Tadanori Yokoo

1. What it is — a standalone self-portrait poster, screenprint, 109.2 × 79.1 cm, exhibited at Persona (Matsuya, Tokyo, 1965); MoMA acquires it in 1966 ("gift of the artist", object 696.1966).
2. Composition — the entire field below the title is filled with a radial burst of rays from a single point in the lower third — the compositional axis is symmetrical, vertical. On that axis, in the centre, a black silhouette figure hangs with its head down (the author himself). Above: a silver-metallic arc with the name "TADANORI YOKOO", a pink band reading "MADE IN JAPAN", a small green figure resembling the Statue of Liberty on the left, a pink flower on the right. Below: on the left a framed photograph of a baby with the number "1½", on the right a pink caricatured fist with green nails next to a grainy black-and-white group photograph (a class photo). The title text ("...A CLIMAX AT THE AGE OF 29, I WAS DEAD") runs in a narrow band beneath the hanging body. The four corner fields work as quadrants of symbols around one central, literally "hanged" figure.
3. Colour — alternating rays in red and blue (not monochrome, despite one secondary source's claim that they are "exclusively cool blue" — direct viewing confirms alternating red/blue); silver-metallic for the title arc; pink for two corner elements. There is no neutral grey field anywhere — every surface carries a full, saturated colour.
4. Typography — the author's name in large, hand-drawn, almost poster-like lettering on the metallic arc; the rest of the lettering in smaller, more densely composed blocks that follow the curved edges of the elements, not a straight baseline.
5. Message — three-second test: the recognisable "Japanese" colour (radiating sun) reads immediately as a national sign, only afterwards does the hanged figure register. Five-metre test: it remains a symmetrical target/mandala — it pulls the eye before a single detail is read. The point is autobiographical and political at once: the designer as the subject of his own work, not as its invisible executor.
6. Why exactly this way — in 1965 Japan graphic design is an institutional, corporate discipline (Kamekura, NDC). Yokoo deliberately breaks that norm by using a national symbol (the rising sun) as a backdrop for personal, autobiographical, darkly comic content — design as confession, not as service to a client.
7. What would kill it — removing any one of the four corner elements (the baby, the fist, the class photograph, the "Statue of Liberty") would collapse the balance of the quadrants around the central axis and turn the poster into an illustration of one idea instead of a collision of several.

Principles: simetricna-os-drzi-haos (local), sudar-registara-bez-hijerarhije (local) To verify against the image: whether the central figure holds a black rose (stated in one secondary source — not confirmed by direct viewing at the available resolution).

1. What it is — poster, colour screenprint, 104 × 73.7 cm, V&A (E.43-2011, classified under "Psychedelia" and "Post-Modern").
2. Composition — the same radial principle as work 01, but without a figure on the axis: red-white rays radiate from a central rose; two oval medallions with busts (one green-toned, one skin-toned) lie symmetrically left-right across the lower half of the radiating field and "touch" fingers on the central axis. In the corners: a black-and-white photographic fragment (an animal head) top left, a wave motif resembling Hokusai top right, birds scattered in small numbers. A diagonal band with the title cuts across the top third over the rays.
3. Colour — red-white rays as the base; a blue-green wave in the corner; pink floral accents; the two medallions in contrasting skin tones (green versus natural) — a deliberate difference in skin colour between two otherwise symmetrical busts.
4. Typography — the title in a diagonal band, large capital letters over the sun's rays; side panels of yellow tone carry vertical Japanese text in a small cut.
5. Message — three-second test: the hypnotic radial pattern first pulls the eye as a pure optical signal, only afterwards do the two figures in the medallions read. Five-metre test: the red-white rays carry the poster even without reading the text — they work as colour/signal, the same as in work 01.
6. Why exactly this way — the title ("At the house of Mister Civeçawa") suggests an intimate, named space; the composition places that intimate content in the middle of a public, almost religious optical field — a small private scene blown up to the scale of a ritual.
7. What would kill it — turning the two medallions into an identical skin tone would lose the only subtle asymmetry in an otherwise perfectly symmetrical composition, and with it the reason for the eye to settle on the figures at all.

Principles: simetricna-os-drzi-haos (local) To verify against the image: the client/occasion for the work is not named in the record.

1. What it is — poster, screenprint in colour, 109 × 79.5 cm, V&A (E.44-2011, Tokyo, 1968).
2. Composition — black-and-white radiating burst in the background (a variant of the same radial axis as works 01–02), but here almost completely covered by a large white rectangular panel in the middle, on which large vertical Japanese calligraphy runs from top to bottom as an independent figure, not as a caption over the image. Below the panel: a pink-red circular gradient behind two grey, nude figures (back to back or as a pair). Above: two red circles (like pairs of eyes) and blue-turquoise triangular fragments in the corners with a small drawn motif.
3. Colour — black-and-white radiating base; the large white field without colour functions as a pause; the pink-red gradient is the only warm, saturated zone of the composition; blue accents limited to the upper corners.
4. Typography — the calligraphic inscription is not a caption but occupies the central figure of the composition — the same logic of "text that is image" as in Gerstner (see Karl Gerstner), but executed by hand, not by photographing an object.
5. Message — three-second test: the large white field with large letters acts as a pause in the middle of visual noise — the eye stops there first, only then explores the edges. Five-metre test: the grey human presence at the bottom remains legible even when all the ornament is lost at distance.
6. Why exactly this way — the title announces sacrifice/burning ("immolative sacrifice") — the composition literally performs this: a calm, empty field (calligraphy) is surrounded on all sides by a fiery register (rays, red-pink gradient) as if burning around the text that remains still.
7. What would kill it — filling the white panel with ornament or image — the only pause in the composition would disappear and the whole piece would become uniformly dense, with no place for the eye to rest.

Principles: sudar-registara-bez-hijerarhije (local) To verify against the image: client (probably Tenjō Sajiki, not named in the record); the exact content of the calligraphy.

1. What it is — poster for the MoMA exhibition Word and Image (24.1.–10.3.1968), screenprint in colour, extremely elongated format 124.8 × 43.7 cm (ratio almost 1:3), V&A (E.399-1968, gift of MoMA).
2. Composition — a strictly symmetrical vertical strip divided into two zones. Upper third: title in small letters at the top, below it four identical pink oval medallions in a 2×2 row, each with a large drawn open mouth (lips, teeth, tongue). Lower two-thirds: one large eye (blue iris, black pupil, drawn eyelashes) in the centre of a radial red-blue radiating field — the same type of burst as works 01–03, here reduced to a purely geometric, flat drawing without photographic collage.
3. Colour — flat, hard colours without overlap: pink fields of the mouths, alternating red-blue rays, blue iris — no gradation, no overlap of two transparent colours.
4. Typography — the title in geometric grotesque capitals, reduced to the smallest possible role — the whole composition carries the message without relying on text.
5. Message — three-second test: the repeated mouths (speech, voice, word) and one eye (image, looking) literally illustrate the title "Word Image" — but as a pure graphic sign, not as illustration. Five-metre test: the one eye remains legible even from the greatest distance — the most reduced, least collage-like work in this selection.
6. Why exactly this way — for an exhibition dealing with the relationship between word and image, Yokoo makes a diagram of that relationship: four mouths = word (utterance), one eye = image (gaze), placed one above the other in the same strip.
7. What would kill it — adding a photographic collage or a third element — the piece works precisely because it reduces "word" and "image" each to one pure graphic sign; any third element would break that equation.

Principles: simetricna-os-drzi-haos (local), visestruki-registar-kao-potpis (local)

1. What it is — advertising poster for Asahi beer, 1966; exact printing technique and dimensions not confirmed (PGDA record without museum data, source Pinterest).
2. Composition — a completely different register from works 01–04: a densely illustrated park/picnic scene in a naive, almost childlike drawing style (trees, tiny human figures) fills the whole background. Over it, a photographic hand holds a red Asahi can and a bottle with a beer case; a diagonal red-white band with Japanese lettering cuts the composition from the lower right toward the upper left corner.
3. Colour — a warm, colourful illustrated background (green, yellow, red in many small fields) against the photographic hand and product in natural, saturated red-white brand tones.
4. Typography — Japanese lettering in large letters on the diagonal band, following the angle of the band, not a horizontal line.
5. Message — three-second test: the red Asahi can in the photographic hand reads immediately as "beer", regardless of the dense illustration behind it. Five-metre test: the diagonal red-white band remains legible and carries the brand on its own.
6. Why exactly this way — the commercial brief (sell beer) is solved with the same collage-collision method as the author's own work (01) — photographic product against an illustrated, almost folk scene — but here without the personal, autobiographical layer; the collision remains a purely formal selling tool.
7. What would kill it — replacing the illustrated background with a photograph of a landscape — the difference in register (drawing versus photograph) that carries all the visual energy of the composition would disappear.

Principles: sudar-registara-bez-hijerarhije (local) To verify against the image: printing technique, exact dimensions — the source of the record is a weak aggregator (Pinterest via PGDA), no museum/archival record.

1. What it is — cover of the Swiss design magazine Graphis, client Amstutz & Herdeg Graphis Press (Zürich), 1974, screenprint (documented, source hanga-museum.jp).
2. Composition — a large, tightly cropped portrait of Johnny Weissmüller (the actor who played Tarzan, whom Yokoo first watched in childhood) — mouth open in a scream, two hands by the face. The title "TARZAN" runs diagonally across the upper part of the frame in large red letters.
3. Colour — pure halftone pop-art register: magenta/pink tones for skin and shading, cyan-blue for the background and part of the shadows, red for the title — the same palette used by American pop-art portraiture (Warhol), not traditional Japanese colouring.
4. Typography — a large, hand-drawn display lettering, placed diagonally across the face — the lettering as an additional graphic element, not as a separate block of text.
5. Message — three-second test: the scream frame + the title "TARZAN" immediately reads as excitement/sensation, before the specific actor is recognised. Five-metre test: the halftone colour patches remain legible as a face even from a distance.
6. Why exactly this way — for a design magazine, Yokoo chooses a personal memory (a childhood film) and treats it in a borrowed American pop-art vocabulary — a double collision (personal memory + borrowed foreign style) on a cover aimed precisely at a Western design audience.
7. What would kill it — returning the portrait to natural photographic colours — the whole point (halftone as a citation of pop art, not as photographic reproduction) would disappear.

Principles: visestruki-registar-kao-potpis (local)

1. What it is — theatre poster for Shūji Terayama's play 毛皮のマリー (literally "Marie of the fur"), Tenjō Sajiki, performed at the Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka from 1 to 7 September (year readable from the poster itself as 1968); screenprint.
2. Composition — a completely third register in this selection: flat illustration in art nouveau silhouette style (Beardsley/Klimt register) — a large black silhouette of a figure in feathers/fur with elongated, stylised lines, yellow face with no shading, a second smaller figure bottom right. Large Japanese calligraphy for the word "fur" (毛皮) runs diagonally across the whole composition. A block of small text on the left carries the production information (theatre, dates, ticket price, names of collaborators).
3. Colour — flat pink ground with no gradient; black silhouette with no modelling; yellow used only for faces — only three colours total, the most reduced palette in this selection.
4. Typography — the large calligraphic word as the main graphic element (same logic as work 03 — lettering as figure, not as caption); the small information block completely separate, almost administrative.
5. Message — three-second test: a black silhouette in fur/feathers with an instantly recognisable art nouveau manner signals "decadence, costume drama" before the title is even read. Five-metre test: pink + black contrast stays legible as a silhouette shape from a distance.
6. Why exactly this way — for Terayama's play about a transvestite mother figure, borrowing the vocabulary of European fin-de-siècle decadence (Beardsley/Klimt) is a more precise choice than any "Japanese" or "psychedelic" register Yokoo uses for his own self-portrait work — proof he picks the style according to the content of the play, not according to his personal signature.
7. What would kill it — adding shading or modelling to the black silhouette — the flat, plane silhouette is the reason the work cites art nouveau at all, rather than the photo-collage approach of works 01, 03 and 05.

Principles: visestruki-registar-kao-potpis (local) To verify against the image: exact technique and dimensions; the record source (artnet.com) is moderately reliable, the date is confirmed from the poster itself.

1. What it is — invitation for an Issey Miyake fashion show in Paris (client: Miyake Design Studio); according to the New York Times the show was held on 22 October 1988 (spring/summer 1989 collection), while the PGDA record dates it 1989 — inconsistent, see Notes on sources.
2. Composition — a completely fourth register: an expressive, painterly-treated face on a dark, blotchy anthracite ground — a white face half-emerging from the texture, a gestural mark scattered across the eyes and mouth in several colours (yellow, blue, red, turquoise) like a painted, not printed, trace. In the bottom left corner a small red hand-drawn shape (hand/leaf).
3. Colour — predominantly grey/anthracite and white; the coloured gesture reduced to small, asymmetric blots across the centre of the face — the complete opposite of the full, flat fields of the earlier works (01–07).
4. Typography — no visible text in the available frame (to verify against the image — the text may be on the reverse or outside the frame of the reproduction).
5. Message — three-second test: the textured, almost horror-poster-like face reads as a painting before it reads as design — a total absence of any "graphic" signal (no logotype, no flat colour).
6. Why exactly this way — twenty years after works 01–07, and seven years after publicly announcing he was leaving graphic design for painting (1981), even his fashion commercial work already looks like a painting, not a poster — proof that the boundary between "designer" and "painter" was blurred in his work even before the official announcement.
7. What would kill it — adding a logotype or a typographic block with the name of the show — it would pull the work back into the category of "graphic design" that it deliberately flees.

Principles: visestruki-registar-kao-potpis (local) To verify against the image: exact date (1988 show versus 1989 PGDA record); whether there is text outside the frame of the reproduction.