangible, the creative process, the concept more than the artifact. For her, art is a question of relationship, shared experience, invitation to action. From this point of view, its adhesion to the movement Fluxus It was a natural choice: the group founded by George Maciunas aimed to erase the barriers between art and life, promoting an aesthetic of participation and ephemeral event.
The book carefully retraces his first artistic experiences, highlighting how Ono has always refused the pre -established categories. Its production is made of Instruction Piecesshort poetic texts that suggest simple and apparently trivial actions, but which, if performed, reveal an extraordinary emotional and philosophical depth. Works like Painting to be steppe on (1960), in which the public is invited to trample a painting, or Cut piece (1964), performance in which spectators are free to cut his clothes until they leave it naked, overturn the relationship between artist and user, shifting attention from creation to experience.
The authors also dedicate important pages to his commitment to peace, which has expressed itself through actions and installations with a strong visual and conceptual impact. Among these, the famous stand out Bed-in with John Lennon, an icon of non -violent protest against the war in Vietnam, and the Imagine Peace Towera column of light erected in Iceland to remember the couple’s pacifist message. Yoko Ono has never stopped using his art to promote a better world, transforming public and media spaces into awareness and mobilization tools.
An artist beyond prejudices
One of the main merits of the book is to disassemble the prejudices and simplifications that have accompanied the figure of Yoko Ono over the decades. Too often reduced to the role of “wife of John Lennon”, unjustly accused of having caused the end of the Beatles, his figure has long been the victim of a sexist and superficial narrative. Burn this book after reading it He returns justice to an artist who has had an autonomous and brilliant career well before and well beyond his link with Lennon. The book recalls that, when the two met in 1966, Ono was already an established name in the environment of avant -garde art, with collaborations with John Cage, George Maciunas and Monte Young behind.
The authors also precisely analyze the relationship between Yoko Ono and feminism. His work is crossed by a profound awareness of the female condition and the role of art in the struggle for equality. Performance like Cut piece or My Mommy Was Beautiful (2004) They face themes such as gender -based violence, sexualization of the female body and motherhood directly and courageously. The book highlights how its art has never been a simple aesthetic exercise, but always a political act, a form of resistance and claim.
A writing that reflects Yoko Ono’s energy
From a stylistic point of view, Burn this book after reading it It is an engaging and passionate text. Francesca Alfano Miglietti’s writing manages to convey the intensity and vitality of Yoko Ono’s work without expanding in agiography. The tone is at the same time analytical and poetic, with passages that seem to reflect the lightness and depth of the texts of the same ino. The book is enriched by numerous citations and cultural references that expand its perspective, placing the artist within a wider historical and philosophical context.
Another interesting aspect is the structure of the volume, which alternates wise parts with more personal and suggestive reflections. This approach makes the reading dynamic and stimulating, inviting the reader to get in touch with the art of Ono directly and intuitively. It is not a simple book of art history, but an experience that reflects the artist’s participatory aesthetic.
A book to read and reread
Burn this book after reading it It is much more than a monograph on Yoko Ono: it is a manifesto of an art that refuses conventions, which feeds on imagination and freedom, which believes in the power of beauty to change the world. It is a book that invites you to look at art with new eyes, that recognizes the value of the can be made, to understand that a work is not only an object, but an experience, a process, a possibility.
Francesca Alfano Miglietti and Daniele Miglietti offer us a rich and multifaceted portrait of an artist who has always refused labels and definitions, who has been able to reinvent himself and who, despite criticism and misunderstandings, has left a profound mark on the contemporary cultural panorama. A necessary book, to discover (or rediscover) one of the most extraordinary figures of the art of our time. And, contrary to what the title suggests, a book not to burn, but to be read (and reread).
