The snow and the leopard
The
works by Coco for Milarepa
Tibet Pavilion - Padiglione Tibet
«It
is at night that is nice to believe in the light» Edmond Rostand,
the French playwright father of the famous Cyrano de Bergerac, said.
His, at the same time, lyrical and historical romanticism made him
think for a long time on the shadows of mind and on the doubts of
heart, on the darkness and on the light as complementary aspects of
existence. The same duality enliven into the deep the cycle of
paintings that Giuseppe Coco (Biancavilla, Catania 1936 – 2012)
realized between the late eighties and the two thousand, the hypnotic
figure of Milarepa. Coco, who was brilliant and versatile artist able
to compete with the bitterest satire and simultaneously with the most
poetic themes of the human comedy, pursued – away from the clamour
of public and critics, from the glossy pages of lifestyle magazines
and from the irony of his hand illustrator – a deep attachment to
the Tibetan spirituality and to the oriental culture.
In
the background of his daily activity, punctuated by collaborations
with major magazines such as Comix, il Corriere della Sera, Epoca,
Horror, l’Espresso, la Repubblica, La Settimana Enigmistica,
Panorama, Relax and Zoom, in addition to the hugely popular Playmen
and Playboy, Punch or the French humour magazine Hara Kiri (precursor
of Charlie Hebdo), Coco deepened in the private the mystical themes
of an epic tale such as the spiritual rebirth of Milarepa, his
retirement and his meditation. Different times of inner growth that
the artist has translated into powerful works with lysergic colours
and suffered shapes. As much as painful was the struggle of the monk
against evil.
Here
then his Mystical Body engulfed in flames emerging from the earth,
fluid as a tongue of fire. Here it is changing appearance, armed
angel or feline creature, a leopard hidden in the Cave of the Demons,
where it consumes the battle between the order and the case, the sun
and the darkness. And here he is again, ascetic yogi, on the edge of
a cliff, silent in his recollection.
Coco
portrayed him with the same emotion of those who perceive the
intimate drama of man in front of the life’s martial hardness, of
sin and of violence. An almost eschatological instinct dominates
theatrical and frenetic scenes, full of people crowded into the dark,
skeletons and monkeys, skulls and snakes. Representations of fears,
of storms that shake the conscience, of spirits that torment the body
and the reason. The Sleep of the Reason Produces Monsters is the
title of one of the graphic masterpieces by Francisco Goya. And, once
again, the romantic aftertaste of Coco’s research emerges in the
sublime charge of his imagery. The monsters take the power when the
mind does not react. But Milarepa’s mind never sleeps. Alone among
Tibet’s mountains, between ice and snow, it fights the demons that
try to overthrow it, strong of that mystical heat that Coco has been
able to evoke through the hot tones of his palette: the sulphur
yellow, the red as fire, the black like pitch. The meditation’s
heat warms the body that does not fear any more cold. «My dress fell
as worn by the fire» Milarepa wrote on his Demon of the Snow and
Coco portrayed him, in fact, shaken by a blaze burning with faith and
magic.
The
Navel of Milarepa, a beautiful works of 1996 celebrates the solar
plexus as site of an outbreak hidden under the skin and between the
bowels that only a deep inhalation can turn like a fuse. The backbone
conveys the spark and the flaming body reaches a supernatural
dimension. A process of moral enlightenment that Coco has masterfully
transformed into painting, entrusting to his liquid sign, to his
instinctive gesture, mindful of the ways of the great European
informal, of Jean Dubuffet or Karel Appel, mixed to the volume
voltage, typical instead of Francis Bacon, to his scream of meat that
becomes thought.
An
expressive wisdom gained in himself since the seventies, from the
first painting exhibition at the Milan Art Center, forward to the
maturity, when in addition to the vocation for the drawing as a way
of communication with the world, the painting remained for Coco a
means of communication with himself and with his soul. Such as
happened with the extraordinary cycle (and contemporary) of the works
for the Milan underground. Another journey into the bowels of the
earth, looking for other demons dreaming – as claimed Rostand –
another light beyond the night.
Dalla cima del Duomo di Piacenza.
L'interno del Duomo, da solo, merita la gita.
