Ensor's living - detail
James Ensor – A special Belgian artist
These two photographs are a visit and tribute to the Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949), in his house in Oostende. These pictures were made in 2017 before the renovation of his house that was completed in 2020. In his days, Ensor was a typical example of the misunderstood artist and he was in many ways far ahead of his time. Especially his many masks refer to a complex story behind his paintings; this implied a layer of understanding the general public simply was not yet ready for. In my own eyes, his work always has some surrealistic element in it, while it is also quite critical for his fellow human beings, that hardly saw him standing as a serious artist. For this reason, his masks seem to reveal an unpleasant underlying reality that not many people in his own days were able to see, referring to the carnavalesque and grotesque travesty of life, a destructive mentality that, Ensor thought, also resulted into his lack of recognition as an artist.
His most famous painting was the ‘Entry of Christ into Brussels’ made in 1889, a huge painting which is still in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But a life size copy of the same painting was displayed in his house around the harmonium, imaged by my photo from 2017 (how the situation is today I do not know, haven’t yet been able to visit the renovated house/museum). He was no longer interested to show the painting after its completion and kept it in his living around his harmonium, just as my photo shows. As he was also an amateur musician, he wrote music for this painting and played it on his harmonium, so in the picture only Ensor himself is lacking for his musical support of the mass scene around him; quite surrealistic indeed. Decades later the painting was revealed to the general public. It is hardly a religious work, but again rather a humanistic critical work, referring to a critical aspect of human reality that destroys precious objects/subjects of adoration in paradoxal accidents of a nightmare that could as well happen today, albeit shaped by a different context but with the known unfortunate endings already visibly under construction.
However, for Ensor, his curriculum vitae actually ended rather well, because he became notoriously famous internationally and this in turn, led to his national recognition starting in 1929. So, the last 20 years of his life were -while artistically less productive- a blessing for the old man with all his unseen efforts, qualities and isolation during the earlier decades. In those days, Albert Einstein came by to see him and shake hands, that kind of stuff.
James Ensor was not the only artist that tried to link the painting to music. Having seen Ensor’s painting in the Getty in LA, Bob Dylan actually understood that his song “Desolation Row” in the album Highway 61 revisited, was about James Ensor’s painting (see further the link).
Anybody that visits the Belgian costal region and is interested in art should also visit the Ensor museum in Oostende.
Ensor's living - detail
James Ensor – A special Belgian artist
These two photographs are a visit and tribute to the Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949), in his house in Oostende. These pictures were made in 2017 before the renovation of his house that was completed in 2020. In his days, Ensor was a typical example of the misunderstood artist and he was in many ways far ahead of his time. Especially his many masks refer to a complex story behind his paintings; this implied a layer of understanding the general public simply was not yet ready for. In my own eyes, his work always has some surrealistic element in it, while it is also quite critical for his fellow human beings, that hardly saw him standing as a serious artist. For this reason, his masks seem to reveal an unpleasant underlying reality that not many people in his own days were able to see, referring to the carnavalesque and grotesque travesty of life, a destructive mentality that, Ensor thought, also resulted into his lack of recognition as an artist.
His most famous painting was the ‘Entry of Christ into Brussels’ made in 1889, a huge painting which is still in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But a life size copy of the same painting was displayed in his house around the harmonium, imaged by my photo from 2017 (how the situation is today I do not know, haven’t yet been able to visit the renovated house/museum). He was no longer interested to show the painting after its completion and kept it in his living around his harmonium, just as my photo shows. As he was also an amateur musician, he wrote music for this painting and played it on his harmonium, so in the picture only Ensor himself is lacking for his musical support of the mass scene around him; quite surrealistic indeed. Decades later the painting was revealed to the general public. It is hardly a religious work, but again rather a humanistic critical work, referring to a critical aspect of human reality that destroys precious objects/subjects of adoration in paradoxal accidents of a nightmare that could as well happen today, albeit shaped by a different context but with the known unfortunate endings already visibly under construction.
However, for Ensor, his curriculum vitae actually ended rather well, because he became notoriously famous internationally and this in turn, led to his national recognition starting in 1929. So, the last 20 years of his life were -while artistically less productive- a blessing for the old man with all his unseen efforts, qualities and isolation during the earlier decades. In those days, Albert Einstein came by to see him and shake hands, that kind of stuff.
James Ensor was not the only artist that tried to link the painting to music. Having seen Ensor’s painting in the Getty in LA, Bob Dylan actually understood that his song “Desolation Row” in the album Highway 61 revisited, was about James Ensor’s painting (see further the link).
Anybody that visits the Belgian costal region and is interested in art should also visit the Ensor museum in Oostende.