series of anniversary shows to reveal ‘the man behind the mask’

The Belgian artist James Ensor could also be simply recognisable for the macabre faces that so usually function in his works, however a significant new season of exhibitions and occasions in his residence nation goals to disclose “the person behind the masks”.

Commemorating the seventy fifth anniversary of Ensor’s loss of life, the year-long season will discover the work of the artist whose work, drawings and etchings often defy categorisation, crossing a variety of genres and kinds—from Symbolism to Expressionism, Fauvism to Surrealism and caricature. The organisers hope to spotlight the lesser-known areas of his work.

“For many individuals, skeletons plus masks equals Ensor, however there’s a lot extra to inform,” says Stefan Huygebaert, curator on the Mu.ZEE museum in Ostend and a co-organiser of the season’s launch exhibition Rose, Rose, Rose à mes yeux: James Ensor and Nonetheless Life in Belgium from 1830 to 1930 (16 December-14 April 2024). “This can be a main level we wish to make each with the Nonetheless Life exhibition and with the Ensor 12 months as an entire.”

Ensor was born in Ostend in 1860 to an English father and a Belgian mom, who owned memento retailers promoting seashore ephemera and the type of carnival masks that have been to determine often in his work. As an adolescent he studied on the Royal Academy of Wonderful Arts in Brussels, earlier than in 1883 co-founding the artists’ group Les Vingt alongside different Belgian painters, sculptors and designers together with Fernand Khnopff, Théo van Rysselberghe and Theo Hannon. Later, he returned to Ostend the place he would spend most of his life, portray and turning into lively within the city’s social and cultural life.

The in depth sequence of occasions celebrating the artist, supported by the Flemish authorities, will embody a complete of 11 main exhibitions happening throughout Ostend, Antwerp and Brussels, in addition to quite a few different associated occasions starting from live shows and literary occasions to kids’s theatre performances. Eating places in Ostend may also be introducing Ensor-themed menus for the event.

The Nonetheless Life present is a daring and impressive place to begin, that includes 73 works by Ensor alongside a variety of works by fellow Belgian artists together with René Magritte and Frans Mortelmans, in addition to lesser-known names. Most of the works are introduced collectively for the primary time, and embody loans from native and worldwide establishments, in addition to non-public collections.

The Ensor works on present are organized thematically. They vary from dark-palleted works from his very early years, equivalent to The Hat Stand (1876), painted when he was simply 16, and Roses (1892)—with its thick sludges of vivid pink and pink paint laid on with a palette knife—to the extra exact, managed works of the Thirties. These later works function the luminescent, mother-of-pearl backgrounds, chinoiserie, shells and masks for which he’s finest identified.

Additionally on present will probably be Magritte’s The Crimson Mannequin (1953), through which an outdated pair of lace-up boots have metamorphosed into human ft, bringing what Huygebaert describes as “life into nonetheless life” in the identical means that Ensor did along with his scenes that includes masks and human characters alongside inanimate objects.

Elsewhere, a sequence of exhibitions will open on the James Ensor Home, additionally in Ostend, together with James Ensor: Self-Portraits (21 March-16 June)—which can embody Ensor’s well-known Self-portrait with Flowered Hat (1883), through which he stares instantly out on the viewer whereas sporting a jaunty floral headpiece. James Ensor: Satire, Parody, Pastiche (19 September-12 January 2025), in the meantime, will showcase components of humour and caricature in Ensor’s work, together with by means of his commentaries on the hypocrisy of bourgeois social mores and artwork criticism.

On 28 September 2024, the Ensor season’s largest present, In Your Wildest Goals, will open at KMSKA (Royal Museum of Wonderful Arts Antwerp), operating till 18 January 2025. This will probably be Belgium’s most expansive Ensor exhibition because the retrospective KMSKA held in 1999. It should show his work alongside that of artists who impressed him, together with Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Claude Monet and Edvard Munch.

Different vital exhibits in Antwerp will embody Ensor’s Quest for the Gentle: Experiments on Paper on the Museum Plantin-Moretus (28 September 2024-5 January 2025), specializing in his drawing observe.

At Antwerp’s FOMU pictures museum, in the meantime, Cindy Sherman: Anti-Style (28 September-2 February 2025) will spotlight the way in which the American up to date artist has taken the themes of masking and self-representation—so central to Ensor’s observe—right into a Twenty first-century context. Works will embody Sherman’s Untitled (2003), the place we see her with a white clown face and pink nostril whereas sporting a Stetson hat.

Ensor is already an enormous star in his native Belgium—a reality maybe emphasised by King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium’s plans to go to the Nonetheless Life present this week. Inside the artwork world, his status is so pervasive that the time period “Ensorian” is often used as a creative reference. The curators behind this 12 months’s programme hope the anniversary will introduce him to a broader worldwide viewers and consolidate his place in European artwork historical past.

“Ensor is troublesome to pigeonhole and that makes him intriguing,” Huygebaert says. “His work has Impressionist options, pre-Impressionist options, and when it comes to language with phrases, there’s a pre-Dadaist component as effectively. Some would possibly even say his use of color is near Fauvism, and if you consider it, artists who’re troublesome to pigeonhole are sometimes those we keep in mind and discover most intriguing.”

Extra particulars on the total Ensor2024 programme will be discovered right here.