This summer, the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art underwent renovation and opened as the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art. To kick off the event, ``Hiroshi Sugimoto's Lazuli Pure Land'' will be held until October 10th. It has also become a hot topic that the Glass Tea Room Mondorian, which Sugimoto traveled to with Sugimoto to Venice and Versailles, has come for this exhibition. This is a two-part interview that traces Sugimoto's creative journey along with this tea room.

《Glass Tea Room Monchoan》 is divided by land.
I have been traveling while weaving stories.

Okazaki, Kyoto. Worshiping the shrine building from the large torii gate of Heian Shrine. The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto is on the left leg of the torii, and the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art (Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art), which was newly renovated this year, is on the right leg. Beyond the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art building is the museum garden. In the center of this garden, which is said to have been created by Jihei Ogawa, a pioneer of modern Japanese garden design, is a cubic box with glass on all sides and a ceiling.

At first glance, you might think it's a device for some sort of observation or experiment. Or perhaps a small greenhouse? If you look closely, you can see that it is a small Japanese-style room or tea room, as the floor is made of tatami mats. It is Hiroshi Sugimoto's Glass Tea Room Mondorian.

``One side of the four walls is approximately 2.5 meters.There is a little extra space for a two-tatami mat for the tea room.Wood doors are used for the tea ceremony entrance and the nijiriguchi.Going to the tea room. In order to do so, you have to travel along a bridge, and this time that bridge is also made of glass.''

The unexpectedness of making a tea room out of glass. For those who are familiar with tea ceremonies, or even those with a little experience, tea ceremonies place you in an extraordinary space, and your sense of time is disrupted by the unique progression of the ceremony. I sometimes feel like a long time has passed, perhaps because I'm spending so much time together. However, it is surprising and interesting that no time has actually passed. This is a phenomenon that can only occur because the tea room is a closed room, but I wonder how much time will pass in a tea ceremony with a glass barrier. ``A tea room that is completely visible to the outside world is the perfect place for the secrets and schemes of the heart to proceed.'' What is Sugimoto's plan?

Sugimoto is a globally popular contemporary artist, but he also works on many architectural works. His largest project is the Enoura Weather Observatory in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, for which he is also the client. The location, architecture, and works on display all make it a place that presents Sugimoto's worldview. On the other hand, this ``Glass Tea Room Monchoan'' is, in a sense, the opposite of that (one could say), a movable architectural work.

Born in Venice, the city of water
《Glass Tea Room Monchoan》

“This Glass Tea Room Monchoan was created to be exhibited at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.It is a little away from the hustle and bustle of Venice, a world heritage city, but it is located on the opposite side of St. Mark's Square.・It was built on the island of Giorgio Maggiore.The church and its spire, designed by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), one of the earliest professional architects, are symbolic there, as well as the glassworks. It is an island that consists only of the museum ``LE STANZE DEL VETRO'', a yacht harbor, and a restaurant.In the garden between the church and the museum, we have placed a fence inspired by the wooden fence of Ise Grand Shrine, and placed an open field. As you walk along the open field, you will see an artificial pond that looks like a long, narrow pool with bright blue tiles made in Italy on the bottom. There is.”

Venice is the city of water and glass. This is the tea room that was born there. During his stay in Venice, Sugimoto also created tea bowls at a glass workshop on Murano Island.

``The Hakururi no Wan, a Shosoin treasure said to have been made in Sassanid Persia, is now housed at the Shosoin in Nara, and we taught glass craftsmen to use it as a model. I made a copy of it, as I couldn't buy one from Shosoin (lol).It turned out better than I expected, and I used the name of Murano Island as a glass craftsman. I chose Toroku Murano because of his name.”

This tea bowl was made in Persia, on the way to the Silk Road, and is located at Shosoin in Nara, the final stop. Sugimoto also picked up the bowl, thinking about the story of his far-flung journey to make a copy of it in Venice, near the starting point of the Silk Road.

``When I assembled the tea room and looked at it as a three-dimensional object, I discovered that it resembled the composition of Piet Mondrian's (1872-1944) abstract painting ``Composition.'' When I went to Taian, the tea room in the hermitage said to have been created by Rikyu, I remembered that the wall composition felt like an experiment in the style of abstract painting. , pronounced by Mondrian.It is said that when you enter the tea room, you hear birds singing above your head.

“Monchoan” that appeared in the garden pond of the Grand Trianon Palace
Luxury and poverty, the ideas of the far north are here.

After several years of exhibition in Venice, ``Monchoan'' appeared on the Pra Fonds Pond in the grounds of the Trianon Palace in the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris when Sugimoto was invited to participate in a contemporary art project at the Palace of Versailles. There was a reason for that. Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793) famously sought a place away from the power, luxury and hustle and bustle of the main palace of Versailles. During her pre-revolutionary days of peace, she found her place in the Trianon Palace and created it to her own taste. Sugimoto says that what she was looking for was the opposite of luxury: poverty and frugality.

Regarding poverty and frugality, for example, Murata Juko (1422 or 1423 – 1502), a tea master in the middle of the Muromachi period, left behind the words, ``It's good to tie a good horse to a straw shed.'' It would be a good idea to have famous tea utensils in a simple tatami room. Also, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) perfected ``Wabi-cha'', which was actually sought after by the queen of France in the 18th century. I felt that there was something in common with the longing for peace and the ideal state of Japanese tea masters of the 15th and 16th centuries."

This was probably expressed through the idea of ​​a very minimalistic glass tea room, and the modern architectural techniques used to make it a reality.

And then to Kyoto
The grand dream of the Heian capital of elegance

Monchoan is currently being invited to the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art for its re-opening. As mentioned above, when you think of Kyoto, there is Taian. The tea room that Sugimoto modeled and admired is Taian, and it is basically the Soan tea room Uchoten, which Sugimoto built within his work Enoura Observatory, which is the culmination of his artistic activities. This can be seen from the fact that it is a copy of "Taian". Finally, in early February 2020, Glass Tea Room Monchoan was installed in Kyoto. There is a photo of snow falling and snow piling up on the ceiling and bridge.

``As an alternative to the calligraphy and paintings that hang on the floor, I turned the space that can be seen from the tea room itself into a painting. Versailles, an artificial pond built on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where you can see the spire of the church in Venice. There is a pond in the back of the tea room surrounded by forest.And this time, it is said that the seventh generation Ogawa Jihei was involved, and the pond is surrounded by pine trees.The scenery surrounding the tea room itself is used as a floor decoration.

A tea room in the capital of water and glass, a tea room that speaks of simplicity at the end of luxury. The tea rooms have each told their own stories on the land they were built on, and now they reflect the stories of the grand dreams of aristocrats in Miyako during the Heian period.

(Titles omitted)

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Born in 1948. After moving to the United States in 1970, he continued to create in 1974 while traveling back and forth between New York and Japan. His representative works include the ``Seascape'' and ``Theatre'' series. He opened the architectural design office "New Materials Research Institute" in 2008 and the cultural facility "Odawara Cultural Foundation Enoura Observatory" in 2017. At the Hawk's Well, for which he created the direction and space, will be performed at the Paris Opera in the fall of 2019. His books include ``The Moss Child,'' ``The Present Image,'' and ``The Origin of Art.'' He was awarded the 2001 Hasselblad International Photography Award, the 2009 Prince Takamatsu Memorial World Culture Award (painting category), the Medal with Purple Ribbon in the fall of 2010, and the 2013 Order of Arts and Letters Officer of France. He was selected as a Person of Cultural Merit in 2017. ``Hiroshi Sugimoto's Lazuli Pure Land'' is being held until October 2020th (Sunday) as the opening ceremony of the Kyocera Museum of Art, Kyoto, which completed a large-scale renovation in 10. "Enoura Kitan" is scheduled to be released in October 4.

◆"Hiroshi Sugimoto's Pure Land of Lazuli"

Held at the Kyocera Museum of Art, Kyoto until October 10th. (Glass Tea Room Monchoan will be open until January 4, 2021, after the exhibition ends)

124 Okazaki Enshojicho, Sakyo Ward, Kyoto City

075-771-4334（受付時間／10:00～18:00 12月28日～1月2日を除く）

Currently, the exhibition is on a reservation priority system. If the capacity is not reached, same-day viewing is possible without reservation. Free areas such as the cafe, museum shop, and The Triangle can be entered and used without reservation.

For more information, please visit the museum's official website or call for reservations.
https://kyotocity-kyocera.museum/
Reservation phone: 075-761-0239 (10:00-18:00) *Telephone reservations must be made until the day before.