Tadanori Yokoo
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Portals to Universes
Never Before Imagined
1974.
I Was Dead, 1965.
Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer and artist known for his unique psychedelic posters. Influenced by Surrealism, American Pop Art, contemporary Japanese culture, and ukiyo-e prints, Yokoo’s intricate works brought a new vision to postwar Japan. His friend the writer Yuko Mishima once wrote of him, “Tadanori Yokoo's works reveal all of the unbearable things which we Japanese have inside ourselves and they make people angry and frightened. He makes explosions with the frightening resemblance which lies between the vulgarity of billboards advertising variety shows during festivals at the shrine devoted to the war dead and the red containers of Coca-Cola in American Pop Art, things which are in us but which we do not want to see.” Born on June 27, 1936 in Nishiwaki, Japan, Yokoo began his career as a set designer for theaters in Tokyo as a young man. The artist’s first poster designs came out in the mid-1960s, and he gained international acclaim later in the decade. Over the years that followed, Yokoo designed posters and album covers for The Beatles, Carlos Santana, and Cat Stevens, making a lasting contribution to popular culture. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, among others. Explore more on artnet .