Eiko Ishioka | Eiko Ishioka | book new | sale

Eiko Ishioka

MaoMao publications | 2014

336 | ND

english | softcover | new | sale

25cm x 19cm | 990gr

Eiko Ishioka (Tokyo 1938-2012) was a Japanese costume designer who stood out mainly in cinema, where she won an Oscar award. He also diversified his work into other fields, such as when in 2008 he designed the costumes for the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games. His work has been so appreciated that it is present in museums around the world, including the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), where his work rubs shoulders with that of geniuses like Picasso. "Eiko Ishioka was never interested in designs that only define and explain the characters. She aspired to something more difficult: “to enliven the public's imagination, stimulate their eyes and move their spirit.” We cannot, at the very least, be more than grateful to her for that. One of its most notable features was absolute freedom of expression in all the disciplines it addressed. Advertising campaigns, album covers, music videos, costume design for theater, opera, Olympic games and cinema, are just some of the fields in which, with his unclassifiable aesthetics and his unbribable courage to not be daunted when it came to visually experimenting in quicksand, he earned the respect of his colleagues. Daughter of a graphic designer and a restless housewife and lover of literature, she gratefully recognized the way in which her parents, whose confidence in her talent was unlimited, educated her creative spirit and allowed her—as she declared on countless occasions—“access to life's most valuable treasures.” His inspiration came from friends of rare talent such as the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, the photographer Irving Penn – the cover of Tutu by Miles Davis is a privileged witness of that affinity – or the no less unpredictable and controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl; but, also from the normal and ordinary people he crossed paths with every day. For her, the entire world was her studio: the secret and inexhaustible source from which she extracted the sap with which to nourish her work. When he was commissioned to create costumes for a film, the first thing he did was study the script thoroughly and then began a broad dialogue with the director and the rest of the team. Later, and alone with the blank sheet of paper, he let his mind wander without restrictions of any kind. "