James Ensor (April 13rd 1860 - November 19th 1949) is a Belgian painter which took part in the movements of avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century and which leaves a work expressionnist and original.

Biography

Born in a family from the small-middle-class of Ostend, Ensor will leave its birthplace little. Commenting on its birth at the time of a banquet offered in its honor, it is expressed in these terms:

“I was born in Ostend, on April 13rd, 1860, one Friday, day of Venus. Eh well! dear friends, Venus, at dawn from my birth, came to me smiling and we looked at ourselves lengthily in the eyes. Ah! beautiful sea-green and green eyes, the long hair color of sand. Venus was fair and beautiful, very smeared of scum, it fleurait good the salted sea. Well quickly I painted it, because it bit my brushes, puffed out my colors, coveted my painted shells, it ran on my mother-of-pearl, was forgotten in my conches, salivated on my brushes…”

His/her father, a Engineer English, will sink in the Alcoolisme and his/her mother, of Flemish stock, holds a souvenir shop, shells and masks of Carnaval. The last hours close to it, in a coloured and fantastic decoration, will influence its inspiration.

In 1877, it is registered with the Academy of the Art schools of Brussels, it binds friendship with Fernand Khnopff and Willy Finch and becomes acquainted with the Rousseau family which introduces it into the anarchistic and intellectual mediums capital. But it rises against the academism: “ I leave and without way of this box to short-sighted ” and decides retouner to settle in his mother.

Into the family home where, convinced single person, it will live there until in 1917, Ensor moves a cabinet in the roofs and starts to paint realistic portraits or landscapes inspired by impressionism. At that time, he will write: “ My fellow-citizens, of molluqueuse eminence, overpower me. Me am insulted, one insults me: I am insane, I am stupid, I am malicious, bad… ”. He starts one of his most creative periods then.

In 1883, Octave Maus founds the artistic Circle of avant-garde “the XX” and Ensor paints its first painting of masks and a Autoportrait to which he will add the “flowered hat later”. In 1889, the Entry of Christ in Brussels is refused with the Salon of the XX and it is question of excluding it from the Circle dint it is however one of the founding members. The group separates four years afterwards.

At 33 years, Ensor is already a man of the past. The Pointillisme and the symbolism seem to carry it. The first residences of Victor Horta symbolize a new art of living. He is not any more the dwarf Hop-Frog, buffoon of Edgar Allan Poe, less still Christ martyr.

Ensor will have to await the beginning of the next century, whereas it gave the best, to attend the recognition of its work: international exhibitions, royal visit, ennoblement - it is made baron -, Légion of honor. It from now on is called the “prince of the painters”, but it has an unexpected reaction vis-a-vis this recognition awaited too a long time and too late come to its taste: it gives up painting and exclusively devoted the last years of its life to the Musique.

He dies the November 19th 1949 and is buried in Mariakerke close to Ostend.

Its work

With its return to his/her mother, Ensor is fascinated by the light of the balneal city which inspires to him by the secret palenesses. Ensor carves the light and is fascinated by the capacity to recreate the things or to empty them of their familiar contents: “ the light deforms contour. I in it live an enormous world which I could explore, a new manner of seeing that I could represent. ”. Its tables, the white Cloud and the Roofs of Ostend , point out those of Turner, between modernity and avant-garde.

In the Mangeuse of oysters (1882), an immaculate tablecloth dazzles the foreground and fall quasi apart from the limits from the framework. In spite of the prestigious tables that one recalls (all the Flemish tradition of the 17th century), but also Vuillard, one refuses it with the Living room of Antwerp. The following year all its fabrics are rejected living room of Brussels, before being put at the variation of the Cercle of the Twenty. Ulcerated, Ensor rocks in the insanity. From now on, only against all, it covers and gash its fabrics of colors rougeoyantes symbolizing its aggravation.

It is between 1887 and 1893 that it paints its more beautiful paintings: the chromatic range takes fire in the middle of translucent mother-of-pearl of the ciels and the marines. Contemporary of the Van Gogh and the fabrics of Edvard Munch, its work contains the future revolutions of the Fauvisme to the movement Cobra.

It thus will highlight the grotesque aspects of the things, raised in a surreal way, and will be directed towards a radical, sarcastic vision of the world and insolente. As at Pieter Bruegel Old the or Jerome Bosch, the inanimate one breathes and shouts. Its obsessions and its fears play a manifest part in the threatening features which it allots to the utility objects, to the ghosts and the masks. The latter, starting from the Years 1880, dominate its inspiration and return to the Carnaval, this “world with back”, anarchistic where the social reports/ratios are shown by the absurdity. The crowd considered as a threat, a nightmare, will be the topic many fabrics. It maintains with her the ambivalent reports/ratios: solidarity towards the claims of the processions against the Church and the king but also, feared middle-class of a withdrawn man of the world.

Pluralist artist, it is it also in his style and his techniques: fabric, wood, paper, paperboard, spattle palette, fine brush or spatula…: “ Each work should present a new process ”, writes it with André de Ridder. It also launched out in engraving: I want to survive, and I think of solid coppers, with inalterable inks

With a purely food aim, it publishes etchings, famous “the beefsteaks of Ensor”, purely commercial works but which then made the pride of the merchants of memories. It carries out also caricatures, leaving free course to its gouailleuse liveliness, with a feature race, rabble and destroyer with the manner of Bruegel and Bosch. Its scenes of bathers buttocks to the air in laughing postures are chiefs of works of the kind.

List its works

nonexhaustive List

• Mangeuse of oysters , 1882, this table contrasts with later work.
• the Entry of Christ in Brussels , 1888-1889, an immense table which has the appearance of a proclamation, it illustrates in a carnavalesque mode and while being identified with Christ, her vision désabuée of the company. This work will trônera until the end of its life in its workshop.
• the white Cloud
• the Roofs of Ostend
• the Lady sinks , evokes the distress of his/her Mitche sister.
• the middle-class Living room and the Afternoon in Ostend translate the soporific atmosphere of the balneal city.
• the masks intrigued , 1930
• Ensor with the masks , on the topic of the masquerade, it denounces them through company.
• Masks and death, 1927
• Skeletons wanting to heat

Others

One knows less the writing of Ensor which would however deserve to be studied:

• My Writings , Labor, Northern Space
• Letters , Labor, Files of the Future

Ensor had a great influence on Michel de Ghelderode which was inspired for its theatrical works ( Masques ostendais , the Head office of Ostend etc…) by the masks and the figures of Ensor (Death, Devil, fishermen…).

The Cartoon of Jan Bucquoy the Ball of the dead rat and the film Camping Cosmos are directly inspired by the drawings of Ensor (Carnaval, Bal masked).

“ let us not stir up any more this large Flemish corpse. Today hollow mannequin, faded, animated by some aggressive locusts. Inopportune Flandrophyliseurs, delirious displaced désorienteurs, your interested excitations the whistling ones transferred remain without echo. The modern art does not have any more borders. With bottom the rembrunis acariâtres. Egoistic and sirupeux cheesemongers. Frontierized alarmists. Porkbutchers of Jerusalem. Sheep of Panurge. Ice-cold architects and mélassiers, etc Lives free, free, free art! … ” - an artistic reaction to the country of Narquoisie (1900), J. Ensor

Books

• Out of the ordinary Beautiful arts magazine, 49 pages.
• Emile Verhaeren, James Ensor
• Monograph published by the royal Museums of the fine arts of Belgium and illustrated by Michel Draguet, ED. Gallimard, 250 pages.

External bonds

• http://www.james-ensor.org