Otsuka Bijutsukan

[Abe' Mark Nornes]

I went to the Otsuka Bijutsukan, and it was one of those amazing
only-in-Japan experiences.

Otsuka Corporation---which is into everything you can imagine---wanted an
art museum next to its headquarters in Naruto, several hundred meters from
the dock where busloads of tourists turn into boatloads of tourists checking
out the whirlpools in the Straights. The museum itself is the largest
permanent space in Japan, and it's as expansive as major galleries in the US
and Europe. Of course, they had the problem that all these new art museums
in Japan have. They own no art! But they got around this problem by using a
new reproduction technology that they had invented. It's a kind of
large-scale photograph on ceramic plates, and the quality of the
reproduction is extremely high. Even a few inches away from the image you
don't see the kinds of patterns you get in most color prints, so I assume it
must be a kind of optical photography. What they did was team up with art
museums around the world and copy their best works of art, in precisely the
same size as the original. Yes, it's a major museum filled with nothing but
fakes!

They are displaying the master works by every major artist in the history of
art. Never seen the Mona Lisa? It's there...in the same room as the Last
Supper. Rembrandt? They've got about ten of his best, plus a representative
sample of the most important art from each period in history. I actually
enjoyed seeing Las Meninas "for the first time." However, I have to admit
they didn't have all the Vermeers in the world....at least New York. The
artist who got the most attention by far was Picasso, who even got his
_actual_ photograph displayed next to Guernica. All the other artists simply
got labels as in any other art museum.

The other interesting thing about this technology is that it's more
malleable than a photograph. Because the base is ceramic, it can be molded
and integrated into architecture. That means that they could reproduce
artistic _spaces_. For example, they reproduce tombs and early grotto
churches down to the texture of the stone and the areas where the wall
paintings have flaked away. My favorite, however, was the life-size
rendition of the Sistine Chapel. I tell no lie. It's the first thing you
walk into. Except they've only included the Final Judgement and the strip on
the ceiling. Haven't gotten to the other walls, obviously.

Of course, there's no aura. For most of us. However, my sister-in-law---who
has been to Tokyo...once---provides a hint at what's going on in the minds
of many of the people who shell out a steep 3,500 yen to look at a warehouse
full of fakes. She was clearly sent into a kind of rapture by the Sistine
Chapel. She was bored by the Greeks and Romans, and most of the other
Vatican and royal propaganda up to the 16th century. But one she worked her
way into the Rennaisance and early modernists she was back in heaven. The
place is so huge that she didn't make it to the 20th century before wearing
out, which is too bad since I thought the technology lent itself quite well
to people like Warhol and Lichtenstein. I mostly enjoyed watching the people
marvelling at the "art." Also being able to walk on the Greek floor mosaics.


Oh, by the way, if you didn't know already, there's no art outside of Europe
and New York City. I guess that's not exactly true. They had one modern
Japanese painting. In the cafeteria.

Oh, and another thing: this ceramic stuff was originally for an Otsuka
venture that apparently failed, although they don't tell you this at the
museum (I heard it from a glass blower friend in Tokushima). It was supposed
to be for reproducing images of loved ones on gravestones! But this didn't
go over well in Japan...no aura, I guess.

Markus