Shigeo Fukuda (福田繁雄)

1. What it is — a poster for the Warsaw competition marking the 30th anniversary of the war's end, 1975, grand prix (Wikipedia). UMMA holds a 1976 reproduction: screenprint, 102.9 × 73 cm, gift of DNP. A client in the sense of a commissioner doesn't exist — a competition work.
2. Composition — the entire format is one flat ochre-yellow plane. Two black objects on the same diagonal (≈ 35° from vertical, tilted left): a cannon barrel enters from the lower left corner (muzzle of the barrel at ≈ 46% w, 49% h), a shell hovers upper right (centre of mass ≈ 72% w, 20% h) and RETURNS into the barrel — its tip is turned toward the muzzle. The title VICTORY 1945 upper left (≈ 5–47% w, 4–8% h), white. The eye enters on the title, slides along the diagonal onto the shell, then down it into the barrel — and stops there because the direction doesn't add up. The gap lower right (≈ 40% of the format) is deliberate: the shell has nowhere else to go.
3. Colour — three colours: ochre-yellow ground, black silhouette, white word. On the black objects one thin YELLOW glint (edge of the barrel, ring of the shell) — not a fourth colour, it's the ground showing through a break in the black. Zero midtone, zero shadow; the shine is a line. Yellow was chosen so the black would be as hard as possible (maximum brightness contrast without a white ground) and so the poster from five metres would be one yellow rectangle with two black stains.
4. Typography — condensed grotesque (sans serif), capitals, white, one line; a class, not a specific typeface (not in Fonts In Use). It sits like an inscription on the object, not like a title above the image: same 0° angle, same whiteness as the glint. Nothing else on the format.
5. Message — victory is a bullet that returns to whoever fired it. Three seconds: you recognise the cannon and the shell; the fifth second: you grasp the direction. Five metres: yellow, two black marks — cannon and shell; the message reads only from three metres, but even from five it works as "war". Text-covering test: it passes — the image says it all; the title only dates it.
6. Why exactly this way — a competition, a single sheet, an international audience without a shared language: the word must be redundant. The limitation of screenprint (flat colours) and the limitation of the jury (hundreds of sheets, three seconds per sheet) yield the same solution: one operation on one familiar image — reverse the direction. Fukuda doesn't draw war, he draws a ballistic error.
7. What would kill it — turning the shell "correctly" (away from the barrel): it becomes an artillery poster. Or adding a second shell: "impossible" becomes "a lot" and the argument disappears. Or a shadow under the barrel — the object gains a floor, and loses the diagram.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec jedna-operacija-po-radu (reverse the direction) predmet-protiv-svoje-funkcije nemoguci-predmet-kao-argument ravna-boja-na-daljinu To verify against the image: exact angle of the diagonal and whether the glint is the yellow ground or a separate colour (screenprint 1976 — probably a break in the black); the 1975 original versus the 1976 reproduction (UMMA itself says "Reproduction"). Measurement (from screenshots): muzzle of the barrel (46, 49) %; centre of mass of the shell (72, 20) %; title (5–47, 4–8) %; angle ≈ 35°.

1. What it is — poster for the author's own exhibition in the gallery on the 5th floor of the Keio department store, Tokyo, 23–28 May 1975 (inscription; UMMA). Screenprint, 102.9 × 73 cm (UMMA; PGDA says offset, 103 × 72 — see Notes on sources). Same year as Victory.
2. Composition — format divided into six vertical "columns": six black women's legs with high heels hang FROM ABOVE (heel at ≈ 12% v), and the white gaps between them are men's legs in trousers with shoes standing FROM BELOW (shoe at ≈ 88% v). There is nothing else but one line of small text along the bottom edge (≈ 95% v): name, date, venue. The eye reads the black legs first (figure), then the white "snaps" into male legs — and from then on it can no longer see just one. The rhythm is strict: six modules, equal step, full height.
3. Colour — black on white, nothing else; and this isn't economy but a condition: as soon as one side got colour, it would become the figure, and the other the background, and the illusion would die. Equal "weight" of black and white (≈ 50/50 of the area) is what keeps both readings alive.
4. Typography — one line of small capitals, grotesque (PGDA states Helvetica with no source — class Helvetica). Deliberately illegible from a distance: the poster must first be an image, and only at half a metre a notice. The text sits below the shoes like ground.
5. Message — a poster for the exhibition of a man who makes illusions IS an illusion. There is no slogan; the message is the experience "I see one thing / I see another". From five metres: black-and-white stripes, op-art; from two metres: women's legs; from one: men's too. Three distances, three contents.
6. Why exactly this way — department store, passers-by, zero budget for text: the poster must stop the step. The constraint he set for himself is stronger than the client's: both readings must be COMPLETE (heel AND shoe, with no "leftover" in either). This is what distinguishes this poster from Rubin's vase: there is no neutral zone.
7. What would kill it — one module shifted (unequal step) or one leg in a different pose: the white stops being a leg and reverts to a gap. Or a grey background: the figure gains priority and the background dies.

Principles: oba-citanja-dovrsena bijeli-prostor-kao-oblik jedan-primitiv-za-sve (one leg shape, six times) dva-rastojanja-citanja crno-bijelo-prije-boje jedna-operacija-po-radu (repeat and invert) To verify against the image: exact number of modules (six black / five or six white — edge); technique screenprint/offset; whether the PGDA image (file nagai_n2.jpg, source Gurafiku) is really this sheet or a reprint. Measurement: module step ≈ 16.7% w; heel ≈ 12% v; shoe ≈ 88% v; text ≈ 95% v.

1. What it is — anti-war poster 1968, screenprint, 103 × 72.5 cm (MoMA 475.1987, gift of the designer; M+ 2018.618, 102.7 × 72.7). The client is not stated in either record. One year after Herb Lubalin's No More War (1967, Avant Garde competition) — see Pairs.
2. Composition — the whole format covered with one primitive: a short black line (bomb), slightly tilted, in tens of thousands of repetitions. The skull emerges SOLELY from density difference — dense along the edges, sparse in the face, nothing drawn with an outline. The skull occupies ≈ 70% of the width, from ≈ 12% to 95% of the height; eye sockets ≈ (37, 40) and (62, 40)%; teeth ≈ 65–72% v. The eye doesn't zoom in anywhere — the skull is instantly there from a distance, and at half a metre it disappears into a rain of bombs. Two readings, like Keio, but by DISTANCE, not by figure/ground.
3. Colour — red background, black line. The red is chosen as a mid-tone value: dark enough for the black density to build shadow, light enough for the sparse fields to work as light. On white, the skull would be a diagram; on red, it's flesh.
4. Typography — none; one small line along the bottom edge (illegible in the screenshot). The title only exists in the catalogue. This is a borderline case of jedna-slika-jedna-rijec: one image, zero words.
5. Message — the bombs falling ARE the skull; there is no metaphor to explain, because the image is itself both cause and effect. Five metres: skull. Half a metre: bombs. In between — the moment you realise one is the other.
6. Why exactly this way — screenprint in two colours, without tone: to get a shadow without a halftone screen, Fukuda makes a screen out of CONTENT. The same procedure as Gerstner's or Cieślewicz's enlarged halftone dot, but the dot isn't a dot but an object — and that is what's new in 1968.
7. What would kill it — a skull outline (one line): the bombs become texture inside a drawing. Or bombs in two sizes: density stops being the sole parameter and the image falls apart into "big and small".

Principles: lik-samo-iz-gustine jedan-primitiv-za-sve dva-rastojanja-citanja rebus-tjera-na-izvodjenje jedna-slika-jedna-rijec To verify against the image: whether the line is a bomb (with a tail) or a plain line — in the screenshot it looks like a short rounded line without a tail; whether there's text along the bottom edge; the exact red. Measurement: skull (15–85, 12–95)%; eyes (37, 40) and (62, 40)%; teeth 65–72% v.

1. What it is — sheet #5 from the series Happy Earth Day 1982, offset, 100 × 70.7 cm (M+ 2016.739). The series has several sheets; UMMA 2017/2.89 is a DIFFERENT poster of the same year and title (green-black globe in a white "holder" on blue — Earth as a seed germinating, per UMMA's description). Here the sheet with the axe is analysed; see Notes on sources.
2. Composition — red-orange plane; a black axe placed UPSIDE DOWN: head bottom left (≈ 15–60% w, 82–95% v), handle upright through the centre (≈ 50–55% w), and at the top of the handle (≈ 5% v) two sprouts with little leaves. The inscription HAPPY / EARTHDAY in two lines bottom right (≈ 68–95% w, 84–92% v), green, with Japanese text left and right of it. The eye enters on the axe (the largest black mass), climbs the handle to the sprout, and only then falls on the green inscription — a path from blade to leaf.
3. Colour — three: red-orange, black, green. Green appears only on the word, not on the sprout — the sprout is black like the axe, because it IS the axe. The green word is the only "living" tone and sits where the eye ends up. On the axe, thin white highlights (edge of the blade, wood grain) — a break in the black, not a fourth colour.
4. Typography — condensed serif capitals (class Clarendon-condensed), green; unconfirmed. A typeface tone was chosen that "speaks" the poster about nature in the 1980s, rather than a grotesque — the only work among the eight where the typeface carries the mood.
5. Message — an axe that sprouts: a tool cuts wood, and yet wood grows through the tool. Three seconds: axe; five: sprout; from five metres: black vertical on red — an exclamation mark. The text-covering test passes.
6. Why exactly this way — a series of at least five sheets on the same theme: each must have ONE different idea, same format, same economy. Here the operation is substitute: top of the handle → sprout. The upside-down axe is not a style but a necessity — the sprout grows upward, so the head must be down.
7. What would kill it — a green sprout: the message becomes an illustration of "even an axe can be good", instead of the paradox that wood is stronger. Or the axe in perspective: the diagrammatic legibility of the silhouette is lost.

Principles: predmet-protiv-svoje-funkcije jedna-operacija-po-radu (substitute) jedna-slika-jedna-rijec ravna-boja-na-daljinu To verify against the image: the Japanese text beside the inscription (name of the organisation Earth Day Japan?); whether #5 is M+'s numbering or Fukuda's; the background colour (M+ says "red", the screenshot shows red-orange). Measurement: handle (50–55)% w, 5–82% v; head (15–60, 82–95)%; inscription (68–95, 84–92)%.

1. What it is — poster for his own exhibition Look 1, 1984; screenprint, 103 × 72.5 cm (MoMA 266.1986, gift of the designer). Wright 2018 sells a copy as offset lithograph on glossy paper from Rand's estate — two processes for the same sheet or two editions; see Notes on sources. There is also a variant Look 1 (Mona Lisa) from the same year (Wright lot 248, Artsy).
2. Composition — black plane. White SILHOUETTE of a man in an 18th-century coat, with a wig and cane, striding down and to the right (head ≈ (78, 12) %, front foot ≈ (30, 68) %). Below him a WHITE OUTLINE of a staircase in isometric view: three steps from the upper left toward the lower right corner (≈ 5–85 % w, 30–78 % h). The trick: the figure is drawn so that its front leg passes THROUGH the step — the staircase is an impossible object (Penrose type), and the figure doesn't notice. Lower left (≈ 4–22 % w, 88–96 % h) a multicoloured "sticker" LOOK 1 with Japanese text. The eye enters on the lightest thing — the silhouette — then down the stairs, then snags at the point where the leg and the step don't line up.
3. Colour — black + white, and one tiny colour zone (magenta, cyan, yellow, red) in the sticker. All the colour is squeezed into 2 % of the surface, and at the spot the eye visits LAST. The silhouette is a solid plane, the staircase is only a line: two weights of white on black make depth without a single tone.
4. Typography — LOOK 1 as a stuck-on label, bold grotesque (sans serif) in colour; the rest is small Japanese type. Typeface not confirmed. The label is deliberately a "foreign body" — the only element that isn't black-and-white and the only one not drawn by hand.
5. Message — "Look" literally: keep looking until you see the mistake. Three seconds: a gentleman descends the stairs; five: the stairs aren't possible; ten: he doesn't know it, you do. From five metres: a white figure on black, reads as a figure, not as a trick.
6. Why exactly this way — a poster for an exhibition of illusions is itself an illusion (same as Keio 1975, nine years earlier) — but here the device is an IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT, not figure/ground. The 18th-century silhouette was chosen because it's recognisable (Hogarth/costume iconography of the "gentleman") — it must be identifiable from a single outline so that all attention goes to the stairs.
7. What would kill it — the staircase as a solid white plane (like the figure): two masses collide and the depth disappears. Or a coloured figure: the eye stays on it and never reaches the mistake.

Principles: nemoguci-predmet-kao-argument rebus-tjera-na-izvodjenje jedna-slika-jedna-rijec crno-bijelo-prije-boje To verify against the image: exact type of impossible staircase (Penrose / Escher Ascending and Descending); who the figure is (Hogarth? a generic "gentleman"); content of the sticker (date, exhibition venue). Measurements: head (78, 12) %; front foot (30, 68) %; staircase (5–85, 30–78) %; sticker (4–22, 88–96) %.

1. What it is — poster for an American tour of kyogen theatre, UCLA Asian Performing Arts Institute 1981 (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York — as inscribed), offset lithograph, printer Toppan, 103 × 72.8 cm (MoMA 599.1981, gift of UCLA). Same programme and same printer as Ikko Tanaka (田中一光)'s Nihon Buyo 1981 (MoMA 649.1981) — two posters for the same tour.
2. Composition — indigo plane. A SINGLE white band, like a wide brushstroke or a kimono sleeve, coiled into a spiral from the upper left corner (≈ 8 % w, 8 % h) toward the centre; at the centre of the spiral, in the indigo left showing through, a PROFILE FACE reads facing downward (nose, closed eye — a smiling kyogen mask), and the tail of the band exits below (≈ 45 % w, 82 % h) and ends as a tabi-clad foot with a toe. The whole figure — sleeve, face, foot — is one unbroken white stroke. The title KYOGEN in red, below (≈ 40–58 % w, 88 % h), a line of small text underneath, designer's signature to the right. The eye enters at the outer end of the spiral and spirals inward to the face; the face is the reward at the end of the path.
3. Colour — three: indigo, white, red (title only). The face isn't drawn in white but LEFT as indigo — the background becomes the figure in one spot. Fine indigo lines within the white (folds of the sleeve, the toe) — the only drawing in the piece.
4. Typography — KYOGEN serif capitals (Clarendon class), red; a line of small text underneath. Not confirmed. The red word is the only warm point and sits below the foot — the ground the figure stands on.
5. Message — kyogen is a comedy played out in a single gesture of the sleeve; the poster is one gesture. Five metres: white spiral on blue (a mark, almost a mon crest). Two metres: the face. Half a metre: the foot, the toe, the folds.
6. Why exactly this way — the American audience doesn't know what kyogen is: the poster can't explain, it has to give ONE image that is both Japanese (brushstroke, sleeve, mon) and universal (spiral, smile). The condition he set himself: the whole body from a single stroke — and the face from what the stroke doesn't cover.
7. What would kill it — a white face drawn inside the spiral: two white shapes, the spiral stops being a single stroke. Or a different colour for the sleeve: the mon becomes an illustration of a costume.

Principles: jedan-primitiv-za-sve (one stroke) jedna-slika-jedna-rijec rebus-tjera-na-izvodjenje ravna-boja-na-daljinu To verify against the image: whether the tail of the band is a foot or a sleeve (in the screenshot the toe of the tabi); content of the small text line (cities, dates); comparison with Tanaka's sheet for the same tour — same size, same printer, opposite method (grid / stroke). Measurements: start of spiral (8, 8) %; centre of face ≈ (50, 42) %; tail (45, 82) %; title (40–58, 88) %.

1. What it is — poster for Children's Day (5 May), 1955, screenprint, 72.6 × 51.2 cm (MoMA 80.1990, Lauder Foundation). Student work (1956 diploma). Small inscription: 子どもの 日に・日本童画会 — for the Japan Society of Children's Illustration (Nihon Dōgakai); MoMA does not list a client.
2. Composition — olive plane. At the top centre (≈ 50 % w, 18 % h) a small red figure of a child hangs UPSIDE DOWN from a white horizontal bar (a shaft, ≈ 40–60 % w); the bar has two white supports going down. The lower half of the format (≈ 55–100 % h) is a wall of white vertical Japanese text in five columns reading right to left, largest on the right (5月5日 — 5 May), progressively smaller to the left, with the smallest line at the far left (author and society). The eye enters on the red dot, falls onto the large date, then reads leftward and downward.
3. Colour — three: olive, red, white. Red only on the child (≈ 1 % of the surface) — the only warm point, as with the KYOGEN title 26 years later. The white text is a tone of light, not information, from a distance.
4. Typography — Japanese gothic (sans serif), vertical setting, stepped-down column sizes; a class, not a specific typeface. The text is half the image: zid-teksta-kao-oblik in the Japanese vertical mode — the block has a geometry (a staircase right to left) before it is read.
5. Message — "Not just on 5 May — one should think about children's playgrounds (every day)". The child hangs upside down from a single bar: the playground reduced to one object. Three seconds: red dot + date; five metres: olive with a white staircase of text.
6. Why exactly this way — 1955, a student, screenprint in three colours, B2: the limitation of the medium is the same as twenty years later, and the solution is the same — one figure, one plane, text as shape. This piece is proof that the method didn't come from Switzerland in the 1960s but from screenprinting and poverty in 1955.
7. What would kill it — the child upright on the bar: the only oddity disappears and it's left as a pictogram. Or the text in one size: the wall loses its geometry and becomes a paragraph.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec ravna-boja-na-daljinu zid-teksta-kao-oblik To verify against the image: exact translation of the columns (read from the screenshot: このいち日だけ でなく / 考えなければならない / 子どもたちの / 楽しい遊び場を); whether it's a shaft or a frame; author's signature in the small line. Measurements: child (50, 18) %; bar (40–60, 22) %; text 55–100 % h, largest column ≈ 80–95 % w.

1. What it is — official poster for the 19th Montreux Jazz Festival, 5–20 July 1985 (per the inscription). No museum record has surfaced; technique and dimensions unknown — by appearance offset in six colours. Nine years after Milton Glaser's poster for the same festival (1976).
2. Composition — grey-beige field. Large black treble clef running the full height (≈ 30–75% w, 2–92% h). Around the clef and over it, eight-nine comic-strip speech bubbles (cloud, star-shaped "burst", rounded) in flat colours, with tails coming OUT of the clef — the clef "speaks" in several voices at once. Below, one line of black capitals (≈ 92–96% h): 19 JAZZ FESTIVAL · MONTREUX · 5-20 juillet 1985. The eye enters on the black mass, then jumps across the bubbles like a rhythm — there's no single path, there's a pulse.
3. Colour — six: grey-beige ground, black, ultramarine, magenta, orange, green. The bubbles OVERLAP with the clef so black passes over some of them, and some pass over black — depth comes from sequence, not from tone. The grey-beige was chosen so the four colours stay equally loud (on white the yellow would disappear, on black the blue would).
4. Typography — condensed bold grotesque (sans serif), capitals, black, one line along the bottom; unconfirmed. The text is the quietest element: everything loud is already in the image.
5. Message — jazz is one sign (the clef) speaking with many voices at once; wordless bubbles = sound that can't be written down. At five metres: black clef + colourful "confetti"; at three seconds: festival, music, joy. The text-cover test passes (place and date remain unknown, but the theme doesn't).
6. Why exactly this way — the festival needs joy and recognisability from thirty metres away (street poster, Switzerland); Fukuda doesn't build a trick but an ANALOGY: improvisation = many voices from one source, shown through a comic-strip code anyone can read. The only one of the eight works where he drops the paradox — and the only one with more than three colours.
7. What would kill it — text inside the bubbles (musicians' names): the bubbles stop being sound and become a programme. Or a coloured clef: it loses the one black mass holding the colours together.

Principles: analogija-umjesto-ilustracije jedna-slika-jedna-rijec ravna-boja-na-daljinu To verify against the image: exact number of bubbles and colours; format (Montreux series — to verify in the festival archive); whether this is Fukuda's only Montreux (Glaser did several). Measurement: clef (30–75, 2–92)%; text 92–96% h.

The third sheet in the Hiroshima Appeals series (JAGDA, from 1983; PGDA copies the MAAS/Powerhouse description: a globe outlined by meridians, "broken at one corner, a hand with a cuff emerges trying to put the broken world back together"). Sand-beige field; large indigo globe (≈ 12–88% w, 3–70% h) with a network of meridians and parallels CUT OUT in white (holes where the lines cross); top left (≈ 22, 12%) a white fist with a cuff inside the globe — holding it like a ball, or emerging from it. Below, APPEALS in pink, wide light capitals across the full width (≈ 84–97% h), over it a red diagonal band HIROSHIMA in white, and "1985" small in the middle. Same series as Ikko Tanaka (田中一光) 1988 (Cooper Hewitt) and Kamekura 1983: Fukuda alone doesn't use the fire/ash metaphor but an OBJECT (the globe as a ball in a hand) — predmet-protiv-svoje-funkcije in reverse: the hand doesn't throw, it holds. To verify: MAAS record (robots locked) — technique, dimensions, client; whether the fist is "inside" or "outside" (MAAS: emerges); exact number of sheets in the series. The PGDA date 1958 is an error — the poster reads 1985.