A Floating World

A tribute to the diverse artistic expressions of the ephemeral nature of life in Japanese art.

From weathered, centuries-old wooden sculptures and broken tea bowls repaired with gold lacquer to paintings and woodcuts depicting cherry blossom festivals and man's relationship with water in all its forms, A Floating World presents Japan as a nation with a unique aesthetic language of the ephemeral. In a place where earthquakes, tsunamis, and human-made catastrophes can snatch away life at any moment, an art flourishes that is in constant awareness of the precious fragility of our existence—in a breathtakingly beautiful, quiet, and fascinating celebration of transience.

This restless, dynamic, and ultimately deeply relaxed way of life, which finds parallels in the ancient Greek and Roman concepts of panta rhei (everything flows) and carpe diem (seize the day), finds its expression in the diverse works gathered in this catalogue, and accompanying exhibition at the Museum Angewandte Kunst.

From 14th-century sculptures, through Hokusai's Great Wave and up to bold contemporary painting and photography, A Floating World is an elegant testimony to motion and impermanence in Japanese art and culture.