Selected Posters 116

Tadanori Yokoo
Selected Posters 116

Publisher: Amus arts press

116 pages

Pictures: 116

Year: 2001

Comments: Illustrated softcover with obi and Japanese leaflet. 36,5 x 26cm. First edition. Text in English and Japanese. Many colors illustrations. Design by Tsutomu Nishioka. In very good condition.

Tadanori Yokoo (Yokoo Tadanori, born 27 June 1936 in Hyogo Prefecture) is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Tadanori Yokoo, born in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in 1936, is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists. He began his career as a stage designer for avant garde theatre in Tokyo. His early work shows the influence of the New York-based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular), but Yokoo cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences.

In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original.

By the late 60s he had achieved international recognition for his work and was included in the 1968 "Word & Image" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Four years later MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work organized by Mildred Constantine. Yokoo collaborated extensively with Shuji Terayama and his theater Tenjo Sajiki. He starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.