In yesterday's post we looked at the newly reopened Toshiba Japanese Gallery at the V&A. Among the other works of art by Japanese designers, the museum collection also includes in its archives Ikko Tanaka's "Nihon Buyo" poster (1981) for the Asian Performing Arts Institute. In this poster colour planes form the abstract and expressive portrait of a traditional Japanese theatrical character.
The same image together with two other artworks by the late graphic designer Tanaka - Tanaka Sharaku (1995), and Variations of Bold Symbols (1992) - will soon reappear in a Capsule Collection by Issey Miyake.
The collection includes a kimono shaped coat, a dress and a bag (in each design), as well as two pairs of sandals. Tanaka's geisha, samurai and Japanese characters are therefore reinvented in a modern key and in Miyake's trademark pleated designs.
In the '80s Tanaka developed with interior designer and founder of Tokyo-based design firm Super Potato Takashi Sugimoto and marketing consultant Kazuko Koike the concept behind the Mujirushi Ryohin company, better known as Muji, but the graphic designer remained a historic collaborator of Miyake.
His illustrations quite often mixed the aesthetic of the Bauhaus with the shapes of Matisse's paper cut works, though his basic yet vivid colour palette proved he was a minimalist and favoured notions of subtraction.
The collection will be launched in February 2016, and will be available in Issey Miyake and Pleats Please stores worldwide. Sounds like a great tribute to a graphic designer who was also a textile designer (in the '50s Tanaka worked as textile designer in Kyoto). Hopefully, at least a couple of garments from this collection will be purchased by the V&A or by other museums to be showcased at some point next to the original posters featured on the garments.
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