Tadanori Yokoo
March 12th, 2012
Recently, the Jen Library Special Collections department had the opportunity to acquire a small collection of books by Tadanori Yokoo. If you are not familiar with his work, Yokoo is a gifted Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, painter, and printmaker born in 1936. He has designed books, prints, posters, animation, album covers, theater sets, watches, and a wealth of other items. His work draws on a number of different art movements such as American Pop Art, Surrealism, Dada, and contemporary and traditional Japanese art forms such as ukiyo-o woodblock prints. He uses collage techniques and often mixes photography with illustration.
Self titled poster by Tadanori Yokoo exhibited at Persona group's 1965 joint exhibition.
While he has created a huge body of work, he is probably best known for his posters. The one above was one of his early works and much of the imagery contained within became emblematic of the “Yokoo style”. This image is found on page 23 of Tadanori Yokoo: all Things in the Universe, published in 2002. He is well known in Japan, but less well known in the west. He incorporates both eastern and western pop culture imagery in his compositions.
Here are some of the titles in our collection. While most of them are written in Japanese, they are image heavy and very nicely designed:
Tadanori Yokoo : all things in the universe. ND1059 .Y56 A4 2002
Bōkenʼō, Yokoo Tadanori = Tadanori Yokoo be adventurous! ND1059.Y56 A4 2008
Yokoo Tadanori zen kaiga = Tadanori Yokoo. ND1059 .Y56 A4 1996 folio
Yokoo Tadanori dennō kānibaru. ND1059.Y56 A4 1994
Yokoo Tadanori mikazuki ryokō = Crescent carnival in New Orleans.
ND1049 .Y56 A35 1995
Bigeikō / Tsutsui Yasutaka saku. PL862.S77 B54 1981
There is also a book by him about a collection of hundreds of postcards of waterfall collected and compiled by Yokoo.
Waterfall Rapture:Postcards of falling water my addiction, my collection, my edition. N8261 .W274 Y56 1996