When DW visited James Ensor’s hometown of Ostend on a December afternoon, the flowers were nothing like the “beautiful and colorful flowers” the Belgian painter once called them. This town is located on the Flemish North Sea coast. Black clouds were drifting over the coast that stretches between the Netherlands in the east and France in the west.
Until its destruction during World War II, Ostend was known as the “Queen of Seaside Resorts.” Today, the coastal district is lined with modernist vacation apartment buildings. James Ensor lived in this charming, quiet town from his birth on April 13, 1860 until his death on November 19, 1949, with the exception of a few absences. However, he is about 100 km away in Brussels where he studied art for three years.
Inspired by my mother’s souvenir shop
Ensor’s house on Vlaanderenstrasse (Flandersstrasse) is located on the second row from the beach. On his ground floor in this souvenir shop, his mother sold stuffed crocodiles, colonial weapons, and carnival masks. This cabinet of curiosities has been authentically restored and is one of the main attractions in James’s Ensor home. It was reopened as a museum in 2020.
The tour takes you through past reproductions of his most important works and the Blue Salon, which also served as Ensor’s studio. It is a perfect introduction to the life of a lonely man who lived under one roof with his mother, aunt, and sister in Ostend. The family subsisted on the income from his six souvenir shops in Ostend. Three of his cars were owned by the Ensor family until his father’s death. Items sold here, as well as local carnival celebrations, were an important source of inspiration for James’ Ensor.
Fusion of carnival and reality
Ensor’s vividly detailed images of skeletons, marionettes, skulls, and carnival masks are at once legendary and morbid. Although Ensor was an atheist, he often referred to the Passion of Christ in his paintings.
His most famous painting, “The Entry of Christ into Brussels, 1889,” hangs as a reproduction in the Ensor House. The original is in Los Angeles and no longer travels. His painting “Calvary” shows that he did not think much about religion. The artist himself is shown hanging on the cross instead of Christ, and the inscription above says ENSOR instead of INRI.
The mask that made Ensor popular
Once considered an eccentric, he is now considered one of the symbols of modern art. Ensor House curator Xavier Toriko says that if he had not retreated into his shell in Ostend, his fame would be different than it is today. Artistically, he was far ahead of his contemporaries. “Ensor was an eccentric person who always walked around with his two small dogs on leashes and a yellow raincoat. People looked at the exceptionally tall artist from the side,” Toriko said at Ensor House. told DW.
The artist then looked back “idly,” as in his painting “The Bathers of Ostend,” which depicts summer vacationers seeking leisure by the seaside. Inspired by cartoons and graffiti, Ensor created a Brueghel-like panorama of (free) beach fun in 1890. As he closely observes the frolicking beachgoers, it becomes clear that Ensor has no interest in them. He depicted endless banalities, including dogs mating, a man groping a woman’s breasts, an overweight woman showing off her bare bottom, two young men kissing, and a floating obese figure. produce.
Ensor’s still life paintings are exhibited in Ostend.
From the beginning, objects sold at his parents’ souvenir shop appeared as motifs in his paintings. This also applies to his still lifes, as the exhibition “Rose, Rose, Rose a Mess You. James Ensor and Belgian Still Life, 1830-1930” currently on show in Ostend shows. it is obvious.Musee MuseumA few streets away from Ensor’s mansion, the museum is exhibiting 50 of his still life paintings for the first time in the context of his Belgian contemporaries.
“Ensor becomes a benchmark for other athletes. We can compare quality and at the same time show that Ensor had an environment and was not running alone in the desert,” said curator Bart Verschaffel. told DW. Ensor experimented with new styles and techniques until old age. Therefore, his still life paintings cannot be classified.
Changes in color palette around the end of the century
James Ensor had an early penchant for farce and chaos, depicting motifs that became his trademark, including seashells, skulls, skeletons, chinoiserie, and carnival masks in his carefully composed paintings. Ta. Ensor mixed them with typical Vanitas motifs such as playing cards, wilted flowers, and skulls. Common themes in Vanitas’ style of artwork revolve around death, mortality, the passage of time, and the futility of worldly pursuits. French Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism also inspired Ensor to experiment with the atmospheric phenomenon of sunlight.
This exhibition traces Ensor’s development from his dark-toned academic still lifes before 1890 to the influence of Impressionism. Towards the end of the 19th century, Ensor changed its color palette. He used pure colors like red, yellow, and blue and applied them thickly. In a vegetable still life, a red cabbage shines brightly next to a yellow lemon on a blue tablecloth. Ensor was concerned not with realistic representation but with the dynamics and individuality of the depicted object, which characterized all his still life paintings.
neither symbolist nor impressionist
Bert Verschaffel considers Ensor a “pioneer of expressionism”, especially for his provocative color combinations and powerful brushstrokes. According to Xavier Torico, the Ostend bourgeoisie reacted with horror to his daring still lifes, and art critics advised him to “return to tradition.” In a satirical spirit, he painted his canvases with bouquets of flowers and skulls with cigarettes in their mouths. Another of his magnificent motifs is a portrait of a flirting stingray. Almost obscenely, it extends its lower part towards the viewer. An open fish eye appears repeatedly. “Even though they’re dead, we’re still looking for them,” Verschaffel said.
In any case, Ensor did not have any friends when he boldly attacked the upper classes with his works and painted seashells as symbols of the female sex. Ensor lived under the same roof as her sister until her death, and she had an ambivalent relationship to sexuality. At first, no one bought his work, which tended toward the surreal. However, the excitement subsided and Ensor became popular. Among artists, he was long considered a leading star. Wassily Kandinsky, Edouard Vuillard, Erich Haeckel and Giuseppe Ungaretti are among the many who have traveled to Ostend to visit Ensor’s home.
The exhibition at MuZee traces the trajectory of Ensor’s artistic development, always making provocative comparisons with the motifs of his contemporaries. Ensor can hardly match the sophistication of Ostend’s sophisticated loner.
This article was originally written in German.