Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Well reproduced Japanese prints, releasing subject matter from deep links with purely academical grounds, can be perceived as one dimension of ‘ popular imagery’ since they offered a series of pictures which were easily accessible from all points of view, even that of aesthetic pleasure, to a wide range of social classes during the Edo period. The creation of these ‘ Floating World Images’ emerged from attempts to seize the moment and its worldly reality in its true fugacity. They were seldom collected in Japan before the end of the 19th century. When they arrived on the European art market in the second half of the 19th century, they were immediately conferred a completely different status ; admired with covetous eyes or seen as long-term collections, they convey extremely diverse aesthetic points of view. Their compilation and exhibition are the expression of a desire to write a new chapter of art history.</jats:p>