Naoshima is a beautiful island noted for its attempt at being one big art exhibit. To get visitors primed, outside the main port is a large red pumpkin people can crawl in and out of.
A long block away from the big pumpkin is a bunraku statue. Or at least that’s how the Portuguese sculptor describes it. Bunraku puppets are large, lifelike Japanese dolls that have a puppeteer who controls the head and body while two assistants manipulating the arms and legs. I think a bunraku puppet standing there like a scarecrow would have been more interesting.
There are the art houses scattered throughout the village of Honmura that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog. (Ella has an interesting blog entry about why empty houses aren’t that hard to find in Japan.) Then there are the more modern museums hugging the coast. We went to a couple today.
First was the Benesse House Museum. Below the museum in a park were scattered colorful sculptures.
The museum, designed by Tadao Ando, overlooks the Sento Sea.
Terraced with wide views of the water, the interior of the museum spirals up from a tall lobby to spacious gallery floors featuring expansive wall-dominating work by David Hockney and Frank Stella.
Second, up the road from the Benesse House Museum, was the Valley Gallery. Also designed by Tadao Ando, built along a valley, it is a big stone wall enclosing other stone walls. Meant to be a sanctuary encouraging introspection, it made me feel that there must be evil forces outside the double-walled structure. We weren’t allowed to take photos, so that contributed to the sense of needing to be secure with secrecy. Overall, it had a paranoid vibe emphasized by the insanely heavy iron door to the bathroom that I almost didn’t have the strength to open. When it closed with a thud I thought, oh no, I’m going to be trapped in here forever!
Outside the gallery was the Narcissus Garden, an installation created by Giardini Kusama made out of reflective mirror balls.
It was supposed to make us feel like we were unified with nature, but it seemed to me to be an eye-wincing interruption of nature.
Giving nature its due, I was more moved by the red-tipped photinias growing by the road.
