Konichiwa, Japan: Art Island

There are many, many islands in Japan, some mere dots and others very substantial. Most of the small ones with habitation are primarily home to small farms and fishers. These are not particularly noteworthy or interesting other than cultural context for the last 200 years of Japan's economic foundations and social lifestyle.

But one island has decided a different future for its old buildings and hilly landscape. Naoshima.

My curiosity was piqued hearing about an island recently dedicated to modern art and architecture, and the more I heard about it and the more people who recommended going there, the more determined I was that this would be the one small island we would take in.

Naoshima, accommodating maybe 4,000 people, was a run-down place struggling with a massive amount of industrial waste dumped in its surrounding waters. In the mid-1980s, the mayor, Chikatsugu Miyake teamed with publisher Tetsuhiko Fukutake to remake the island in three sections: one for industry, one for regular people to live, and one for tourism. Tourism? What on earth could this little island develop that would bring tourists to it?

Brightly coloured art pieces started showing up on open grounds,

the "hello kitty" pink umbrella adds a certain something

including Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin, which has become the symbol of the island.

Then the Naoshima International Camp was designed by a prominent Japanese self-taught architect Tadao Ando. (I wonder at the courage of Ando's first patrons commissioning a work by a man who taught himself how to design and build, and whose favoured material is huge blocks of polished cement). Benesse House Museum, another one of Tadao Ando’s creations, was completed three years later. Hotel space was added to an art gallery and conference/workshop space at As the most important building on the island, the Benesse House, which is still the anchor building.

no photos allowed, but there it is at the top

Initially, the artwork that came to Naoshima was brought over from international museums, galleries and private collections but soon site-specific art and the space to house it was being commissioned directly from the artists and Ando. this includes the Chichu Art Museum and the Lee Ufan museum.

These museums have excellent modern art, but what really makes them ground breaking is their almost invisible from the outside architecture. It makes you rethink what is a museum, and what is art and how seamlessly two can enhance each other.

Let's start with the Benesse. Slightly more traditional in its museum form, it uses the outside and inside to show off the exhibits.

The first hotel rooms built are in an oval, inset underground so that light moves across the inner courtyard (which is a pool) differently according to the time of day.

Lee Ufan is a Korean painter and sculptor, who had Ando build a small museum for his work. A few pieces sit outside a space, but at first it is hard to discern how to actually enter the museum, then we spied two people "disappearing" into the wall and followed them

.Inside a few of his pieces were given space to shine, but it was the space that really shone

No doubt, for me the best space was the Chichu museum, an Ando masterpiece of how to remove a large hill, create space for art, then replace the hill on top so that no one but a helicopter pilot can see the museum as a whole.

Inside is a warren of cement-clad corridors that eventually lead to a space that holds treasure, either some of Monet's waterlilies

or Walter de Maria's smiling reflecting orbs

or a James Turrell disorienting light piece.

Or it could be a triangular yard of rocks.

Or a square field of grasses and reeds.

One is blind to the grand vision of the place and yet alive with anticipation as to what the next turn might reveal.

Outside again, the surprises continue with a Japanese version of Monet's Giverney garden.

Despite the cold temperature and rain, which we knew were coming and it is was the perfect day for indoor art, if you could call this indoor that is, we spent the day following our noses to more art pieces dotted externally.