Iconic late 60’s graphic design publication collating up the psychedelic mysticism of the treasured Japanese artist, illustrator and print maker Yokoo Tadanori.
Collated by the late designer Kiyoshi Awazu, this 1967 debut publication of Tadanori’s is confusingly titled Posthumous Works, which is characteristic for the prankster who famously found notoriety from his own illustration of a false obituary at age 29, advertising his own death. This book followed, which is the perfect portal into the artist’s hallucinogenic world, often absurd and bursting with colour. It gathers up his commercial work commissioned by hot springs and Shuji Terayama’s independent theatre trope Tenjou Sajiki, as well as his own independent paintings and augmented photographs of a mock-funeral held for himself. Its utterly disorientating, colliding the worlds of east and west to create a new visual language for Japan that has been perpetuated through musical collaboration with likes of Harumi Hosono (Cochin Moon most obviously), Miles Davis (Agharta), Pharoah Sanders (Save Our Children), Eitetsu Hayashi and loads more. Heavily collaged, laced with humour and always blurring the boundaries between cultural traditions, Tadanori is without a doubt one of the most important artists of the post-war generations. (NM - top clean copy, without dust box).
