CAN YOU IMAGINE?

A revealing profile of “the world’s most famous unknown artist,” as her iconic husband put it.

A critic quoted in the afterword echoes that sentiment, claiming that Yoko Ono’s “fame made her almost impossible to see.” Making a brave effort to look past that glare of publicity, Tolin begins with Ono’s childhood imaginings of better relationships with her distant parents and ends with her 2007 “Imagine Peace Tower”; the afterword describes her 2013 “Imagine There’s No Hunger” initiative. A clear theme emerges in this sympathetic overview of her long career. Rather than making her subject’s relationship with John Lennon the center of her story, the author offers enough coverage of those years to assert that the attraction was mutual, reject the notion that the Beatles’ breakup was her fault, and highlight the strength of character it took to weather all the opprobrium. Instead, Tolin focuses on the development of Ono’s idealistic artistic sensibility and descriptions of some of her less controversial works. Imamura’s swirling gouache and watercolor scenes mingle figurative and fanciful images, leaving Ono wreathed in stars and dovelike bundles of paper slips representing wishes for peace. “Slowly, the world turns in her direction,” the author writes—an assertion that may be arguable but will at least encourage dreamers to imagine that they’re not the only ones.

Fresh, perceptive, and worthy of attention.