catalogue
The dream of a shadow
Antonio Fernandez De Alba
Member of the Royal Academy Saint-Fernando/Architect
 
It is in this pictorial task,full of self sacrifice and knowledge from with in,from her inner
being,that the preliminary sketch of her picture is completed without haste. The birth of the picture is prolonged by intimate caligraphic metaphors,by veiled geometrical profiles,by dark forests pierced only by tenuous nocturnal constellations,by universes rescued from time,by the parallelepipeds of the metropolis, by objects drawn from memory and by natures and enigmas of the being,recognised in the shadow of oblivion.
Contemplating the artistic development of Japanese painter Taki-Umeokais is to contemplate work that takes the rigorous path of the simple craft of painter,in her encounters with nature and with the experience that she gains in the Prado,like stratified biographical sequences of her artistic drive. Her pictures present painting with neither adjectives nor references to alloys removed from artistic expression.
The Poetry of Time
Manuela Mena
Ex-vice Director of the Prado Museum
 
The Garden of Earthly Delights, the immense copy that Mariko Taki Umeoka has made of  Bosch's original in the Prado Museum , at first  sight
causes astonishment and disbelief. It is not possible to understand that  in our contemporary world of frenzied haste, somebody could have had the patience, and virtuosity of the old masters and furthermore, of those delicate and meticulous, precise and perfect masters-the mediaeval Flemish painters.
 The brilliant  colouring of  the great triptych by this singular and very young Japanese painter makes one dream of how Bosch's original must have looked, which today inexorably show the passing of the centuries and presents  itself to our eyes like a monumental and grandiose miniature of an ancient manuscript-of those that even today, after hundreds of years , have kept their wonderful original colouring, with scarcely and alteration. In scene after scene, Bosch's fantastic imagination is portrayed with extraordinary accuracy , immersing us in a world that , albeit well known , is no less attractive.
 As a spectator in front of this singular creation, one thinks of Bosch because of the familiar image of his masterpiece per excellent, but one also thinks of the patient hours devoted by the Japanese painter to her task, of the profound concentration she must have needed to complete her work, which from painting becomes deep meditation on the lost worlds of the past, on another way of understanding reality and art, on the differences and analogies between east and west. It is a thoughtful work, but it is also fresh and cheerful, is profound yet superficial; menacing yet playful. One cannot help thinking about the moving simplicity Japanese art.
A time of shadows
Ignacio Gomez de Liano
Completence University, Professer; Department of Literature and Esthetics
 
When I gazed at the amazing, clear copy made by Mariko Umeoka Taki of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch, I was all questions. What had this Japanese painter been looking for so tenaciously Had she wanted to meet a challenge, or indulge in a monumental extravagance Or perhaps what she wanted was to relive the process experienced by Bosch, which included both Paradise and Hell, where, as if through a microscope, people were seen swarming like ants in a garden, in which each of their movements and gestures was a hieroglyphic, an alchemistic operation whose key was lost goodness knows when?
 
Did Mariko, I asked myself, want to create an updated version of this archetype and, on experiencing the dawn landscape she had conjured up with her brushed, feel like the new Lady of the Garden
 
“With which part of the garden do you most identify yourself ?"I asked.
Without hesitating and smilingly , Mariko pointed to the triptych's upper
right panel , the Kingdom of Shadows .When she showed me her most recent works, I realized that the Japanese artist had adopted the landscapes of that Kingdom. Mysterious doors and windows sere seen-square, round-through which the light pierced the dense forest of the nigh. Mariko Umeoka Taki separates light from darkness, and, as she dose so, probes the shadows, and on probing them, lovingly caresses imprisoned light s made from the cold brightness of the Moon or the hot, trembling flames of a candle. Are they the lights of the day that has passed, or do they belong to the day that about to be born?
 It was night by the time I left Mariko's studio. At home, I took a volume from the shelf. I smiled on reading in Mrs. Shonagon's Bedside Book that, “in spring the most beautiful is the dawn."
Meeting with Bosch
 Mariko Umeoka Taki
 
In July 1987, moved by the feeling that my painting was about to die, I finally stepped onto Spanish soil, about which I had my doubts. What was the reason for this rejection? I had no fundamental reason because until then I had never been to Spain, but a confusing intuition kept me away and prevented any approach in order to find out. So, it was while attempting to go find a solution to the crisis of my painting, when I was meditating on the itineraries of grey time that accompany every crisis, that I decided that if I were to go to the place about which I had so many reservations, and did all the things I didn't feel like doing, maybe I could achieve my encounter with painting, and so I decided to go.
 
 Then I went through the different rooms at the Prado and stopped in front of one of the pictures of whose existence I was already aware. This was undoubtedly the solution, and I sighed, knowing that I would have to drink this bitter cup just as Jesus Christ had done. There was no doubt about it. In The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch lay the door key to the exit from my painting problems. There are few opportunities in life about which one can be so sure, and these opportunities are not given to all painters; therefore I decided to take it.
DRY GARDEN
Luis Javier Ruiz Sierra
Director of Culture of the Institute Cervantes in Egypt Archaeologist
Commissioner of Expositions in Spain of Mariko Taki- Umeoka
 
Perfectly placed within this need of the art of our times to give birth to art from art itself, Mariko Umeoka devoted five years of her life to the sole task of contemplating, studying and painting Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. For five years she walked along the dangerous paths of this always mysterious garden, with an outlook so completely Japanese that she was able to recognize the invisible waters of the work, the dew, the dampness, in an arrangement that immediately brings to mind the dry gardens of Zen Buddhism. And thus, working with Bosch's atmosphere, Mariko Umeoka shows the contemporary observer how the most carefully guarded secret of Japanese art works outside its own tradition. Humidity and dryness, an empty scenario: a true Bosch who has just left the workshop in which neither the cloud nor the lake nor the fountain contains true water. Not only a true Bosch but also a renewed Bosch, converted into our contemporary, assailed by the very nature of our age, makes Mariko Umeoka, the creator of this new Garden of Earthly Delights, an extraordinarily modern painter. 
The dream of a shadow
Antonio Fernandez De Alba
Member of the Royal Academy Saint-Fernando/Architect
 
It is in this pictorial task,full of self sacrifice and knowledge from with in,from her inner
being,that the preliminary sketch of her picture is completed without haste. The birth of the picture is prolonged by intimate caligraphic metaphors,by veiled geometrical profiles,by dark forests pierced only by tenuous nocturnal constellations,by universes rescued from time,by the parallelepipeds of the metropolis, by objects drawn from memory and by natures and enigmas of the being,recognised in the shadow of oblivion.
Contemplating the artistic development of Japanese painter Taki-Umeokais is to contemplate work that takes the rigorous path of the simple craft of painter,in her encounters with nature and with the experience that she gains in the Prado,like stratified biographical sequences of her artistic drive. Her pictures present painting with neither adjectives nor references to alloys removed from artistic expression.
Umeoka Taki's Experience in Bosch
Tetsuro Kagesato
The Ex-Commissioner and Director of the Yokohama Museum of Art
 
Especially among them recollected for me the Tale of Taketori Monogatari and the mysterious bamboo groves under moonlight and some golden sparkles in the shadows of a night. The story of “Princess Kaguya Hime" is not only a satire on the ancient aristocratic society, but also is one of the prototypes in traditional Japanese aesthetics. I believe Umeoka Taki's themes and expressions in the post Bosch's experiences which are described into “Light in the Darkness", is a synthesised creation of her unavoidable inborn Japanese tradition with Bosch's experience.
 
After having an experience with Bosch, Umeoka Taki's works have been developed into The Forest series, The Fountain series, The Abyss series, and Night series. This rather quick succession of development is spectacular, nevertheless, in every work by the painter, the Bosch-like elements seem manifested and become seeded. Energies charging from every work are constantly creating a spectacular association with darkness and light. Although this association might mature in her further development, it is no doubt that experience she had with Bosch made a swift progress on her. In this grandeur association, one might discover the times and man, day and night, sun beam and moon light, and a floating modern man's soul within.
Mariko Taki-Umeoka's Homage to Bosch
Nobuo Nakatani
Professor, Faculty of Letters Kansai University / Art Historian
 
Once or twice in a lifetime, a painter or a sculptor may be possessed by inspiration and create a work that can only be described as a divine gift. Goya's Third of May. 1808 (1814) and Antonio Saura's Goya's Dog (1984) are such works. Another supplies the subject of this essay:Mariko Taki-Umeoka's Homage to Bosch. If Bosch's The Garden of Delights depicts a positive version of heaven and hell, so brilliant that it appears as inlayed with jewels, Umeoka's Homage to Bosch depicts a monochromatic negative version. With its gray tones, produced using a technique combining oil and tempera, Homage to Bosch (1997) may also be described as a tranquil piece that displays an extraordinary transparency. With her choice of subject, motif, color, combined with the interweaving of the elements of the artistic tradition, including Eastern painting and Japanese brushwork, Umeoka has produced a work of remarkable grace.
 
Following his death, countless numbers of people have seen Bosch's paintings, but only Umeoka has met him face-to-face. It is this miraculous experience that gave rise to Homage to Bosch, a work that transcends of both Eastern and Western culture. Permeated as they are with the mystery of Bosch, one might describe Umeoka's subsequent works as Bosch's offspring.
THE TRANSPARENT MIRROR OF HIERONYMOUS BOSCH
Eugenio Grannell
Master of Surrealism President of the Grannell Foundation
 
In the Muse del Prado the Japanese painter Mariko Taki Umeoka had the audacity and determination to copy a task that could not be more admirable ? Hieronymous Bosch's enormous triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights, a supreme magical vision of the world dreamt by such s great inventor. In her text entitled Meeting with Bosch, the young artist describes with much good sense the circumstances of her many trips to Spain, her interest in the paintings of Velazquez, Zurburan and Goya, the process of preparing for the daunting task of mastering the pigmentation that was usual in Bosch's day, and her own manner of painting in the Museo del Prado every day, during the fives years she devoted to reproducing Bosch's colossal triptych.
When I saw the reproduction of The Garden of Earthly Delight at the inaugural exhibition in the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, while marveling at such a detailed transparent mirror, I remembered something in connection with the work of the Flemish artist:

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Mariko Taki Umeoka's combination of tenacity and talent re-kindled them. Tanks to her, Bosch returned to revel to me the splendour of his marvelous imagination.
With her copy of The Garden of Earthly Delights, Mariko Taki Umeoka offers the world of art a gift and lesson that are incomparable. This admirable triptych can be contemplated the world over, thus sparing the original the disastrous consequences that almost destroyed Picasso's huge Guernica. Paintings of such enormous dimension should remain where they are. The replica of Bosch's work has just come into existence. It will be able to travel everywhere, but before it ages.
Mariko Taki Umeoka is as excellent a painter as she is a writer.
>Mariko Taki Umeoka's aphorism on the art of loving are very important.

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There is no doubt that the magical atmosphere of Mariko Taki Umeoka's scense is due to the magical legacy of the spirit of her ideal master. And the two are united by their audacity. The drawing entitled Nights in the Bamboo Villages is related to what Bosch paint in the semicircle of the panel that closes and opens all the vision of The Garden of Earthly Delights. This occurs became Maiko Taki Umeoka's copy is, more than a copy, marvelous transparent mirror.
The Soul and the Eye: the Transparent Night
Jesus Moreno Sanz
Philosopher,History of literature,Ministry of science and culture
 
And this is the perspective from which I think the subtle and successful undertaking of Mariko Taki Umeoka's painting must be perceived. Because, alchemizing in a very Japanese manner Eastern and Western ways and techniques, she seeks to give the pure signs of luminous actions through a dance or rainbow of colour, in which the most intimate individual perception and the most external face of light come together, as a result of her innermost act of clearing and piercing the darkness. The great Tanizaki and his Elogio de la penmubra (Praise of Shadow) is an essential reference for understanding this love for the sources of the most natural light which suitably combine with the very light of the soul. These paintings are the work of light and they accept the challenge of laying down a bridge of colour between grace's down and darkness.
Mariko Taki Umeoka: A Lecture on Bosch
Fernando R. de la Flor
University of Salamanca, Professor
 
The spirit of replicas
In trying to talk about Bosch or trying to enter his world, the mystical and charming nature of Mariko Taki Umeoka's work offers us a decisive power. Her unque definition, her view of the present age, and the way her own dreams overlay those of Bosch are a challenge to us.
Copying, reproducing, creating
In one sense, Mariko Taki Umeoka is performing the same role as that of the cartographer who produced this finely detailed map. She has performed am extraordinary task on the scale of the Creation.
There is no doubt that the act of creation is a perverted and cursed act. This is because the viewer is confused. Today, the time has come when we must turn once again to the question of creativity and consider it carefully. This is the question Mariko Taki Umeoka at us. In response, she offers us the quietism and non-aggression that symbolize her culture. It is a culture that continues to root itself in the instability of the laws of time and space.

Provisional ending
An anecdote regarding the great modernist Andy Warhol is probably best, since it relates to what I have just been talking about. The anecdote concerns a visit Andy Warhol made to the Prado Museum while he was in Madrid some time in 1985. Warhol wandered around a number of exhibition halls inside the Prado Museum, one of the finest museums in the world, without stopping in front of a single painting. However, on seeing a certain modestly executed painting (and also probably moved by Bosch's work) he stopped. He then gazed for some time at this contemporary work (by Mariko Taki Umeoka).

This anecdote makes us think again of the question of “time's arrow". It is a question of our actual though categories relating to such issues as sequence, origin and duplication. It is also a question rigorously taken up in Mariko's work.

The real ending( the end of the ending)
The association with a kind of evil is purified. Finally, the vulgar objects are destroyed. Old thinks are replaced by a new power. And from this begins a new existence.
We can feel that the ancient, message from Bosch- a message which Bosch's patron, Philip, must have read on viewing the painting in the dark interior of El Escorial after finally getting his hands on it-is totally different and distant from the message being sent to us by Mariko Taki Umeoka in this bright “Japan Society" in late November 1999.
The alchemic spells have been cast.
The works have changed. By changing the essence of the works and the conditions under which they are placed in the world, the works have been transformed into new works. This we can say without doubt.
Opus novum (new work)
Gardens, cities, dreams
Eduardo subirats
Professor of New York University and Princeton University, Professor; Department of Esthetics: Roman Languages
 
Technical reproduction and plastic recreation of an artistic theme; these are the terms of the problem. Mariko Taki Umeoka's work shows a fascinating intellectual tension between these two extremes. On the one hand, we find a meticulous and delicate task of formal and technical reconstruction, restoration and reproduction; on the other is the updating of the spiritual themes that Hieronymus Bosch put on his panels; nature, mystery, architecture's intimate relationship with it, and the dynamic and chaotic spaces of modern civilisation.
Dragon in a New Cloak: Clarified forest Dream
Flix Ruiz de la Petra
Doctor of Philosophy. Professor at Architectural Department
Polytechnic University, Madrid
 
The path that the artist has chosen, the middle way has not been easy or comfortable. However, her artistic work of high quality has made it possible for her to take a position in the famous school of expressionism. For example, if lines monopolies the surface of Jackson Pollock's work, similarly shadow monopolies Mark Rothko's surface, and then the darkness of the works determines Mariko Taki Umeoka's work. Although Mariko Taki Umeoka's works are not classified into the doctrine of American abstract expressionism, her technique and the method used for an expression are similar to this school's. Her works are different from figurative expressionism, and as for her landscape work, the elements of a forest and river are painted in maximum abstraction, but they constantly maintain the connection with the realities. Therefore, from this viewpoint, Mariko Taki Umeoka's works are classified abstract realism, or rather into “expressionistic abstraction" as Professor Nobuo Nakatani of Kansai University describes.

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In the forest theme paintings, a viewer is exposed to profound and powerful but not defined nature. Mariko Taki Umeoka's paintings always bring us to a starting point, the first beginning. The reversion, returning to the past changes the direction of time, and switches a mutual relation among the objects placed in a space;