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15/12/2005

James Ensor

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Retrospective

Curated by Ingrid Pfeiffer.

There is hardly another late 19th- or early 20th-century artist’s work that is as bizarre, sarcastic, deep, and rich in interpretive possibilities as that by the Belgian master James Ensor. His paintings peopled by masks, skeletons, and imaginary creatures, as well as his theatrical still lifes have become unmistakable symbols of the absurdity of existence and influenced both German Expressionists and French Surrealists. Especially when seen in the light of present-day trends, such as the renaissance of the figurative and the narrative, the simultaneousness of painting and drawing, or manifestations of the grotesque and comic, Ensor’s work obtains new topical relevance. With eighty masterpieces on canvas and the same numbers of works on paper from international museums and private collections, the exhibition presents key works from each of his creative periods.

The exhibition “James Ensor" is sponsored by Verein der Freunde der Schirn Kunsthalle e. V. and by the Flemish Community, the Flemish Minister for Culture, Youth, Sport and Brussels Affairs.

Max Hollein, Director of the Schirn: “The retrospective at the Schirn is the first comprehensive Ensor exhibition in Germany since 1972. While the artist was presented as a 19th-century painter then, the approach is different today. The show at the Schirn highlights Ensor as a modern master who, in his non-conformity, has influenced numerous artists of later generations to date."

Ingrid Pfeiffer, curator of the exhibition: “Ensor’s work is full of different themes and styles which are more strongly related to each other as one might think at first sight. The thread running though the exhibition is the eccentricity of the artist whose incessant experimenting, playing with models from art history, and excessive imagination still strike us as surprisingly modern."

James Ensor (1860 Ostend - 1949 Ostend) already became a legend in his lifetime. In his later years, the rooms above his mother’s curiosity shop in Ostend, Belgium, where he lived his whole life long, became a place of pilgrimage for artists, collectors, and museum peopRetrospectivele who visited him to pay his respects to him. There, amidst his paintings and drawings, he received Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Wassily Kandinsky, and others. Besides Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch, Ensor is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the “avant-garde of the North."

Ensor’s work reveals a deliberate, pronounced pluralism of styles. It is dominated by a simultaneity of forms, by paraphrases and returns to former themes and motifs, and by a permanent questioning of his own universe as an artist. Yet, the fact that Ensor repeatedly re-explored certain subjects has helped to establish an attitude within traditional art historical research according to which he had already developed all essential subjects such as masks, death, and self-reflection by about 1900 and only produced few innovative and artistically important things after. Even the more recent retrospectives in Europe (Zurich 1983, Brussels 1999) presented merely a small selection of his late works.

The exhibition at the Schirn not only includes more of the artist’s late work but, by choosing a thematic rather than a chronological form of approach, also discloses that the breaks in Ensor’s work are less significant than maintained so far. Arranged according to themes and motifs like “self-portraits," “death and masks," “pictures of Christ," “landscapes," “still lifes," “theater and music," and “caricatures," the show presents a selection of central works from all periods of production. This elucidates Ensor’s concept, introduces earlier and later works as parts of conclusive series, and unfolds new contexts. As the various media were mutually dependent on each other for the artist, the exhibition also shows paintings, drawings, and etchings next to each other.

Though James Ensor called himself a “painter of masks" it would be wrong to reduce his work to this aspect. Nevertheless, the works which show groups of grotesque and distorted mask faces surrounding a skull or an entire skeleton, number among his most famous achievements. By depicting skeletons, Ensor took up classical motifs of the Flemish tradition, such as the medieval danse macabre which was to remind people of their mortality. Ensor’s alter ego death has nothing degenerate though but is mostly portrayed with humor and irony. The masks harassing him are not only a manifestation of Ostend’s absurd carnival tradition which is still alive today but also stand for the petty bourgeois who rejected the artist and scoffed at him. To this day, Ensor’s fame as “an astonishing colorist" is mainly based on the work group of his mask pictures for which he relied on bold contrasts of unmixed colors for the first time.

Ensor also integrated masks and skulls in his still lifes for which his family’s souvenir shop in Ostend served as a kind of everyday “art and curiosities chamber" that provided a motley of shells, chinaware, keepsakes, stuffed animals, and manifold bric-a'-brac. His entire work, but above all the group of his still lifes, clearly mirrors this bizarre world.

Ensor’s self-portraits constitute another work group. His early work confronts us with portraits of the young artist classically positioned at his easel with a flower hat as an ironical note on his great model Rubens. Equally capturing are his self-portraits as a melancholy Pierrot or as Christ being crucified by his critics several times - an unequivocal reaction to the years of slating and disapproval the artist suffered before gaining acclaim only in his late years.

Ensor directed his attention not only to people but also to landscapes. Some of his early sea pictures evidence both the fact that light was one of his crucial themes and the degree of the famous English painter William Turner’s influence on him. Ensor himself emphasized that he spent all his life by the sea in Ostend: “I live by the sea," he said, and “The sea is my dearest inspiration." In his sea landscapes, Ensor created atmospheric pictorial spaces which became increasingly abstract and works of “pure painting." When he dedicated himself to the carnival on the beach of Ostend again in his late years, he also returned to the infinite horizon with a high sky arching above it.

Besides the various subjects Ensor explores, it is the range of his artistic innovations that characterizes his brilliant paintings, his drawings, and his significant etchings. His compositions strike us because of their theatrical, stage-like designs, presentations of pictures within pictures, and panorama-like pictorial landscapes framed by people watching that he characteristically positioned along the edges. His unusual perspectives and views that offer just a section from a certain scene show quite unexpected present-day pictorial solutions.

The exhibition is presented under the patronage of the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany Horst Kohler and His Royal Highness Albert II, King of the Belgians.

Catalog: “James Ensor." Edited by Ingrid Pfeiffer and Max Hollein, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

Image: The great Judge, 1898

Opening: December 16

Schirn Kunsthalle
Romerberg - Frankfurt
Hours: Tue, Fri-Sun 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., Wed and Thur 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Admissions: 7 euro, reduced 5 euro, family ticket 15 euro.

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