Ensor wildest dreams

KMSKA

Leopold de Waelplaats 1, Antwerp

28/09/2024 – 19/01/2025

James Ensor and me

2024 is the Ensor year. It is 75 years ago that Ensor died, on November 19, 1949. James Ensor was 89 years old! If you had asked me something about Ensor a year ago, I would have only known the basics. I must also honestly admit that I was absolutely not a fan of Ensor. But that was in the past. Not that I am now a complete fan, but I understand why he is called a master and a genius and that is largely due to this exhibition (and the exhibition in the Museum Plantin-Moretus, also this year).

Ensor and Courbet, Monet and Manet

My image of James Ensor was that of the strange loner in the attic who stayed in Ostend. Now it turns out that this is completely wrong! Ensor knew a lot about art history and certainly the new trends. For example, as a young artist he worked with realism like Courbet and later with the impressionism of Monet and Manet.

The exhibition features ‘Adam and Eve expelled from paradise’ from 1887, a work from the KMSKA collection. It hangs next to two works by Claude Monet. Sketches after Michelangelo are a little further away in a cupboard. You can see where Ensor gets his inspiration. While he claims that he learned nothing at the Academy… Ensor hated white statues (which were used as examples at the Academy). One of the teachers said that Ensor depicted the statues with frog skin and a wig. The white statue of Hercules in the stairwell cannot be moved, so a touch of Ensor was used…

Ensor and Rembrandt

In addition to the 90 works by Ensor in the exhibition, there are also 30 by other artists. Works that inspired Ensor. For example, there is the 100 guilder print by Rembrandt, which he very likely saw himself on one of his trips to Brussels and its ‘Prentenkabinet’.

James Ensor makes large-scale drawings, thus showing that drawings and paintings are equally important. In the first part of the exhibition, you will find the six-part series ‘The Aurelors of Christ or the Sensitivities of Light’. In the second part of the exhibition, a space has been specially set up for ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’. This work, consisting of 51 sheets from his sketchbook, comes to the exhibition especially from Chicago and will not be seen in Europe for a very long time afterwards.

Ensor and his favourite room

After his famous works, with skeletons, masks and ‘zwans’, a final room follows with a bathing carriage as its centrepiece. In this bathing carriage you can see a 3D version of the work ‘My Favourite Room’ from 1892. The setting is the living room in the parental home. The walls are covered with his works around his portrait from Isidoor Verheyen. His piano is also indispensable. Do you recognise the works featured in the bathing carriage on the walls of this exhibition room?

Guided Tours

You will see me there as a guide or to come and look at the works again. If you want a guided tour, you can always indicate this when booking or send me an email.