Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World
Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850 opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and runs through April 2008. The exhibition of Japanese paintings from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has traveled from Kobe, Japan to Nagoya to Tokyo to the Kimbell Museum then back to their usual home in Boston and on to Ontario and now San Francisco. The exhibition is stunning. Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodcuts may be quite familiar but the chance to see his paintings on silk was revelatory. Two paintings in particular stood out: Hokusai's Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror (Kyômen bijin zu) is a work of extreme elegance and beauty. A woman stands before a mirror, a cherry seductively lolls in her mouth, and in her right hand she holds a letter. A poem inscribed on the scroll by the poet Shima Tokki reads: Does that letter from the man she waits for promise a summer's night out? Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese, 1760–1849 Wo...