Expo: our top 3 of the week

For a lot of galleries, the jolly season is a welcome break. But there are more than enough places open over the holidays to take your breath away with the imaginative power of images.

UKIYO-E
Ukiyo-e are woodcuts that have depicted the fleeting joys of the urban bourgeoisie in Japan since the end of the 17th century. The collection at the Royal Museums of Art and History consists of a whopping 7,500 of these prints, of which a considerable number are now on display in an extensive, must-see exhibition at the Cinquantenaire Museum. The exhibition offers a chronological exploration of the genre, and illustrates the evolutions of colour, printing technique, format, style, subjects, etc. through dozens of examples. From the prints that pay tribute to the actors of the kabuki theatre, to the representation of The Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (a glimpse into the prestigious Yoshiwara brothel neighbourhoods) by Kitagawa Utamaro, and the erotic shunga, which are subtly described as "spring pictures".

Unavoidably, this exhibition also features a selection of Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and The Great Wave off Kanagawa, but it also has some lesser-known prints to his One Hundred Ghost Tales (such as this The House of Broken Plates). As well as: the landscapes of Hiroshige, the goldfish of Kuniyoshi, a selection from the "new prints" and "creative prints" movements, and a reinterpretation of ukiyo-e by Brussels-born Dimitri Piot.
> Cinquantenaire Museum. > 12/02, Brussels

GUGGENHEIM. FULL ABSTRACTION
There were once plans to turn the Klein Kasteeltje/Petit-Château into a satellite gallery of the world-famous Guggenheim Museum. Unfortunately, those plans were scrapped, but until 12 February you can visit the ING Art Center to see a collection of beautiful pieces that epitomise abstract expressionism in the United States and Europe between 1940 and 1960. You will see works by Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning, to name only a few of the greats. The bright canvasses on which the works are displayed create a stark, but enchanting frame and guide your eyes directly to the paintings.
> ING Art Center. > 12/02, Brussels

JIM JARMUSCH: CHOKING THE ALLIGATOR
"Let's go into the white," Cinéma Galeries suggests while inviting us into its catacombs under the Koninginnegalerij/Galerie de la Reine to see a (small) exhibition devoted to the US indie director Jim Jarmusch. It includes large-scale presentations of some of the King of Cinematic Cool's "plan sequences", including a looped excerpt from his second film, the melancholy road movie Stranger than Paradise, in which Willie (jazz musician John Lurie), Eva (Eszter Balint), and Eddie (former Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson) stare across the white surface ice of a frozen Lake Erie.

The work of the silvery grey-haired maverick, now 63, is strange, but not as crazy as the exhibition's weird captions next to the excerpts, such as the one above, suggest. Some ten excerpts immerse you in Jarmusch's unique, slow-moving, poetic world, featuring the rundown New York of the Seventies, no-wave, samurai, vampires, Bill Murray, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Johnny Depp. To see his more recent films, Paterson or – coming soon – the Stooges documentary Gimme Danger, head for the cinema upstairs.
> Galeries. > 12/02, Brussels