Naoshima, Fellonies and Himeji

Friday, May 1, 2009

Recap time!

Wednesday we got to Naoshima at around 11 am. The island itself is not that exciting...pretty ugly for an island actually. What makes it so special is the atmosphere that has been created on the island through art and architecture.

We all stayed at different parts of the Benesse House, which consists of The Oval, The Benesse House/Museum, and The Park; all designed by Tadao Ando. My room was in the museum with Carisa, Trudy and Karen. Our room was the biggest since it was for 4 people, and the whole hotel was really nice. Most of the group decided to get drunk up in The Oval and watch the sunset. Carisa and I weren't really feeling the dynamics of the group, so we just had a few people in our room to do the same sort of thing, but much more mellow. I think we're all pretty happy about that decision because the rest of the group ended up breaking into what was essentially an art exhibit.

The Benesse House has an exhibit called a cultural melting bath, which is essentially a hot tub mixed with art, in which the whole experience is supposed to be a major part of the artistic nature of the site. This is what everyone decided to break into to "go in the hot tub". Granted, everyone was pretty drunk, but we're all still pretty pissed off about it. Seems like we're all adults here, and we should definitely know better. It's just really disappointing that a group of designers can't even be trusted to recognize and respect art work and the values of a different culture. I for one am really disheartened and, to be honest, a little disgusted with people for their lack of foresight and consideration.

Thursday was supposed to be our day to explore the island, but because of the incidents of the night before, it was a little tainted. Eleven out of eighteen people took part in the incident, and they were very lucky that they got to see the Chichu Art Museum before they had to leave the island.

The Chichu Art Museum was also designed by Tadao Ando, and is set into one of the hills of Naoshima. It houses four works by Claude Monet, three sculptural/spatial pieces by James Turrell and another spatial piece by Walter De Maria. The building itself was amazing and the joint composition with the artists was incredible. This modern spatial and artistic experience had made it onto my list of the top five places I have visited in Japan. Within his design, Ando has once again captured space, form and light in a series of concrete boxes. The man is an absolute master, and we were all dumbstruck by his skillful planning and his knowledge of material and light. It is still astounding to think that he actually had this all pictured in his head, and he definitely knew how the space would feel.

Each of the three featured artists were given their own space. The Monet gallery was beautiful, with all the pieces featuring water lilies. They were set in a simple white and concrete box, with beautiful lighting that allowed the paintings to captivate the viewers. The most interesting thing about spatial art is that starts to interact with the architecture. The three Turrell works, entitled "Afrum, Pale Blue", "Open Field" and "Open Sky" are all elegantly worked into Ando's architecture. All three are based on light, optical illusion and space. The concept of actually interacting with the art piece is incredibly interesting to me, and actually applies to the last piece in the Chichu Museum as well: "Time/Timeless/No Time" by Walter De Maria. The piece was a room that consisted of stairs and a platform, all done in concrete. Within the room, a dark sphere has been seemingly balanced on the platform and surrounded by what essentially becomes white space. Wooden sculptures covered in gold leaf were places around the sphere and the whole design is bathed in natural light, which makes it so much more interesting because it changes throughout the day.

After the museum, those of us who had not "been voted off the island", as Don Choi said, went to the famous Art Houses of Naoshima. These are traditional old houses, in which art installations have been placed. There were strange but interesting. There were six in total but three of them really stood out to me. One was the Go'o Shrine installation by photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. It was stairs that looked like glass coming out of an old shrine and penetrating the ground. You could actually go into the basement and see the stairs coming down into the earth, after you pass through a very narrow hallway. Another was called Ishibashi, and had a room filled with paintings of waterfalls, reflected into a dark and polished wood floor, done by Hiroshi Senju. The last piece that was probably the most amazing experience unfortunately doesn't photograph well. It is a collaborative piece by Tadao Ando and James Turrell called Minamidera. Ando designed the architecture, but the light installation on the interior was by Turrell. The experience is quite incredible because you enter the house into complete darkness. You cannot see anything in front of you except pitch black, to the point where you literally run into walls if you are not careful. You are guided, partially by your hands on the walls and partially by the guide and the voices around you, onto a bench at the back of the room. You see absolutely nothing for a while, and then, faintly, you begin to see a light. Just a simple, orangish light in the left-hand corner. It is so faint that at times you think it has faded. Then, gradually, you start sensing something more before you even see it. Then, slowly, a blueish rectangle starts to appear in the middle of the far wall. After that, another simple light off to the right. Your eyes adjust from the point where you think you might either go blind or crazy, to where you feel like you might have night vision. All of a sudden, the lights are completely clear and you realize that you can see the people around you. As a group, you all get up and walk towards the back wall, curious to see what sort of trick has been played on you. You reach the back and find that it really is just simple, faint lights, reflecting and shining. A couple friends tried to take pictures of what they saw, but all the camera could see was black.

After we finished at the Art Houses, we headed back up the mountain via shuttle to see the Benesse House Museum and the Museum at the Benesse House Park. Both, again, were Ando designs. A few of the exhibits were very interesting, but nothing really compared to the buildings themselves for us. At 7 pm, we took the last ferry back to the mainland in Uno. From there, we took the train to Himeji.

Today was our one day in Himeji. We went to Himeji Castle, the Koko-en Garden, the Prefectural Museum of History and the Museum of Literature, by Tadao Ando. Again, the Ando buildings always seem to dominate, but the castle itself was interesting and the garden, though we have seen more inspiring gardens, was still very beautiful. There are a few things here in Himeji that I wouldn't mind seeing but we just don't have time. For example, there is a zoo and a "safari" where the animals are left to roam and you can go near them without a cage in between. Of course, these things are not exactly related to architecture, and so I guess it leaves me something to see if I ever get the chance to come back.

Now, we have about an hour before our bullet train back to Kyoto, where we will have an hour to get our stuff together before we get on another bullet train that will take us to Tokyo by a little after 10 tonight. I will try my best to catch up on pictures tonight so that you all can see the amazing things I've seen this week. Our first week-long trip is over. My feet are killing me, my shoulders must be as hard as rock, I probably lost like 5 lbs and I haven't had shin splints this bad since I was 5...but it was so, entirely worth it. The things I've seen this week are going to stick with me forever. For now, I'm just going to focus on catching my train and avoiding the swine flu. lol Next time, hopefully I'll have adventures in Tokyo to write about.