Naoshima
I went with ICIEA to Naoshima in Kagawa Prefecture this past Saturday. I honestly hadn’t checked what the plan was – I just wanted to go with my friends and see some new things. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that we were headed to a few art museums. By the end of the day, I’d seen 4 original Claude Monet pieces and discovered an artist (new to me) whose work I really like. At least, what I’ve seen of it so far. That was all at the Chichu Art Museum. (Fun aside: the name of the museum in kanji is 地中美術館. Sort of conjures up thoughts of the Lord of the Rings…”middle earth art museum.” Well, I thought it was interesting. Ha ha.)
First, let me provide some other helpful links. Here’s an old Washington Post article about the island. And here’s a flickr set featuring the island, too. (Fun aside #2: this might be my favorite picture, but not for the reasons you might guess.) Here’s the island’s Japanese-only official website. If you don’t read Japanese, this will not be of much interest to you. Lastly, here’s a link to the famed Benesse House (which we missed due to time constraints). That ought to round it out.
Anyway, other than the Monet pieces, which seem so much larger than life when you’re allowed to be mere inches away from them, the works of artist James Turrell were really amazing to behold. Turrell does lots of really neat experiential things with light levels. He had one piece which I thought was rather lame, called “Afrum, Pale Blue” – which involved a shaped light projected into a corner – it was either beyond my comprehension or too out there for me. The other 3 works I saw were far better. “Open Sky” was the least involved piece. It consisted of a room lined with a bench-like outcropping and a massive skylight. I wish I’d seen it at night or during a rainstorm. My favorites, though, were “Open Field” and “Backside of the Moon.” The piece called “Open Field” was interesting. You shed your shoes (without putting on slippers) and march in your sock feet up a dark staircase and into a glowing room. The far wall is slightly brighter than the rest of the room, and is somewhere between violet, blue, and indigo in color. The seams along the length of the room have been rounded out, and the lighting is very very even, so that if you proceed into the room you lose your sense of the size of it. It was really cool. It would have been better if the museum employees hadn’t been so in your face about moving past a certain point, though. (We’d previously been instructed to walk until a buzzer sounds, but the people seemed to panic because we were foreign and stopped us long before we were in range of the buzzer.) Anyhoo – it was cool.
The last piece was called “Backside of the Moon.” I won’t lie, I giggled at that and made sure to point out the possible jokes contained in that name. Only 16 people can view this piece at one time, and it’s worth it. You walk along the outside of a building covered in wooden slats. You enter the building with 7 other people, in a train. You put your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you and follow the train past a few entry walls (that block out the light) and enter the pitch black. Everyone sits on a bench. For ten minutes or so, you simply sit in the dark and let your eyes adjust. There is a rectangle of vague light toward the front of the empty room. It becomes brighter the longer you sit there. Due to the low level of light, most people are timid about approaching the light for a few minutes. Then, according to the instructions, you rise from the bench and move toward the light to try and place your hands in it. Because people are adjusting together, they tend to make this trip to the front of the room together. The light seems to be quite distant when you’re sitting, but you realize how fast you’re coming up on it and there is a moment when you realize that the rectangle is actually a hole – filled with light. You reach out to touch what you think is a screen and your hand passes right through it. It’s a wonderful feeling – kind of childlike giddiness. It’s really really cool. Anyway, the long and short of it is that his pieces made me reevaluate my surroundings, my perception of space, and my importance in that setting. It was really cool. I’m gonna try and find more of his stuff in the future. Anyhoo – it was a good trip, and a very pleasant surprise. 
