Tag: objects

Yoko Ono “Sky TV for Washington” (1966/2014)

“Sky TV is, in Yoko Ono’s words, “a TV just to see the sky.” It brings a live image of the outdoors into the gallery, rain or shine, twenty-four hours a day. When the work was first conceived, in 1966, the artist lived in a windowless space and “wanted so desperately to have a sky in my apartment.” Sky TV is one of the earliest works of art to harness the instant feedback capability of the video camera. The simplicity of its imagery was especially radical at a time before the popularity of videotape and when all material seen onscreen was created by commercial broadcast companies. The sky has been a recurrent motif throughout Ono’s career. She recalls looking up at it as a form of refuge during World War II in Japan: “The sky is the only thing that was shining—beautifully—and it never stops shining.””

—Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden