Tadanori Yokoo

1. What it is — an independent 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 by a radial burst of rays from a single point in the lower third — the compositional axis is symmetrical, vertical. On that axis, at the centre, a black silhouette figure hangs with its head bowed (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 below the hanging body. The four corner fields work as quadrants of symbols around a single central, literally "hanged" figure.
3. Colour — the rays alternate between red and blue; direct viewing confirms the alternating scheme, not a single cold blue. Silver-metallic carries the title arc, pink the two corner elements. There is no neutral grey field anywhere — every surface carries 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 set blocks that follow the curved edges of the elements, not a straight baseline.
5. Message — three-second test: the recognisable "Japanese" colour (the sun-ray burst) reads immediately as a national sign, only afterwards does one see the hanged figure. Five-metre test: it remains a symmetrical target/mandala — it draws the eye before a single detail is read. The point is autobiographical and political at the same time: the designer as the subject of his own work, not its invisible executor.
6. Why exactly this way — in 1965 graphic design in Japan 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 a 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 a single idea instead of a collision of several.

Principles: Symmetrical axis holds chaos, Clash of registers without hierarchy To verify against the image: one secondary source states that the central figure holds a black rose; not verified against the image 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 spread out from a central rose; two oval medallions with busts (one toned green, one in skin colour) lie symmetrically left-right over the lower half of the ray 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 upper 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 against natural) — a deliberate difference in skin colour between two otherwise symmetrical busts.
4. Typography — the title in a diagonal band, large capitals over the sun rays; side panels in a yellow tone carry vertical Japanese text in a small typeface.
5. Message — three-second test: the hypnotic radial pattern first draws the eye as a pure optical signal, only afterwards does it read as two figures in medallions. Five-metre test: the red-white rays carry the poster even without reading the text — they work as colour/signal, just as in work 01.
6. Why exactly this way — the title ("At Mr Civeçawa's house") 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 enlarged to the scale of a ritual.
7. What would kill it — identical skin tone on both medallions would erase the one subtle asymmetry in an otherwise perfectly symmetrical composition, and with it the reason for the eye to stop on the figures at all.

Principles: Symmetrical axis holds chaos To verify against the image: the client and occasion for the work are not confirmed.

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), here almost entirely covered by a large white rectangular panel in the middle, on which large vertical Japanese calligraphy runs from top to bottom as a standalone 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 paired). 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 confined to the upper corners.
4. Typography — the calligraphic inscription doesn't function as a caption but occupies the central figure of the composition — the same logic of "text as image" as in Gerstner (see Karl Gerstner), here executed by hand, not through photography of 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 lands there first, only then explores the edges. Five-metre test: the grey human presence at the bottom stays legible even when all the ornament is lost at distance.
6. Why exactly this way — the title announces a sacrifice/burning ("immolative sacrifice") — the composition literally performs this: a calm, empty field (the calligraphy) is surrounded on all sides by a fiery register (rays, red-pink gradient), as if burning around the text, which stays still.
7. What would kill it — filling the white panel with ornament or an image — the only pause in the composition would disappear and the whole work would become uniformly dense, with no place for the eye to rest.

Principles: Clash of registers without hierarchy 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, an extremely elongated format of 124.8 × 43.7 cm (a ratio of almost 1:3), V&A (E.399-1968, gift of MoMA).
2. Composition — a strictly symmetrical vertical strip divided into two zones. Upper third: a small-lettered title at the top, below it four identical pink oval medallions arranged 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) at 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, a blue iris — no shade, 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 the single eye (image, gaze) literally illustrate the title "Word Image" — but as a pure graphic sign, not as illustration. Five-metre test: the single eye stays 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 photographic collage or a third element — the work works precisely because it reduces "word" and "image" each to one clean graphic sign; any third element would break that equation.

Principles: Symmetrical axis holds chaos, Multiple registers as signature

1. What it is — advertising poster for Asahi beer, 1966. Print technique and dimensions not confirmed (PGDA record with no museum data, source Pinterest).
2. Composition — a 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 entire background. Over it, a photographic hand holds a red Asahi can and a bottle with a beer box. A diagonal red-white band with Japanese lettering cuts across the composition from the lower right to the upper left corner.
3. Colour — a warm, colourful illustrated background (green, yellow, red across many small fields) against the photographic hand and product in the brand's natural, saturated red-white tones.
4. Typography — Japanese lettering in large type 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 instantly as "beer", regardless of the dense illustration behind it. Five-metre test: the diagonal red-white band stays legible and carries the brand on its own.
6. Why exactly this way — a commercial brief (sell beer) is solved with the same collage-collision method as the author's own work (01) — a photographic product against an illustrated, almost folk-art scene — but 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 photography), which carries all the visual energy of the composition, would disappear.

Principles: Clash of registers without hierarchy To verify against the image: print technique and exact dimensions not confirmed — 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 journal 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) — mouth open in a scream, both hands by the face. The title "TARZAN" runs diagonally across the upper part of the frame in large red letters.
3. Colour — a 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 a traditional Japanese colour scheme.
4. Typography — a large, hand-drawn display headline, placed diagonally across the face — the headline as an additional graphic element, not as a separate block of text.
5. Message — three-second test: the scream frame + the title "TARZAN" reads instantly as excitement/sensation, before the specific actor is recognised. Five-metre test: the halftone colour patches stay legible as a face even from a distance.
6. Why exactly this way — for a design journal, Yokoo picks 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: Multiple registers as signature

1. What it is — theatre poster for Shūji Terayama's production 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 (the year is legible from the poster itself as 1968); screenprint.
2. Composition — a fully third register in this selection: a flat illustration in an art nouveau silhouette style (Beardsley/Klimt register) — a large black silhouette of a figure in feathers/fur with elongated, stylised lines, a yellow face without shading, a second smaller figure at the 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 — a flat pink ground without gradient; a black silhouette without modelling; yellow only for faces — just three colours in total, the most reduced palette in this selection.
4. Typography — the large calligraphic word as the main graphic element (the same logic as work 03 — the inscription as a figure, not as a caption); the small informational block entirely separate, almost administrative.
5. Message — three-second test: the black silhouette in fur/feathers, with an immediately recognisable art-nouveau manner, signals "decadence, costumed drama" before the title is read. Five-metre test: the pink + black contrast stays legible as a silhouette shape at a distance.
6. Why exactly this way — for Terayama's play about a transvestite mother figure, the borrowed 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 works — proof that he chooses style according to the content of the production, not according to his personal signature.
7. What would kill it — adding shading or modelling to the black silhouette — the flat silhouette is the reason the work cites art nouveau at all, rather than photographic collage like works 01, 03 and 05.

Principles: Multiple registers as signature To verify against the image: exact technique and dimensions; the source of the record (artnet.com) is of medium reliability, the date is confirmed from the poster itself.

1. What it is — an invitation for an Issey Miyake fashion show in Paris, client Miyake Design Studio. According to the New York Times the show was held on 22.10.1988 (spring/summer 1989 collection), while the PGDA record dates the work 1989. The date is unresolved (see Notes on sources).
2. Composition — a completely fourth register: an expressive, painterly treated face on a dark, blotchy anthracite ground. The white face half-emerges from the texture, with a scattered gesture in several colours (yellow, blue, red, turquoise) across the eyes and mouth, like a painted trace, not printed. In the lower left corner a small red hand-drawn shape (hand/leaf).
3. Colour — dominantly grey/anthracite and white; the coloured gesture reduced to small, asymmetrical blots across the centre of the face. A complete opposite to the full, flat fields of the earlier works (01–07).
4. Typography — no visible text in the available frame. It has not been verified against the image whether text exists on the back or outside the frame of the reproduction.
5. Message — the three-second test: a textured, almost horror-poster face reads as a painting before it reads as design. A complete 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 the public announcement that he was leaving graphic design for painting (1981), even his commercial fashion work already looks like a painting, not a poster. Proof that the line between "designer" and "painter" was blurred for him even before the official announcement.
7. What would kill it — adding a logotype or a typographic block with the name of the show. That would pull the work back into the category of "graphic design" that it is deliberately escaping.

Principles: Multiple registers as signature To verify against the image: exact date (1988 show versus 1989 PGDA record); whether text exists outside the frame of the reproduction.