Tadanori Yokoo

Yokoo’s signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world.

The designer’s ambition embarked on at an early age during Yokoo’s teenager years, and before moving to Tokyo, he had done graphic design-related works for a period of time for the Chamber of Commerce in Nishiwaki.

The first work of his to receive popularity, Tadanori Yokoo (1965) was on view at the Persona exhibition, featuring 16 designers and held at Tokyo’s Matsuya department store.

[7] In A la Maison de M.Civeçawa, Yokoo again employed his stylish collage coated with dark humor, citing photos of Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (a novelist to whom the dance was dedicated to, top left corner), Hijikata and fellow Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno (on the rose stem in the middle of the composition), and the famous painting Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters from 1594.

Interweaving the sexual and the political, the historical and the modern, the Western and the Japanese, A la Maison de M.Civeçawa (1966) was another bold declaration of Yokoo.

[10] Throughout the 60s and 70s, Yokoo also collaborated with musicians and designed albums, record covers, and concert posters for individuals and groups such as The Happenings Four, Takakura Ken, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Asaoka Ruriko, and several international rock bands including Earth Wind and Fire, The Beatles, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Cat Stevens, and Tangerine Dream.

[11] By the late 1960s 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.