Somewhere amid the grief for which she is an unwitting living reminder, the lingering (if misguided) resentment over the end of arguably the greatest rock band to ever exist, and the 25-minute songs of anguished wailing, the world lost sight of Yoko Ono’s sense of humor. After all, as John Lennon once told Rolling Stone, he was initially attracted to Yoko through her hilarious artwork, where she did things like put an apple on a stand next to a £200 price tag. (Apples typically sell for much less.) And over the years she’s continued that avant-gutbusting through spectacles like her guerrilla “Museum Of Modern (Fart)” show, her naked-butts-on-a-treadmill film Four, and her recent clothing line of “Butt Hoodies” and the like. She’s even done some funny stuff outside of butts, like that time she believed mankind was capable of world peace.
But of course, the greatest measure of one’s sense of humor is not whether you can tell a joke, or even tweet zingers like these on the regular. It’s whether you can laugh at yourself—and more importantly, whether you can reference The Simpsons. Judging by the new Ono-curated exhibit at Iceland’s Reykjavik Art Museum, she can, on both counts.
“Yoko Ono: One More Story...” is billed as “a voyage through the notion of art itself, with a strong social and political engagement,” and it more than lives up to that laugh riot of a logline thanks to the contribution of one Ragnar Kjartansson. His piece consists of a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat—something Simpsons fans will recognize as the drink ordered by the Yoko Ono stand-in who drives a conceptual wedge between the members of “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet.”