Author Description

"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."--BOOK JACKET. "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."--BOOK JACKET.