“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.” ~ Rene Magritte.
It is intimated that Leonardo da Vinci had written; "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." It is certainly attributed to him.
The exceeding literate Filipina artist Cristina (Kitty)Taniguchi has been both poet and painter. She could, no doubt like the French creative Jean Cocteau, make the claim that she is first and foremost a poet. She is a person who paints poetry. Her works exude the beauty of well written poems while simultaneously teasing the viewer with visual signs, symbols and partially hidden mystic metaphors enough to both capture our attention, and to hold it.
Taniguchi's fellow Filipino poet José Garcia Villa (in his poem 'First, A Poem Must Be Magical') alludes to the inherent magic and music in the everyday. Taniguchi lifts a blinding veil to reveal images of that underlying magic in all its glory and accompanying symbolism. Taniguchi’s artworks bring to mind those of the British artist Leonora Carrington, who once intimated that "Art is a magic which makes the hours melt away and even days dissolve into seconds." Carrington was, of course, talking about the art making process, but the same could be said of the act of gazing at Taniguchi’s spiritual Mise-en-scène.
It is not enough that Taniguchi paints poems on canvases, she also ‘paints’ colour into her textual poems. Where (in Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’)’ moonless nights might be “Bible Black...crowblack”, in ‘The Dance of a Crow (Between illusion and reality)’ Taniguchi gives her crow ‘brown feet, yellow dreams and vermillion skies’, in ‘Salvo to Crows’ we are presented with ‘reddish stares’, as she weaves textual and visual languages in her painting and in her poetry to transcend the notion of ‘crow’ intuitively from what had become a heavily narrated metaphorical blackness.
In Taniguchi’s powerful painting ‘Millenium’ (2018, 5 feet by 5 feet, which could be a companion piece to her series of symbolist pieces ‘City of Gods’, more later...), green cacti are arranged to the foreground of the painting while red continues to dominate the background, effectively pushing all other colours forward. Centred within the painting is a female figure having yellow hair (perhaps an ancient Greek symbol of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty), a yellow sleeveless dress and blue wings. Is she an angel? Near her are four golden apples (symbols of immortality) from the mythological Greek Hesperides garden.The feeling of Gauguin’s ‘Vision after the Sermon’ is even stronger here, with the apples recalling Gauguin’s apple tree, birds and cacti replacing the on-looking Breton women. The angel girl (who may represent the more ancient form of Aphrodite, as the goddess Astarte, before she became Aphrodite or Venus) has her wings closed in front of her. Is she trapped? Locked into herself? If she is then the plethora of birds may represent her eventual freedom. Birds frequently are considered representatives of inspiration, messengers from the spiritual realm (especially crows or ravens) and givers or representatives of freedom. Doves, sparrows and swans are also associated with Aphrodite and Astarte.
Taniguchi’s 2019 painted series ‘City of Gods’ is not Fernando Meirelles’ hard hitting filmatic ‘cidade de deus’, though like the Meirelles film the scene obviously reflects Latin America. In Meirelles’ case it is Brazil's Rio de Janeiro, in Taniguchi’s series of paintings, each titled ‘City of Gods’ Taniguchi speaks with ancient visual languages segueing pre-Colombian imagery into ancient European mythology. In one predominantly red canvas (2019, 6 feet by 6 feet), the artist allows the gazer to touch base with a recognisable ‘modern’ figure in the foreground. Behind is an array of mythological creatures projected forward by a vivid red Gauguinesque background (‘Vision after the Sermon’ (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888), revealing a striking splash of Kandinsky yellow (Yellow, Red, Blue, painted in 1925) on a female figure’s skirt. These are accompanied by the powerful green of cacti, which completes Taniguchi’s hints at the simple power of primary colours. The ‘gods’ we see range from an ‘Alicorn’ (winged unicorn) to a lion, crow, cheetah, gorilla and a ‘draco’ (flying lizard).
Practically subsumed into the background red is a South American pyramid-like temple (possibly from Teotihuacan aka Nahuatl: “The City of the Gods). Dotted here and there are perfectly placed green cacti brought forward by the redness behind. The aforementioned female figure is dressed simply with a pale blue sleeveless top, the yellow skirt and a predominantly white headscarf with red patterning.
Through the visual cornucopia of Taniguchi’s mixed theological symbols we can identify Medieval Christianized lions as representatives of a Christian ‘God’, or Christ, a cheetah indicating flexibility and adaptability, and a winged unicorn (perhaps from W.BYeats) representing spiritual light (to be enlightened, quite literally), while a flying lizard acts as a symbol of spiritual messages or messenger. The artist’s ubiquitous crow, which in Greek mythology is considered prophetic and a symbol of good luck, is no longer that deep black (for it was originally white before it was cursed by Apollo for bringing bad news) as it struts across the painting from our right which is the crow's left towards its right (away from sinister to dexter, reflecting part of the Christian blessing of the cross).
It is interesting that Taniguchi’s simply dressed female figure appears to lead the coterie of beings away from all that passion of red, turning their backs on the ancient pyramidal structure at the rear. Does the insertion of the very green cacti into the red of the painting hint at hallucinogens (‘mescaline’ and ‘peyote’), or is that a projection from my overactive imagination? A hallucination would certainly explain, but perhaps too literally, the scene represented in this ‘City of Gods’.
In a second painting in the ‘City of Gods’ series, the gazer is presented with a canvas dominated by a slightly muted yellow. Due to the absence of that very rich red, this canvas appears subtler and more regal. The ‘Alicorn’ appears slightly in front of a seated female figure who is dressed in yellow with a matching headscarf having a graphic sun design pattern.
Cacti, crow, lion and cheetah are still there, as is the Latin American temple in the background, but all are muted, of lesser concern than the pale seated lady. Throughout ancient cultures yellow represented spirituality, royalty, wisdom and intellect. In antiquity women were frequently pictured with yellow ochre or golden faces as symbols of hope, fertility and nature, with a special emphasis on the sun. In the female’s lap is a basket of green, not golden, apples. Have we moved on from the Greek Hesperides garden to the Christian paradisiacal Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and the green apple as the fruit of knowledge and temptation? Maybe, maybe not, as Aphrodite, Freya the Norse goddess of fertility, love, war and death, Pomona, the Roman wood nymph and deity of orchard fruit and Eris (a Greek goddess) are all associated with apples. In the Jewish Kabbalah green apples are also associated with being spiritual, as well as healing.
There is much poetry in the painted works of Cristina Taniguchi. She uses colours and imagery in the way a poet uses words, in symbols, metaphors and signs which are there to be ‘read’ by the careful observer. She controls our gaze by her understanding of colour theory, and our minds with delicate compositions of images. Taniguchi’s is a world in which I would happily be lost while awaiting paradise, Eden or Utopia, and that is part of her magic.
