Long before expressionism fell into the public light, there was James Ensor. With his manic mints, feverish reds, and haunting, often masked figures, eating, fighting, parading, and laughing demonically, Ensor was a late nineteenth century eccentric and occasional visionary.
Seeing the 120 paintings included at the MOMA’s exhibition of the artist’s work, there is a notable sense of urgency and a marked restlessness that permeates Ensor’s career, the course of which was quite scattered. The inclusion of Ensor’s earlier work, from the years just after his completion of art school, was, in my opinion, a curatorial mistake. Though technically proficient, the early work is tame, traditional, and boring – muddy muted palettes, tucked and mannered. There’s little evidence of the bizarre and imaginative world that would later reveal itself in Ensor’s paintings and etchings. In the 1882 painting “Lady in Distress” (images below) his delight in strange subtly begins to surface. Small, mask-like faces lurk along the bed frame surrounding the figure. And by 1886, his reverence for light is clear, though politely, as his colors begin to vibrate in paintings like “Children Dressing”, a vibrant light that threatens to dissolve the material contour of the objects. And a year later, in 1887, the “weird” of Ensor is fully unleashed, “Tribulation of Saint Anthony” is fantastical, Bosch-inspired, and hallucinatory.
Ensor is best known for his masks, and there are admittedly quite a few. There seem to be just as many skulls, as the artist was obsessed with the notion of death, at times appearing fearful, other times mocking, and occasionally, with his substitution of a skull for a head, he’s down right playful. The text accompanying the MOMA show presents Ensor as a leading avant-garde artist in the Belgian scene, but I have a hard time imagining him as anything other than a recluse. With the exception of his art school days spent at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he spent his entire career in Belgium, living for a good portion of that time in an attic studio above his parents souvenir shop. It’s remarkable, and a bit touching, that a man with such hermetic tendencies, who even described himself as “a nut job”, would receive public acclaim within his lifetime. During the later part of Ensor’s career, collectors and writers were praising his work – the king even named him a Baron. This aspect of the Ensor show is quite inspiring: to watch a man ascend from outsider artist to an honorable celebrity. And as for the paintings, they’re not for everyone, but anyone with a sympathy for the strange will be pleased.
