Benesse Art Site on Naoshima

View from Benesse House

Inland Sea

Win and Pumpkin

17 February 2012

On 2/17 we left Kyoto for our journey to the Inland Sea (Seto naikai), inspired by Donald Richie's book, The Inland Sea, and a general longing for salt air.  We traveled by train to Uno via Okayama.  At Uno, we took a short ferry ride to the island of Naoshima, where Benesse Art Site is located.  Benesse is a spectacular and quite unique blending of wonderful architecture, art works of many sorts, and a naturally magnificent setting.  The hotel sits seamlessly in the middle of it all.  There are numerous art projects on Naoshima and neighboring islands.  On Naoshima we explored first the Art House Project.  In the village of Honmura, about six old houses have been restored and transformed into works of art, each by a different artist.  In one house there were large paintings on all four walls resembling water falls, in another walls that looked sometimes like a wild sky and sometimes like a wild sea.  Another had a dark, bath like space with small blinking electric light numbers floating about like aquatic fire flies.  It is hard to do it all justice with words.  Back at Benesse House Park, we found our beautiful room looking over a park and the sea.  Beautiful pieces of art inside and out adorn the house and grounds.   The amusing pumpkin sits on a small dock and is perhaps the iconic image of Benesse.  Win posed in the Japanese fashion.

The next stop was the Benesse House Museum, with a small but wonderful collection, each piece in a space that seems specially created to show it best.  In the photograph above (not mine - no inside photography allowed) is Jennifer Bartlett's "Yellow and Black Boats".  Then dinner in the museum, a lovely, refined Kaiseki meal including 8 small courses served in beautiful dishes.  The soup was "oyster minced and steamed [like a soft dumpling], carrot, spinach and thin-sliced turnip".  The grilled dish was "butterfish broiled with salted entrails of sea cucumber [!!], and salad".  You get the idea...There appears to be nothing dwelling in the sea that Japanese won't eat in one form or another.

The next morning, after an excellent breakfast, we visited the Chichu Museum, mostly underground but with marvelous sculptural spaces and day light coming in from everywhere.  Inside and outside seem intertwined...Aside from the architect, there are only three artists shown in the museum: Monet, James Turrell, and Walter De Maria.  Do visit this museum someday, if you possibly can, to see the five late Monet waterlily paintings hung in a vast white room, lit only by naturally changing day light.  Words fail, but the physical sensations remain when I think of it.

Unfortunately we did not have time to see the Lee Ufan Museum or bathe at the whimsical Naoshima Bath (see first photo).  We took the ferry in the midst of a snow storm to Takamatsu on Shikoku for the next part of our short journey.

 We feel so grateful to Darcy Bacon for suggesting the trip to Benesse!

Love to all