Fast & Award-winning Art & the City from on High
Yesterday Shux and I headed to the to check out the BMW Art Car exhibit. In line for tickets we discovered there’s also a Turner Prize exhibit, as well as an open-air observation deck on top of the building, so we decided to see it all.
Tokyo City View & Sky Deck
The observation deck on the 52nd floor of Mori Tower offers great views of almost all around (some parts are blocked by a restaurant). The weather wasn’t bad, but overcast with rain threatening, so some pictures look a little gloomy. In fact, the open-air Sky Deck was closed for the day due to inclement weather — it was re-opened though once we got upstairs.
The view was pretty impressive. On one hand everything seemed so close, but on the other you begin to understand how large and sprawling Tokyo is. Past Haneda Airport is a large building seemingly sitting alone on the water. I didn’t know what it was, but I managed to get a picture of it (with the terrible 16x digital zoom on my camera).
I tried asking what it was, but one person didn’t know and the other spoke Japanese which I couldn’t understand. I looked it up on Google Maps where I learned it’s called 風の塔 (Kaze no tō). It’s the mid-point of the 9.6km tunnel portion of the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line.
The towers blow fresh air into the tunnel. They are built on an artificial island which is also home to a rest stop with restaurants, shops & amusement facilities. I need to go check it out sometime!
See more pictures of Tokyo from the top of Mori Tower.
Transparent Speed: BMW Art Cars
I had heard about the BMW Art Cars some time ago. I only remembered that some old 70s BMWs were painted by some famous artists, Andy Warhol among them. Anyway, I was looking forward to looking at these unique cars.
There seems to be a total of 15 of these cars, however only 5 were on display:
- 1976 BMW 3.0 CSL by Frank Stella
- 1977 BMW 320i by Roy Lichtenstein
- 1991 BMW Z1 by A. R. Penck
- 1995 BMW 850CSI by David Hockney
- 1999 BMW V12 LMR by Jenny Holzer
A little disappointed that not all 15 were there to view. There’s still Alexander Calder’s 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL, the car that started it all, on display at the BMW Group Studio in Marunouchi. We’ll be taking it in today.
History in the Making: A Retrospective of the Turner Prize
I’m not much into art, but once in a while I can appreciate it. Some of the stuff on display was rather interesting. I guess the Turner Prize tends to evoke lots of controversy over the art nominated. For example, Damien Hirst‘s cow and calf, each split in half and put in separate boxes so one can view the inners of each beast (shown in the Turner Prize poster). Also refreshing was that the items on display weren’t only paintings and sculptures, but also photography, video and performance (of which video was displayed).
Today is Monday but it’s Children’s Day in Japan, part of Golden Week, so no work today. Instead, we slept in and we’ll be exploring more today and tomorrow!
