Chichu Art Museum, Architect: Tadao Ando, Photographer: Mitsumasa Fujitsuka
For this post, I am allowing myself to stray from our beloved photographic shores, but I assure you that it will be worth it. Last Friday I attended a conference at the Palais de Tokyo given for the opening of the exhibition on the Benesse Art Site Naoshima project. This was a pretty star-studded affair: super-architects Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA, Hiroshi Sambuichi, Patrick Bouchain (I was half-expecting Tadao Ando to appear from a hole in the stage), with a guest appearance by Christian Boltanski.
Benesse Art Site Naoshima is a fantastically crazy project that was begun by Tetsuhiko Fukutake, the CEO of a publishing company, in 1989 as part of a promise to develop the island of Naoshima. The project is now run by his son, Soichiro Fukutake, who shares his father’s eccentric vision of how to conduct business. Benesse (derived from the latin to live better) is Fukutake’s modest attempt to “create a new independent country inside of Japan” which could be considered to be “heaven on Earth”. This is a man who clearly spends very little time thinking inside of boxes.
Benesse House, Architect: Tadao Ando, Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto
The project began with a series of architectural commissions by Tadao Ando on the island of Naoshima, including Benesse House and the Chichu Art Museum, and has now been extended to the neighbouring islands of Teshima, Megijima, Inujima, Ogijima and Shodoshima, and to other architects. Fukutake might sound like a megalomaniac who can’t get enough expensive toys to play with, but seeing these projects outlined it is clear that Benesse is much more than that. At the center of the project is a desire to rethink the relationship between art and architecture and to experiment with new possibilities in this field. Fukutake also believes that “culture is superior to the economy” and that the latter should therefore serve the former (6% of his business’s capital goes to the Benesse Foundation). There is a genuine attempt to involve the inhabitants in the developments of these projects and to give them the right to veto anything they don’t like. The project is helping to redevelop the area, to give the aging population of the region more and better opportunities to earn a living and is even succeeding in attracting the younger generation from Tokyo to settle there. Christian Boltanski, who is preparing a museum of heartbeats as his contribution to the project, described Benesse as a utopic project, “in the important and rare sense of the term.”
The only dampener on what was truly an inspirational few hours, was that the exhibition includes a number of Naoya Hatakeyama‘s fantastic prints, notably of the Chichu Art Museum, and nobody bothered to tell us (or him!) about it.
I would recommend going to the exhibition (although I have never really been blown away by architectural scale models), but, if you can, skip that step and just book your tickets to Naoshima right away. Next summer the first edition of the Setouchi Art Festival will be held on Naoshima and the neighbouring islands… sounds like a pretty good opportunity to me.
Go'o Shrine, Hiroshi Sugimoto: Appropriate Proportion, Photo: Hiroshi Sugimoto
3 Comments
I visited Naoshima for three nights and four days over the summer, and had a mixed experience.
On the one hand, most of the exhibits are really well done – I especially enjoyed the art projects on the north side of the island made out of old houses. The Bennesse Art Museum is a good survey of 20th century art, including a hypnotic Bruce Nauman piece that plays well with the space. The Chichu Museum is like an art amusement park, as a museum it’s entirely overpowering – almost to a fault! – but it’s worth experiencing. Also, the new art installation/sento, “I <3 Naoshima,” is the perfect way to relax after a day of exploring the island.
What left me cold was the sense that Bennesse has overrun the island for the sake of making it a tourist destination, while ignoring the locals. This is the feeling I got from talking to different people on the island. For example, most of the men on the island work in the Mitsubishi Materials plant, on the literal “other half” of the island. The ones I talked to could definitely care less about the art projects… I asked an 85 year old man (who nicely drove me to the town center to get me a free ticket to the Chichu museum) if he was going to go to “I <3 Naoshima,” which had just opened up. He waved my question away, no chance! He went to the museums when they first opened but said he would never go back. Incidentally, he did point out the new schools built on the island as a result of the development.
I talked a lot with a guy whose wife of 10 years is from Naoshima, as we took a tour of the Mitsubishi Materials plant. He told me that Bennesse bought up all the best beaches in Naoshima and made them private, for hotel guests or special functions. When the Chichu museum first opened, local people were staffing it, but they were deemed too impolite, so now it’s all young people from the cities who work for free. So it goes…
Before I went to Naoshima I had heard that the relationship between the development and the locals was a good one. From my experience I would say it’s pretty ambivalent.
Thanks for the insight Dan. I was a bit reluctant to post without having been to Naoshima yet, but I have heard good things about it from lots of different sources and I will admit to being really enthused by the conference at the Palais de Tokyo and stuffing my cynicism down the back of the couch. Instinctively I have great difficulty believing in this kind of utopic project, especially when it is so ambitious. My greatest skepticism would be on the ability of making something like this into a true collaboration with the locals and to make them feel like this was something beneficial to their community, so your comments on this are very interesting. If anything, I think I want to go more than ever now, just so I can see for myself.
Oh yes, despite some of the less than glowing things I wrote I think it’s definitely worth going – to see the art, and to observe this kind of tourism.
If you have the time, I’d suggest spending two nights, so that you can take all the art in without rushing around, and have time free to walk around the town. This is a side note, but if you get to the Chichu museum in the later afternoon, the crowds really die down and you can have more time and space to yourself.