Yes, but is it art ?

I admit:  I lifted this title from a book about modern art that I read several years ago.

It took four train rides to get from Kanazawa to Takamatsu on the island of Kagawa.  Then today, we took a ferry to the smaller island of Naoshima which has been reborn as an art haven and is home to several museums of modern art as well as outdoor installations.  The most famous:  the red pumpkin and the yellow pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama.

First we visited the Chichu Art Museum which is built completely of concrete with narrow passageways.  It feels more like a prison than an art museum.  Chichu means "underground" which is where we were, with openings in the ceiling or walls to let in light.  There are only three rooms that exhibit art.  One has six large Monets including water lilies.  Incredible.  One had a rather odd installation, and the third was bare except for a pink light.  (Yes, I know it looks blue, but it was pink when I saw it.)

Okay.  Next, the world famous Benesse House Museum which opened in 1992 as a facility integrating a museum with a hotel, based on the concept of "coexistence of nature, art, and architecture. " Yes, that circle on the ground is made of pieces of wood.  The circles on the wall are finger (hand) painted with mud brought from the artist's home in Italy.

Finally, after lunch, the New Museum of Art.  There were some incredible (and incredibly bizarre) murals here, and this installation of "ninety nine lifelike wolves charging forward with fierce determination, colliding headlong in a glass wall without hesitation.  The wall, which is the same height as the Berlin Wall was, symbolizes the intangible yet deeply felt ideological and cultural divisions between people and communities.  The work reflects on the human condition:  our dangerous loyalty to dominant ideologies and our seeming fated cycle of error."

Yesterday we visited the Isama Noguchi Garden Museum.  Isama Noguchi is one the 20th century's most renowned sculptors, working primarily with granite.  He left specific instructions that after he died, all of the works in his house and garden should be left exactly where he had placed them.  Thus, a garden of granite pieces.

The day before, I created my own art.  We visited a paper factory and each of us made a postcard.

And perhaps the finest work of art that I saw:  Ritsurin Koen, a vast 185 acre Japanese garden dating back to the 17th century.  It is not on the list of the top three Japanese gardens, perhaps because its location is so remote, but it was truly spectacular.

They do not call it bonsai unless the tree is in a pot, but it is amazing how they can shape a full grown tree.  The rocks at the bottom make this look like a tree on a turtle.

Our trip is called "A Taste of Japan," so besides art, we are eating interesting and different foods.  Yesterday we had lunch at the Nakano Udon School where we cooked our own udon (in the bowl on the left) in the little stove on the right.  We did finally have tempura.  I wasn't sure what was in the middle on the bottom.  The right side had teeny raw shrimp that were meant to be eaten raw.

Today we were served a bento box and had to guess what was in each little box.  Three scoops of rice on the diagonal.  Center right looked like fruit but the consensus was sweet potato.  Fried chicken thigh top center, and some kind of cooked fish bottom center.  Bottom right was string beans, and dessert, on the top left, was a macaron and a piece of green tea cake.

Tomorrow we are having lunch at a renowned sushi restaurant.  At least I'll be able to recognize what I am eating.