More great architecture

More great architecture on Naoshima, the Lee Ufan museum and the Chichu museum, both designed by Tadao Ando. Both these museums are designed specifically for the artists and artwork to be displayed there.


 Then there are the art projects, (installations), by various artists.


 Both of the Tadao Ando museums are built underground. Here is the Lee Ufan museum, a simple building.

Approaching the Lee Ufan Museum

Walking to the entrance of the Lee Ufan museum

And the black figure, its not a sculpture! ...its a Jaspar!

Simplicity

Entering the Lee Ufan museum

Around the corner, and inside

Sculpture in the wall

Honey, I shrank the kid!

The Chichu museum is an even more interesting building, but unfortunately I was not allowed to take photos of it, as it is classified as "art"! 


The first room we went into, we had to remove our shoes and put on white slippers. We walked through an empty, dimly lit anti room, towards a bright room. As we approached the bright room, we saw the beautiful big colourful Monet "Waterlilies" painting. As we entered the room, we saw that the room had no corners, it was all white, like a big photographic studio.


The floor was covered in small white mosaic tiles. The paintings had the best frames I have ever seen. They were simple white stone rectangular section pieces, (looked like caesarstone), and so they just blended in with the walls. On each side of the room were two more paintings from the series. The ceiling had a hidden skylight behind it, so there was a huge amount of natural light in the room, but evenly diffused. Very beautiful!


The artist James Turrell had some really interesting works. One was a big square room with a skylight taking up about half of the ceiling. It was clear, and one could look at the sky and clouds through it. In fact we are still not sure if there was any glass in it. The detailing made it impossible to tell.


In the room, the walls were lined with a stone bench, and sloping stone backrest all the way around. When one sat on them, expecting them to be cold, they were actually heated and warm. A very interesting contrast.


We then waited in a queue for about 50 minutes, but it was worth it. The next exhibit, we entered with a group of about 8 people. We lined up at the bottom of about 8 stairs that went a few meters across the room. At the top of these stairs we could see a big rectangle of ultra violet light on the wall.


Upon instruction we slowly moved up the stairs and towards the rectangle. As we got close to the rectangle we realised it was an opening. We then walked slowly into the room beyond. The floor sloped slightly down. As we neared the rear, we were told to turn around. We looked at the opening we had just come through, but it was just a big orange rectangle on the wall, there was no opening, (well that is what it looked like!!).  Strange but true!


If you would like to see more about all of this,  here is a good link:
http://www.benesse-artsite.jp/en/chichu/portfolio.html

You can see information about all the islands and museums on this website.