Otsuka Bijutsukan

[Abe' Mark Nornes]

At 4:53 AM -0500 1/18/00, Peter Grilli wrote:

> A few questions:
> How big are the spaces?  When you say "life-size" do you really mean actual
> facsimile size?  Even the Sistine Chapel?  If everything really is exact
> facsimile size, the place must be HUGE!  About how many paintings are there?
> Hundreds?  Thousands?  How many buildings are there?  Who designed them?  What
> do the exteriors look like?  Are they just factory-like buildings, or are they
> beautiful?

This is a very large building. It's easily as big as art museums in
America's major cities. Situated at one end of the bridge over to Honshu,
the museum is actually built into the side of a mountain on the first small
island the bridge hops over. They make you park pretty far away, and the
entrance is as unassuming as the typical storefront. Once in the entrance,
however, you go up an escalator that must be a hundred meters long. From
there you enter the front lobby, which leads directly to the Sistine
Chapel...such as it is.

Actually, at this point you're still underground: Level B3. Aside from the
Sistine Chapel this floor features art from antiquity and the Middle Ages,
with a touch of Baroque. There are also several reconstructions of early
church interiors, and an ancient tomb. The galleries are all square jobs,
except for the Greek and Roman art. This is in a pretty round gallery with
multiple levels and ramps. They have some floor mosaics you which can romp
around on (although I noticed some people suppressing the urge
successfully), and quite a few "unwrapped pots." For these they have what
amounts to a panorama of urns and pots...a flat surface except for handles
and lips that stick out from the picture plane. It's a little strange at
first, but you get used to it.

On the next level---basement #2---you enter the Baroque and Renaissance.
There are windows that look out onto the Sistine Chapel, and the space above
the round gallery is a small garden. It overlooks the Straights of Naruto,
which are far more interesting than the huge assortment of panels of Monet
lilies that half-enclose the space, and far less interesting than the pools
of water with (ceramic) carp. Even the wildlife is reproduced! The people
who didn't feel like going outside sat in a lounge overlooking the scene,
scarfing can coffee from the jidohanbai and sucking cigarettes (the smoke
wafts through most of the floor).

On the next floor, still underground in the mountain, there's a little
Baroque and lots of modernism. Finally, on the first floor you get to
galleries of 20th century art. This floor also has a separate section
arranged by themes: spatial expression, trompe l'oil, time, and life/death.
Across a little garden area is a second, smaller building that has the
cafeteria, a second floor of unused space and a third of offices.

The museum is actually the only piece of real art. The obviously got someone
pretty good and put a lot of money into it. The galleries have high
ceilings. The hallways are broad lanes with huge walls for exhibition, and
none of the rooms could be called small. According to the brochure, the
museum sits on 66,630 square meters of land, and the gallery space covers
29,412 square meters.

The paintings are recreated to precisely the size of the originals, but I
should note that the ceramic panels have a maximum size that can't hope to
cover most paintings. I suppose each panel is something like 2 and a half
feet by 4 feet, and the seams are highly visible. They occasionally made
attempts to align the seams with folds in clothes and such, but each
painting is spoiled by a grid of gaps.

The art works were chosen by a panel of six university art professors. There
are over 1,000 works from 190 art museums in 25 countries. The reconstructed
spaces like the Sistine Chapel are made to exact specifications of the
original. You can see pictures on their website: http://www.o-museum.or.jp/
One significant difference to other art museums is the dramatic track
lighting on all the paintings. But this did have a certain campish charm.

I imagine there's someone in Otsuka thinking that this will be the wave of
the future. Imagine the ability to create a museum, fill it with famous
paintings from the world over for cheap. No overly complicated shipping
procedures. Minimal insurance. Want the Sistine Chapel? It will fit in a
small truck.

They make a big deal of Guernica, pointing out that the original has never
travelled "before this." So there is an emphasis on the ability to see art
without having to go to the hassle and expense of travelling to foreign
lands where they don't speak Japanese. You could do a reading of the museum
similar to what Yoshimoto did with Disneyland; there probably is a sense of
power that comes from bringing all this art to Japan, nay to _Tokushima_
(the man who started Otsuka never left his hometown of Naruto, so there is a
sense of regional pride for sure)! At the same time, it would be easy to
overdo this. It's a complicated place. I noticed they were taking anketo,
and I'd love to read through them!

More than anything, what you really, truly feel is nothing. It's a striking
experience to be surrounded by so much fantastic art and what piques your
interest more than anything is the broaching of the usual borders policed by
the Museum. I mean more than the audacity it took to stock a major art
museum with nothing but fakes. For example, you weren't supposed to take
pictures, but I wandered the whole place shooting video. No one cared
because THERE WERE NO GUARDS! There's nothing to protect. If you want, you
can go right up to Van Gogh's Sunflowers and touch it. Peek around the edge
and you'll see the steel framework that the ceramic panels are attached to.
I did a jig on a wonderful Greek floor mosaic.

> Is the "Tomato Dome" near the Otsuka Bijutsukan?  It's where Otsuka
>bio-chemists
> cultivate huge tomato plants under absolutely perfect growing conditions.

I have no idea, but I wonder if the nashi a friend just brought us as
omiyage is from Otsuka. It's the size of my baby boy's head. I swear it's
true; we did a test!

Markus