Page 250 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Japan

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BENESSE ART

SITE NAOSHIMA

EXPERIENCE Shikoku ベネッセアートサイト直島
! C5 ⌂ Kagawa Prefecture g Takamatsu or Uno # Hours vary, check
website for individual museums ∑ benesse-artsite.jp/en
One of the 3,000 islands dotting the Seto Inland Sea (p252), Naoshima
was once a desolate and depopulated industrial outpost of Japan’s
rustbelt. Now completely reborn, Benesse Art Site Naoshima brings
together the best in contemporary Japanese art and architecture.
Naoshima’s incredible transformation into an In 1992, Benesse House, Ando’s first permanent
international art destination began in 1987, structure, opened on the site. Now formed of
when Soichiro Fukutake, the chairman of four buildings, it encom passes both guest
Benesse Holdings – an education and pub­ accommodation and a museum housing a
lishing company – purchased the bottom collection of contemporary artworks by the
half of the dilapidated island. Working with likes of Yves Klein, Cy Twombly, Hiroshi
the leading Japanese architect Tadao Ando, a Sugimoto, and Jean­Michel Basquiat.
specialist in cutting­edge concrete buildings, The next museum to open was the Chichu
and respon sible for the famous Church of Art Museum in 2004, designed to encourage
Light in Osaka, Benesse turned Naoshima into visitors to reflect on the relationship between
one of the world’s premier art destinations. mankind and nature. Inside, five paintings

George Rickey’s Three
Squares Vertical Diagonal
(2007) at Benessee House

TADAO ANDO
Ando’s designs are
known for their zen-
like simplic ity, which
are said to be as evoc-
ative as haiku. On
Naoshima, he crafted
Benesse House, the
Chichu Art Museum,
and the Naoshima
Contemporary Art out
of crude concrete. For
his work, the boxer-
turned-architect won
the prestigious Pritzker
Prize in 1995.

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