Last weekend, mostly to get new photos for the “deep dive” feature of my WUIK newsletter, I visited the Garden of Fine Arts again. And: it grows on me.
Part of this is certainly the fact that this time around, I went in the early morning when the sun illuminated the place much better (remember that it’s 2 floors underground) and gave it a more bright and uplifting atmosphere.
The other part is that now I know that the Last Supper and Last Judgement from the Sistine Chapel in Rome were reproduced almost on the original scale. The Last Judgement in particular takes up all three floors of the museum space, and somehow, I can appreciate both paintings much more because of this.
Afterwards, I went to the nearby Kyoto Institute Library and Archives, which I recently (re-) discovered. The entire second floor of the building is just the library with plenty of nooks and crannies to lose yourself in – and books too, of course.
On the first floor, there is a small museum, and this is where I discovered Yasuo Hayashi. He’s now 96, a ceramic artist from Kyoto, and somehow, his works look like MC Escher has discovered the third dimension:
I really enjoyed this exhibition (it’s on until June 9 if you’re in town) and will try to find out more about this artist. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photographs, but I got a list of books showing his works that I can get from the library above.