Cigar Club
Tadanori Yokoo
Japanese, born 1936
1997
A silkscreen poster by Tadanori Yokoo that assembles oversized cigars, disembodied hands and mouths, and exotic motifs into a surreal, advertising-like collage that both advertises and playfully undermines the idea of a “Cigar Club.”
What strikes you is the dizzying repetition of cigars and floating lips and hands—printed in halftone dots and saturated color against a smooth gradient—so that imagery from advertising, royalty cards and tropical kitsch collides like a visual carnival.
The work distills Yokoo’s postwar mix of pop, psychedelic collage and traditional motifs, transforming commercial poster language into dense, ironic visual poetry that helped reshape contemporary graphic design and poster art.
Medium
Silkscreen
Dimensions
40 1/2 x 23 3/4" (102.9 x 72.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the designer
Accession
271.1998
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
