Ishioka Eiko, July 12, 1938 – January 21, 2012 (aged 73) was a Japanese art director, costume and graphic designer known for her work in stage, screen, advertising and print media. Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Japanese visual artist and designer Eiko Ishioka (1938-2012) on what would have been her 78th birthday.
She was born and raised in TokyoHer mother was a housewife, as was traditional for women at the time, and her father was a graphic designer. While both parents supported her artistic pursuits, her father encouraged her to design more traditionally feminine things, like shoes or dolls.
Ishioka ultimately defied her parents' wishes and pursued a career in graphic design after graduating from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Four years later, she became the first woman to win Japan’s most prestigious advertising award.
Noted for her advertising campaigns for the Japanese boutique chain Parco, her collaboration with sportswear company Descente in designing uniforms and outerwear for members of the Swiss, Canadian, Japanese and Spanish teams at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and was the director of costume design for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her work in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula and was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award in the same category for her work in Tarsem Singh’s 2012 film Mirror Mirror.
Japanese designer Eiko Ishioka, whose work across different mediums won multiple accolades, is the subject of Google's special Doodle on Wednesday, which would've been her 79th birthday.Ishioka was a pioneer in the design industry, according to Google. Born and raised in Tokyo, she started a career in graphic design scene at a time when few women were on the scene, but "pushed through boundaries both socially and artistically."
Books
The 1990 book Eiko by Eiko collects her work in art direction and graphic design. A second book, Eiko on Stage, followed in 2000.
Given free-rein to her imagination by Coppola, Ishioka’s costumes for star Gary Oldman brought the vampire count to life and freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with through iconic Universal and Hammer portrayals of the character by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee.
Her vivid blood red designs are crucial to Dracula’s arresting visual impact - a contribution rivalled only by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar’s stirring orchestral score - and do much to counteract the film’s occasionally questionable casting choices, with Keanu Reeves as wooden as a stake playing heroic lead Jonathan Harker.
Filmography
- Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
- Closet Land (1991)
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
- The Cell (2000)
- The Fall (2006)
- Theresa: The Body of Christ (2007)
- Immortals (2011)
- Mirror Mirror (2012)
She is best known for her Hollywood costume designsIshioka’s landed one of her film jobs as the costume designer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. The dramatic, richly coloured costumes scored the budding designer an Oscar for her work.
She would later go on to work with director Tarsem Singh on four different movies, from 2000’s The Cell to 2012’s Mirror, Mirror.
The designer laboured on the costumes for Mirror, Mirror even while receiving chemotherapy for her cancer.
Film career
In 1985 director Paul Schrader chose her to be the production designer for his 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Her work went on to win her a special award for artistic contribution at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Eiko's work with Francis Ford Coppola on the poster for the Japanese release of Apocalypse Now led to their later collaboration in Coppola's Dracula which earned Eiko an Academy Award. She has also worked on four of Tarsem Singh's films beginning with the Jennifer Lopez starrer The Cell in 2000 and including The Fall, Immortals and Mirror Mirror.
She has also done costume design for theater and circus. In 1999 she designed costumes for Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Dutch Opera. She designed costumes for Cirque du Soleil: Varekai, which premiered in 2002 as well as for Julie Taymor's Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which premiered in 2011. She also directed the music video for Björk's "Cocoon" in 2002 and designed costumes for the "Hurricane" tour of singer Grace Jones in 2009.
Ishioka's work is included in the permanent collection of museums throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Already on display in her early print ads, the boldness and surrealism that were the hallmarks of Ishioka's work would go on to gain international acclaim.
Besides her Oscar in 1993 (for costume design on Bram Stoker's Dracula), she won recognition at the Grammys for her award-winning cover of Tutu, the 1986 Miles Davis album. Her set and costume design for the Broadway play M. Butterfly would also earned her Tony nominations in both categories.
Life and career
Ishioka was born in Tokyo to a commercial graphic designer father and a housewife mother. Although her father encouraged her interest in art as a child, he discouraged her ambition to follow him into the business. She graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
She designed for almost every type of performer imaginableIshioka’s dramatic designs made a splash in the opera world, where she earned a Tony nomination for Broadway’s M. Butterfly. For another opera, she reportedly designed a 10-foot-tall teddy bear, complete with a pair of testicles.
She later branched out to designing for Cirque du Soleil, and even for athletes in the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2008, she directed costume design for the entire opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Awards
Eiko won a Grammy Award for her artwork for Miles Davis' album Tutu in 1987 and an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992. She also received two Tony Award nominations in 1988 for the stage and costume design of the Broadway play M. Butterfly. In 2012, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Mirror Mirror and won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence In Fantasy Film. In 1992 she was selected to be a member of the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. On July 12th, 2017, Google showed a Doodle for her 79th Birthday
The award-winning designer died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 73.Today’s doodle showcases some of her designs, from Tarsem Singh’s 2006 movie The Fall.
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