2015 / San Francisco / “Floating World” & “Ukiyoe” Feb 20 – May 10
Asian Art Museum
Feb. 20 – May 10
200 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 581-3500
Monday closed
Seduction: Japan’s Floating World
Featuring more than 50 artworks from the acclaimed John C. Weber Collection, Seduction, explores the popular and enticing entertainment districts—known as the “floating world”—of 17th century Edo (present-day Tokyo).
The centerpiece of the exhibition is A Visit to the Yoshiwara, a grand, 58-foot-long handscroll by Hishikawa Moronobu, offering a visually rich virtual tour of Edo’s pleasure quarters.
The scroll is rarely on public view, and will be presented completely unfurled in the Asian Art Museum’s galleries.
Other highlights include luxurious Japanese kimonos and 18th-century paintings and prints by some of Japan’s most important artists: Katsukawa Shunshô, Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
The Printer’s Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection
Seduction will be shown alongside a complementary exhibition, The Printer’s Eye, featuring Japanese prints from the collection of Edwin Grabhorn, a San Francisco art collector and co-founder of Grabhorn Press.
The Printer’s Eye showcases 88 superb prints acquired by the museum in 2005. Particularly notable are rare early works by Kaigetsudo Dohan and Okumura Masanobu, as well as exquisite full-color prints by Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro and others.
Together the exhibitions offer museum visitors a close examination of how the “floating world” was portrayed by artists of the period.
