| NOTA |
(★)(´Angura : Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde´ presents the extraordinary posters created for a group of experimental Japanese theater troupes during the 1960s and 1970s. The term ´angura (underground)´ accurately describes the nature of this countercultural theater movement. Rejecting the standards and mores of modern drama and dance, the politically-charged plays and performances of these theater groups were purposefully outrageous and provocative. Similarly, the designers who created posters for these companies rebelled against the conventions of contemporary Japanese design culture and international modernism. Combining the vivid and sexually explicit elements of sixties psychedelia with traditional Japanese design and printmaking techniques, these posters are artifacts of a tumultuous period in both Japanese graphic arts and society as a whole.／ Conceived as objects of art, the handcrafted posters featured in this volume were printed in limited editions by artists who remain largely unknown in the West. Though they were ostensibly intended to serve as advertisements, such lavish care was focused on these works that they were often unfinished when productions opened, thereby eliminating their commercial function. Instead, they became a means of self-definition both for the theater companies that commissioned them and the artists who designed them.／ Author David G. Goodman illuminates the theatrical movement for which these posters were created, provides a brief history of modern Japanese graphic design, and describes both the posters themselves and the artists who created them. In a foreword, design historian Ellen Lupton places the posters in the context of international trends in design, and points out their relevance for the contemporary graphic designer.／ ◆David G. Goodman is a professor of Japanese literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An award-winning translator of Japanese plays, he founded and edited the journal ´Concerned Theatre Japan´ while living in Japan in the 1960s. His books include the critically acclaimed ´Jews in the Japanese Mind´ and ´Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s´.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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