Y O KO O TADAN RI
THE
TADANORI YOKOO WOR LD OF PHA NTAS M IC
Transforming reality into fantasy, fantasy into reality
THE PHANTASMIC WORLD OF TADANORI YOKOO explores the prolific artists extensive collection of graphic works to date. The colossal immersive exhibition, being held at MoMA until April 17, 2023 is the largest showcase of the artist’s comprehensive graphic works, fifty years since Yokoo’s first showcase at the MoMA. The exhibition interprets Yokoo’s inner philosophies and inspirations, through the concept of Genkyo, which can signify three
There may be no other Japanese artist who captures the profound realm of imagination, illusion, mysticism, spirituality, and the subconscious mind all intertwined in a psychedelic web of colors and expressions as freely and honestly as Tadanori Yokoo. Yokoo is art himself. He encompasses all the facets of classical history, literature, religion, and political and social dogma, and delves into an alternate universe beyond our mortal reality. His powerful works reveal not only jungles and paradises borne from his childhood memories wrapped in novels and movies, but also the underground and etheric worlds where all human souls rise and return after death.
“THERE MAY BE NO OTHER WHO CAPTURES THE PROFOUND OF IMAGINATION, ILLUSION, SPIRITUALITY, AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Words by Alma Reyes
Tadanori Yokoo began his career as a graphic designer in the 1950s, although he started designing posters when he was still in high school. From age 22, he had already garnered several awards for his poster designs. One of his most celebrated graphic works is the famous Tadanori Yokoo (1965) (Collection of the Artist, Deposited in Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo). The image depicts Yokoo in a black suit and formal shoes, clutching a red rose in his hand, and is hanging from a rope. The brilliant backdrop of red and blue rays is derived from the rising sun of the old Japanese flag, representing wartime Japan, with a reference to the Asahi Breweries trademark.
ALL INTERTWINED WEB OF COLORS PSYCHEDELIC
There is a small photograph of Yokoo as an infant, and another resembling a high school group shot. On the upper corners are tiny pictures of the Shinkansen train and the nuclear bomb emerging from Mt. Fuji. Yokoo explains these symbols as representations of rebirth. At the same time, at the bottom of the illustration, the words “Having reached a climax at the age of 29, I was dead” suggests his own death statement to break away from his past.
This provocative work was the artist’s radical attempt to challenge the state of culture and politics in post-war Japan and to deviate from the country’s acceptance of Western modernism. Many other captivating graphic works by the artist are found in the exhibition’s Graphics without Borders section.
Several pieces have won international acclaim and have been acquired in 1967 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where his solo exhibition was also installed in 1972.
OTHER JAPANESE ARTIST
PROFOUND REALM ILLUSION, MYSTICISM,
SUBCONSCIOUS MIND IN A COLORS AND PSYCHEDELIC EXPRESSIONS AS FREELY AND HONESTLY AS TADANORI YOKOO.”
Hino Moto no Keko (1997)
Yukio Mishima, The Aesthetics of End (1966)
RED SWIMS OMNIPRESENTLY
Having spent an enormous amount of time in New York. Yokoo immersed himself into the hippie era, psychedelic movement, flower children, Vietnam War, racism, and America’s revolutionary transition from the old regime to the liberal order. The renaissance of Western modernism greatly influenced Yokoo’s artistic style. It served as the catalyst in his life when in 1980, he came across Picasso’s exhibition at the MoMA. Yokoo has consistently devalued perfection, and instead, pursued the relevance of the process. The collage method can be seen in Relation between Rose and Rose-Bud (1988, Equine Museum of Japan), Love Arabesque (2012, Collection of the Artist), and Homeland (2019, Collection of the Artist, Deposited in Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art), among others.
Yokoo is also noted for his waterfall postcard collection. He claims to have seen waterfalls frequently in his dreams. These unconscious visions created a stimulating impact as elements of inspiration from his past life. Yokoo collected postcards of waterfalls from all over the world as reference materials for his waterfall paintings without
intending to have gathered 13,000 pieces. In the Waterfall Installation room of the exhibition, the mirrored walls and floors reflecting the thousands of tiny postcards on the walls pull the visitor toward an aura of purity and cosmic power in the same manner waterfalls were worshipped in ancient times.
ACROSS
FLOORS
The color red predominantly occupies many of Yokoo’s paintings, especially in the late 1990s. Deep red illuminates in various shades with only a few black tones. Although the color originally grew from flames in the sky from the air raid during the war, Yokoo eventually associated red with the eroticism of death—a subject that he burrowed profusely in his works. In the Book of Dead section, red swims omnipresently across the floors and walls.
Death resonates in Yokoo’s mind from his childhood recollections of the departed, his adoptive parents, and the bloody remnants of the war. In Destiny (1997, Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), the canvas is a dream-like constellation of fireflies floating in golden orbs against a scarlet mist and black sky. A couple’s legs walk on a suspended bridge, but their bodies have vanished as though death had taken over them.
OMNIPRESENTLY
Yokoo’s lonely childhood left him habitually alone in his house with picture books and portraits of movie stars from movie magazines, which he learned to draw by imitating them. In his own world, he had created story-like expressions of dreams, adventures, and mysteries wrapped in wonder, enigma, romanticism, and eroticism. Perhaps, these visual elements triggered his collaboration with many musicians and celebrities throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
ACROSS THE FLOORS AND WALLS.”
This window of opportunity allowed him to design albums, record covers, and concert posters. Some of these renowned figures included Japanese actor Ken Takakura, musicians Earth, Wind and Fire, Beatles, Cat Stevens, and artists Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Saul Steinberg, novelist Yukio Mishima (whom he
established a close relation to), and others. Mishima quoted Yokoo’s works as a revelation of 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, 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.
HINGS WHICH ARE IN US BUT WHICH WE DO NOT WANT TO SEE.”
FESTIVALS AT THE SHRINE DEAD, AND THE RED CONTAINERS IN AMERICAN
DEVOTED TO THE WAR
CONTAINERS OF COCA COLA
WHICH LIES BETWEEN THE VULGARITY OF BILLBOARDS, ADVERTISING, VARIETY SHOWS,
AESTHETIC
Exploring a Body of Work that Created a New Movement
in Japanese Graphic Design
Words by Olivia Whittick
THE RISING SUN
Seen as representative of Imperialism and a nationalistic nostalgia for a traditional Japan, the 16-ray Japanese sun flag was banned by the American Allies during the war. Yokoo’s work scandalized the symbol, paying homage to his heritage while using it as a background for his multi-layered ruminations on death, sex, violence, and greed. By creating in the style of ancient wood-blocking technique ukiyo-e, Yokoo located his aesthetic deep within a Japanese tradition, yet used culturally significant symbols in a way that was satirical, critical, and anti-establishment. From his earliest poster designs to his contemporary work, Yokoo has never retired the motif.
THE PEACH
In Japanese folklore there is a popular fable about a lonely elderly couple who one day find a large peach floating down the river. Upon opening it, they discover a healthy baby boy inside. This boy, Momotaro, would grow to become a warrior, and eventually leave his family to fight demons on a distant island. During World War II, the Japanese government adopted Momotaro as their icon, hoping to fight the Americans as Momotaro did the oni of Okayama. Yokoo’s “peach” references an idealized past—a symbol steeped in tragedy in its post-war context.
YAKUZA
Yubitsume is a ritual carried out by the yakuza, in which a member atones for their own fuck-ups by removing portions of their pinky finger. In The Ballad to a Severed Little Finger, Yokoo refers to his visual work as poetry, while making light of the customs of the Japanese mafia. Blood is splattered across the poster, adding formally to the design, but in a way that is imbued with sinister meaning. For the cover of political satire magazine Hanashi no Tokushu, the back of a yakuza member becomes a canvas, his tattoos indicative of the perceived relationship between progress and destruction.
Mt. Fuji erupts, a bullet train speeds off of the page, a plane passes overhead. The classical tiger tattoo is parallel to one of Astro-Boy, the innocence of a children’s cartoon corrupted by its positioning as a gangster’s
The Rose-Colored Dance, A La Maison De M. Civecawa (1966)
SHOCK
“ALTHOUGH CULLED FROM THE MOST UNLIKELY OF INSPIRATIONAL WELLS, YOKOO’S BRICOLAGE WAS CHARACTERISTICALLY A FUSION OF THE TRADITIONAL WITH THE FUTURISTIC. IT MOCKED THE NOBILITY OF THE OLD WITH THE VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION OF THE MODERN-DAY.”
You will rarely find a poster penned by Yokoo that does not have the Shinkansen bullet train hiding somewhere in the chaos. Clearly Yokoo was suspicious of rapid technological advancements. They propelled Japan into a machinated, technologically-mediated future. Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train would prompt a wave of urbanization that would revolutionize the movement of bodies in the country.
Koshimaki-Osen (1966)
tattoo.
THE BULLET TRAIN
Ballad Dedicated to An Amputated Little Finger (1967)
Strange Tales of the Bow Moon (1971)
FROM THE COLLECTION
Words by Florence Fu
Our growing collection of posters by the avantgarde Japanese designer are portals to universes never before imagined.
Between multiple worlds: Remixing and collaging cultures
When it came to designing advertisements, instead of prioritizing functionality and clarity, Yokoo favored dysfunctional overload and visual saturation. Instead of distancing himself from the artwork, he fully injects himself into his posters. By stylistically conflating personal expression and corporate advertisement, categories that were traditionally assumed to be separate, Yokoo earned a reputation for blurring boundaries between art and design worlds.
Ads should be interesting, funny, sad, miserable, and at times, frightening. If you look at Japanese ads before the war, people’s feelings are shown as they are: without keeping a distance from or denying God, who exceeds the human intellect, or beings from space, most drew on the everyday or of things close to us. I think the desires, wishes, and prayers of today are no different from the past and should be included in ads. Now feelings are being eliminated from ads, awareness of self is being denied, and only functionality is given priority. I feel, however, that ads should become more independent from the product and have a universal role in people’s lives and feelings.
“YOKOO FAVORED DYSFUNCTIONAL OVERLOAD AND VISUAL SATURATION. INSTEAD OF DISTANCING HIMSELF FROM THE ARTWORK, HE FULLY INJECTS HIMSELF INTO HIS POSTERS.”
Despite an economic boom that catapulted the nation towards a promising future, there were anxieties in Japan about the erasure of tradition at the expense of modernization. Artists, architects, and designers all grappled with these tensions between past and present, between East and West, in some shape or form. Yokoo addressed these tensions by mixing icons of pre- and post-modern Japan, by reappropriating images, or by transfusing Western and Eastern form and content.
The act of collaging allows Yokoo to scramble images from both East and West to form a new universe as both a humorous gesture and visual pun. In Angel Parade, Western angels fly around the frame, and one is even holding a Japanese lucky cat figurine a scene that could never exist in a Renaissance painting, but only in Yokoo’s world. A reclining golden Buddha faces a blazing rising sun, composed in the last posture to leave the world and enter Nirvana. There is also a smaller statue of a Buddha, substituted with Yokoo’s deadpan expression. By creating a space for disparate icons to coexist, Yokoo expands the representations of knowledge divided by cultures.
The Shinkansen bullet train was a 2 million yen project that connected regions far and wide to the heart of Tokyo at record-breaking speeds, and contributed to the city’s rapid population increase. For one, he complicated the politics of symbols, and pushed limits of taboo topics like sex and death. At the center of the poster is a man, presumed to be Yokoo, hanging on a noose with a flower in hand.
He foregrounds the rising sun, a symbol that was banned by American Allies during the war for its
“A POSTER BY YOKOO GENERATES ITS OWN MAGNETIC FIELD THAT WILL EITHER REPEL OR ATTRACT DEPENDING ON THE VIEWER’S TASTES. THE FEELINGS HIS POSTERS ELICIT ARE SELDOM OF PLEASURE OR THE SUBLIME, BUT RATHER OF SHOCK OR CONFUSION LEADING TO DEEPER CONTEMPLATION.”
Yokoo’s emotive poster: Interesting, funny, sad, miserable, and at times, frightening
A poster by Yokoo generates its own magnetic field that will either repel or attract depending on the viewer’s tastes. The feelings his posters elicit are seldom of pleasure or the sublime, but rather of shock or confusion leading to deeper contemplation. Yokoo demands his viewers to sit with and embrace the full spectrum of uncomfortable feelings of humanity.
When Yokoo exhibited Having Reached A Climax At 29, I Was Dead at a group exhibition in Tokyo’s Matsuya Ginza department store, he established his footing as a risk-taker, unafraid to surface what most people feared.
association with the Imperial military and its war crimes. In the bottom right corner is an obscene hand gesture representing sex, while opposite to it is a baby photo of Yokoo. His use of graphic symbols throughout his career explores the way emotions are embedded into symbols, as well as the way that a single form’s meaning can evolve over time. The combination of contrasting images, each embedded with its own story, with an acidic color palette that adds to the intensity of each work.
Having Reached A Climax At 29, I Was Dead, (1965)
The Crime of Debuko Ooyama (1967)
Shiro Kuramata (1996)
Yuhi Shosetsu (1968)
Lucky Gods Festival (1997)
“YOKOO’S VISIONS ARE IMMUNE TO REALITY’S GRIP ON IMAGINATION AND REASON. HIS WORKS ARE ABOUT AND FOR HIMSELF:
Beyond reality: Yokoo’s otherworldly visions
Much like dreams and nightmares that can invite the nonsensical, Yokoo’s visions are immune to reality’s grip on imagination and reason. His works are about and for himself: a space to relinquish the unconscious mind and reflect on questions about life, meaning, existence; a medium to reveal his desires, fears, memories, and collect what may have fallen through the cracks. Some
answers are more cluttered, noisy, and chaotic, while others are composed, quiet, and meditative. Both coexist on the same plane where Yokoo’s past, present, and future meet.
A SPACE TO RELINQUISH THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND AND REFLECT ON QUESTIONS ABOUT LIFE, MEANING,
EXISTENCE; A MEDIUM TO REVEAL
HIS DESIRES, FEARS, MEMORIES, AND COLLECT WHAT MAY HAVE FALLEN THROUGH THE CRACKS.”
To transcend reality’s fixed lens, Yokoo prompts questions about space and place. Japanese art critic Yasushi Kurabashi describes Yokoo’s sense of perspective as extreme. He writes, “At times he disregards points of reference to create an open, limitless, even weightless feeling. His illusions impart the impression that perhaps we are not from ‘here’ but from somewhere else far, far away.” Are You Ready For Fresh Air? becomes a visual boundary where layers of two different worlds touch momentarily. One side is a
sky blue mountain range, while the other is a blooming garden. The two are only separated by an intricate, golden frame, and reversed bitmapped text, as if an introduction to a video game. While the physical frame has often been used in painting to create windows to worlds, Yokoo’s frame as a modern-day trompe-l’oeil creates an experience that has not been imagined before.
LaChapelle Land (1996)
The Wonders of Life on Earth, Isamu Kurita (1966)
Angel Parade (1996)
REFERENCES
PAGES 1-11
IMAGE:
Artvee. (2022a, December 14). Hino Moto no Keko by Tadanori Yokoo. https://artvee. com/dl/hino-moto-no-keko/
Artvee. (2022b, December 14). Yukio Mishima, The Aesthetics of End by Tadanori Yokoo. https://artvee. com/dl/yukio-mishima-the-aesthetics-of-end/
Fauna. (2011, September 23). Tadanori Yokoo on the cover of The Design Review No. 4 1967. Tumblr. https:// freakyfauna.tumblr.com/post/10557188016/tadanori-yokoo
Fu. (n.d.). From the Collection: Tadanori Yokoo. Letterform Archive. https://letterformarchive.org/news/ view/tadanori-yokoo
TEXT:
Graphics by Tadanori Yokoo At Museum. (1972, February 26). MoMA. https://www.moma.org/documents/ moma_press-release_326787.pdf
Reyes, A. (2021, October 8). The phantasmic world of Tadanori Yokoo. Meer. https://www.meer.com/ en/67117-the-phantasmic-world-of-tadanori-yokoo
PAGES 12-15
IMAGE:
Fu. (2020, May 10). From the Collection: Tadanori Yokoo. Letterform Archive. https://letterformarchive.org/ news/view/tadanori-yokoo
Tadanori Yokoo Ballad Dedicated To An Amputated Little Finger 1967. (2022). MoMA. https://www.moma. org/collection/works/4979
Tadanori Yokoo Koshimaki-Osen 1966. (2022). MoMA. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/7957
The Rose-Colored Dance, A La Maison De M. Civecawa (Poster for a performance by Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh dance company). (2022). MoMA. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/6226
TEXT
Whittick, O. (2017, February 2). Aesthetic Shock: Designer Tadanori Yokoo. SSENSE. https://www.ssense. com/en-us/editorial/culture/aesthetic-shock-designer-tadanori-yokoo-2
PAGES 16-25
IMAGE:
Artvee. (2022a, December 14). Lucky Gods Festival by Tadanori Yokoo. https://artvee.com/dl/ lucky-gods-festival/
Artvee. (2022b, December 14). Shiro Kuramata by Tadanori Yokoo. https://artvee.com/dl/shiro-kuramata/
Fu. (n.d.). From the Collection: Tadanori Yokoo. Letterform Archive. https://letterformarchive.org/news/ view/tadanori-yokoo
The Crime of Debuko Ooyama (1967) - Yokoo Tadanori | Objects. (n.d.). M+. https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/ collection/objects/the-crime-of-debuko-ooyama-2016185/
Tadanori Yokoo LaChapelle Land, Photographs by David LaChapelle 1996. (2022). MoMA. https://www. moma.org/collection/works/6061
Tadanori Yokoo’s Psychedelia. (2015, June 11). Juxtapoz Art & Culture. https://www.juxtapoz.com/illustration/tadanori-yokoos-psychedelia/
Yuhi Shosetsu (1968) - Yokoo Tadanori | Objects. (n.d.). M+. https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/yuhi-shosetsu-2016163/
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