YAMAGATA.

Real seller with inventory on hand. Oversize Hardback. Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc, 1986. Fine / Fine. Book is in excellent condition in every respect. Binding is solid and square, in dark blue cloth with gilt titles on cover and spine. Covers have sharp corners, exterior shows no blemishes, text/interior is clean and free of marking of any kind. Dust jacket shows the slightest signs of shelf wear only, no tears. 142 pages with many full page, full color prints, signed on the half title page in Sharpie.

Hiro Yamagata paints Parisian street scenes and cafes, bicyclists lifted aloft by colorful airships, the Eiffel Tower at dusk, giant rabbits leading the Paris circus. His is a world of flamboyant sailboats, fireworks, leaping dolphins, of easy miracles and nostalgic comforts, a child's paradise in which rainbows hug the ground in leaf-strewn parks. Born in Japan, Yamagata settled in Los Angeles after studying in Paris. Some of his paintings and prints synthesize artistic techniques of East and West; their abstract, shimmering quality recalls ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Yamagata prettifies everythinga cluster of Los Angeles billboards, a French wedding, a robbery. While his pictures with their candy colors, jaunty figures and minute detail have surface charm, their aura of innocence is facile and their photorealist technique is slick. (June 15
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hiro Yamagata is a Japanese-born painter who moved to California after living in Paris for eight years. His paintings are typically small imaginative Paris cityscapes painted in a brightly colored naif style and filled with dozens of cartoon-like human figures engaged in comical actions. Yamagata's work has become known to a popular audience in large part through his poster "L.A.'s the Place," which was widely distributed in connection with the Los Angeles Olympic Games. This volume is unabashedly promotional in its approach, stating, for example, that Yamagata is "ready to be the next great artist in his own lifetime." The book is slickly produced, generously illustrated, and provided with a text that is accessible to general readers and high school students. Kathryn W. Finkelstein, M.L.S., Cincinnati
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.