ILLUSTRATION BY HANOCH PIVEN

John Lennon once described his wife Yoko Ono as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does." But Ono wasn't merely ignored—she was reviled. Over the three-plus decades that hers has been a household name, Ono has been vilified for busting up the Beatles, sneered at for her activism, derided for her art, then pitied for losing her husband. Through it all, she never stopped doing the work she believed in while waiting patiently for the world to catch up.

Now, at the age of 70—yes, 70—Ono finds it finally has. Her persistent campaign for peace—she was a prominent face at rallies opposing the war in Iraq—has seldom seemed more relevant than in recent weeks. Her artwork is being fêted in a major international retrospective. Her music is attracting new audiences. Even the staunchest Beatles fans have accorded her grudging respect for her fierce guardianship of Lennon's memory. By refusing to be bowed, ignoring boundaries and surviving her detractors, Yoko Ono has made the extraordinary journey from villain to hero.

In a recent interview at her home in New York City's historic Dakota building, Ono revels in the transition. "Isn't it great?" she exclaims, raising a fist and grinning broadly. "Now people are starting to understand I was doing some work as well as being Mrs. Lennon." Ono looks remarkably unchanged from the black-and-white photos of her younger self, though the famous hippie locks have long been replaced with a short do flecked with bronze. Blue-tinted glasses rest upon those relentless cheekbones. Dressed in stretchy, black knits, she perches like a spider on a yellow director's chair at her kitchen table, sometimes darting in her movements and at other times perfectly still. And while it's clear she's delighted at the newfound accolades, she has gone through too much to consider it much more than a bonus. "I'm lucky," she adds a touch wryly, "to be around to witness it."

She does not add that her biggest fan is not. The ballad of John and Yoko famously began on Nov. 9, 1966, when Lennon visited a London gallery that was exhibiting her work. He climbed a ladder to peer through a magnifying glass at artwork hanging from the ceiling, in which he saw a single word: "YES." "That 'YES,'" Lennon would say, "made me stay" to meet the artist. Thus began a dialogue that led to their marriage three years later and changed both their lives. But what the public is only now beginning to suspect is that meeting Lennon was less a coup than a curse for Ono's promising career.

Born into a powerful zaibatsu banking family, Ono was raised in Japan and the U.S. and was encouraged by her cultured parents to explore the arts. After being the first female philosophy student at Tokyo's prestigious Gakushuin University, she moved to New York City in 1953 and joined an influential group of avant-garde artists called Fluxus. Ono's star—and notoriety—quickly ascended with pieces such as Bottoms, a film featuring 365 swinging behinds; Grapefruit, a book of instructional poems ("hammer a nail into the center of a piece of glass"); and Cut Piece, performance art in which audience members were invited to snip away at her clothing.

Despite her powerful and provocative exhibits—or perhaps because of them—her union and artistic collaborations with Lennon triggered virulent attacks. "People had no idea what to make of her work," says Kim Gordon, bassist for American indie band Sonic Youth and a longtime admirer of Ono. "It wasn't pop; it was conceptual." Beatles fans burned copies of Ono and Lennon's Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins album and record stores refused to carry it because they appeared nude on the cover. The xenophobic Western press, meanwhile, mocked her English with headlines such as JOHN LENNON'S EXCRUSIVE GLOUPIE and snickered at their Bed-Ins for Peace.

Ono and Lennon sought privacy in the '70s to focus on their projects and on raising their son, Sean. Lennon's departure from the Beatles—though the source of great relief and artistic rebirth for him—drew still more venom for Ono. It bothered her, she says, but "my work kept me going. I always felt that artists should concentrate their energy into their work rather than explaining it. So when people were trying not to know my work because I'm a woman or Asian or whatever, I didn't fight it." Then, on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, the couple was returning from a session for Ono's single Walking on Thin Ice when Lennon was shot dead by deranged fan Mark David Chapman in front of their home. In the outpouring of grief that followed, their final recordings together brought Ono a taste of critical acclaim. Her album Season of Glass broke the Billboard Top 50 in 1981. She responded at the time, "If it brought John back, I'd rather remain hated." Her art, too, gathered admirers. "I discovered the great richness and complexity of her work," says Alexandra Munroe, an expert in postwar Japanese art, "and realized just how prescient and seminal she was over and over again." Munroe launched a widely praised retrospective of Ono's work in 2000 at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City, which she directs. The retrospective has toured the U.S., and is scheduled to open this year in Japan and South Korea.

Younger generations, unsaddled with the preconceptions of their parents, are discovering Ono on their own. Club deejays from New York to London to Tokyo are remixing Ono singles such as the 1971 Open Your Box. "Her music is funky, shocking and timeless," says Yoshi Horino, a Tokyo-based deejay. Her books, including Grapefruit, continue to sell. "We still get fan mail for her," says Takato Satomura of Kodansha Bunko, one of her publishers. Miyuki Sugaya says most of the visitors to her gallery in Tokyo's hip Omotesando district are in their teens or 20s. "They don't know much about Ono's art," she says, "but when they see it, they get it." And feel good about it. Says Kosuke Miki, a cosmetics marketing director: "Yoko Ono is Japan's national pride."

Twenty-two years after Lennon died, Ono cares most about the inner peace she has now achieved. She maintains a tight relationship with Sean, now 27 and a musician ("he probably thinks I call too much"). And she has renewed a relationship with long-estranged 39-year-old daughter Kyoko, from her former marriage to American artist Tony Cox. Now living alone, Ono says her life feels complete. "I love the changing seasons. I love to walk in the park. I love the human race. I have my family and my work. These are the things that make me happy."

—With reporting by Yuki Oda/Tokyo

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