Day 5: Naoshima

Naoshima isn't a very big island, but there's a surprising number of things to see. While it doesn't take very long to get from one place to another, there are a couple of very convenient shuttles and busses that run between the three ports and the many museums and art installations.

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We started at the main building of the Benesse House Museum and its collection of modern art works.

Jennifer Bartlett's Yellow and Black Boats hangs on the wall of a museum, a painting of two simple yellow and black boats beached on the shore. Directly in front of it are two molded fiberglass boats, yellow and black, arranged to mimic the painting. It's a neat concept, until the viewer turns around and looks out through the museum's glass walls. There, on a distant beach, is a small speck of yellow and black: the same boats in the same arrangement.

This is the essence of how Naoshima's artists have approached the island. We never knew if we'd find a sculpture at the top of a hill or merely another beautiful view of the inland sea. We might turn a corner in the towns and find a small museum or installation, or just another village street. The experience was surreal.

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The Chichu Art Museum is a massive complex of raw concrete buried in Naoshima's hills. Light leaks through openings at the top of the structure, casting sharp shadows on its angled corridors. As you walk through you'll stumble across small gardens that open to the sky twenty feet above.

The museum houses a small Monet collection in what I can only describe as the most reverent art space I've ever seen. Before entering you exchange your shoes for guest slippers, then proceed down a dark concrete hallway. As you round a corner the hallway opens into a large space, its walls and floor a mosaic of polished white stones. On the far wall stands Monet's Water-Lilly Pond, a full six feet tall and ten feet wide. Three other Monets hang in the room, lit with natural light filtering from above. It's completely silent.

But the really stunning work is James Turrel's Open Field installation. Turrel's pieces are about space and light, so it seemed strange that the piece started at the bottom of a short flight of stairs leading up to a blue rectangle projected on the wall. The guide beckoned us up, and to my surprise we stepped into the blue. We could eventually see that we were standing in a corridor that flared out into... nothing. The way we had come was now an orange aperture, a complementary trick of the blue light we were now immersed in. The end of the walkway dropped off suddenly into a uniformly lit expanse. There were no edges out there. There were no shadows. The ground sloped downwards to the edge: I felt pulled towards it.

I stared out, and infinite Nothing stared back at me.

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