Main Points - Albert Lee
http://www.benesse-artsite.jp/en/chichu/
Chichu Art Museum was constructed in 2004 as a site rethinking the relationship
between nature and people. Artworks by Claude Monet, James Turrell, and Walter
De Maria are on permanent display in a building designed by Tadao Ando. Taking
form as artists and architect bounced ideas off each other, the building in its entirety
can be called a massive site-specific art work.
To ensure that the museum does not affect the beautiful scenery of Naoshima, the
majority of the building is located underground. Despite its positioning, it receives an
abundance of natural light, changing the appearance of the artworks and the
ambience of the space itself with the passage of the days and the seasons.
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/the-chichu-art-museum/
In Japanese, the word 'chichu' means 'underground' and one would, therefore, tend
to imagine a dark, dim space where natural light is cut off. Although part of the
access way and the front lobby are extremely dark, the main exhibition space brings
in natural light creatively through the two main, geometrically shaped, sunken
courts. This is, rather, an 'enclosed above-ground museum'.
Why underground, one might ask? The site of the museum is a place where national
forest abounds and was a former salt field. To preserve the existing atmosphere and
beauty of the site, Ando has wisely 'buried' the museum underground. Only a series
of small concrete openings and geometrical skylights float among the greenery.
The entrance ramp leading down to the entrance lobby has two side walls that incline
at an angle of six degrees towards the East. This slightly skewed space sets the mood
by heightening the tension and suspense of what is to come. There are five galleries
altogether, of various sizes and characters, featuring the works of three artists Claude Monet, Walter de Maria and James Turrell. In the Monet exhibition space,
visitors can view five Monet paintings that are illuminated entirely by natural light
streaming in from the four edges of the ceiling. Viewed from the lobby, the exhibition
space itself looks like a framed painting. The floor is further given an impressionist
touch when laid with 20 x 20 x 20 mm white mosaic marble stones.
Walter de Maria constructed his gallery by laying out 2.2 m diameter spheres and 27
wooden sculptures with gold leaf. As the space is aligned East to West, the
appearance of the work changes constantly from sunrise to sunset. The works of
James Turrell present light as an art itself and are accompanied by spaces that allow
for a unique experience. The distinction between architecture and art works is
blurred. It is hard to delineate where the architecture ends to become art works and
vice versa.
The triangular court connects the exhibition space of the three artists. On two sides
of the walls are circulation ramps. Through a slit of 35 cm, one sees a court lined with
broken limestone. Inside the museum, the visitor is brought constantly between light
and darkness, between mass and void. Incorporating Ando's favorite material palette
of concrete, steel, glass and wood, the Chichu Art Museum has an extremely minimal
design. By limiting the architecture to an underground structure and refusing to have
an exterior design rising out of the ground, the Museum successfully balances the
conflict of being architectural, yet non-monumental. In addition, the artistic
approaches of Walter De Maria and James Turrell, and the architectural approach of
Tadao Ando, are subsumed into one single place.
Meng Ching Kwah
http://phaidonatlas.com/building/chichu-art-museum/1086
Chichu Art Museum, Tadao Ando’s recent project in an ongoing series on Naoshima
Island, carves its exhibition spaces out of and into the terrain. Aside from a few
pieces of the architecture peeking out over the surrounding ocean, the entire
museum is below ground. The island is remote and the submersion of the museum at
the top of a ridge emphasizes the drama of the site. Unlike larger museums that
exhibit a broad range of artists, the Chichu Art Museum exhibits only three: Claude
Monet, James Turrell and Walter de Maria.