ENSOR’S ENDURING INFLUENCE

For contemporary artist Allison Schulnik, it was love at first sight. “I think I immediately knew this was one of my favorite paintings of all time. The intricacy and detail is so fascinating. I knew I had never seen anything like it and nothing would ever compare to it.”

That painting is James Ensor’s masterpiece Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (1888), a cornerstone of the Getty Museum’s post-Impressionist collection.

Measuring 8 x 14 feet, the work’s massive size makes an arresting impression for visitors entering the gallery. With rude outbursts of raw color and crude, thick accretions of paint, Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 holds a satirical mirror up to Belgian society. In the center is Christ, whose face Ensor based on his own, riding a donkey into modern Brussels. Surrounding him is a crowd so caught up in the boulevard’s carnival atmosphere that he is barely noticed amidst the parade of characters with garish masks and facial expressions that surge forward to the edge of the canvas.

Jostling inscriptions on banners, placards, and flags imitate the sloganeering of official civic and religious events as well as mass political demonstrations. “VIVE JESUS / ROI DE / BRUXLLES” (Long live Jesus, king of Brussels) strikes the celebratory tone of religious processions and triumphal royal entries, while “VIVE LA SOCIALE” (Long live the Social) refers to the burgeoning socialist and workers’ movements of the time. A fierce individualist, Ensor signals his cynical distance from all party politics—and

Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889, 1888, James Ensor. Oil on canvas. The J. Paul Getty Museum. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels 14 15 quickly drawing admirers. Abhorring all The Madness of Crowds allows for a crazy kind of objectivity “When I first saw Ensor’s work as a manner of artistic fads, Ensor jettisoned about the world around you. You can’t teenager, I immediately felt a kinship his earlier naturalism and dramatically The crowds in the painting are often see something clearly if you’re too and knew exactly what he was trying to changed direction over the course of the described as “claustrophobic” and close to it.” do. I was struggling to find a method mid-to-late 1880s, ultimately resulting “uncomfortable.” Lipton describes of expressing myself that wasn’t in Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889. how Ensor elicits these reactions Artistic Influence Surrealism or realism. I was trying to through technique: express very deeply felt emotions, and For Lipton and Schulnik, Ensor was a Chief among Ensor’s indictment of Ensor gave me the key to the type of “As an artist who is very aware of the source of inspiration as they launched the “dogmatic fanfares” that Les XX iconography necessary to do so.” had started to champion was his technical aspects of creating three- their own careers. The proof of Ensor’s disdain for the optical theories and dimensional space on a flat plane, the influence on Schulnik is in the paint. As artists continue to study Ensor’s systematic “pointillist” technique of painting makes me as uncomfortable work, their understanding of him “Ensor has been such a huge influence Neo-Impressionism. In as a person with Obsessive Compulsive evolves and reveals the work’s Christ’s Entry into on my work. I’m often, whether , Ensor depicted his contempt Disorder would be with a framed contemporary resonance. Brussels consciously or subconsciously, stealing by including figures vomiting and picture hanging lopsided on the from him. He left such a wealth of defecating over a double X on a balcony. wall,” she explains. “His use of skewed “Maybe he was an escapist masked ideas and textures to be mesmerized The painting might even be considered perspective and the feeling that as a political cartoonist, bored with by. His use of unbridled caricature, Ensor’s defiantly expressionistic riposte everything is crushed up against the reality, and celebrating a no-holds- rebellious satire, and brilliantly to Seurat’s front of the painting gives the viewer barred, wild-man vision,” surmises A Sunday on La Grande exaggerated, at times cartoon-like (1884), which Les XX exhibited the sense of being trampled by the Schulnik. “But something tells me Jatte subjects, are unsurpassed. I am often to much fanfare in 1887. Ensor’s work horribly inhuman procession.” he was far smarter than myself, building upon human frames, but makes clear his deep pessimism, and and loved exposing truths. Illusion An Artist in Isolation reveling in brushstroke and overly his Symbolist approach attacks religion, and exaggeration are far more accentuated details, like he did.” truthful sometimes. I know I’m more imperialism, and nationalist pageantry. Ensor proudly adopted the mantle of comfortable with illusion.” defiant outlier and persecuted genius, Lipton’s work evokes Ensor’s characters, Bone China, 2009, Laurie Lipton. Charcoal and pencil on paper. © LLipton An Artist’s Artist spending a large part of his life isolated and she felt a connection to the artist This exhibition was co-organized with the Art from dogmatic thinking in general— “To this day, Ensor’s art continues to Long considered an “artist’s artist,” Ensor in his studio located above his mother’s early on. Many of her pieces are direct Institute of Chicago, where it will be on view through a placard that reads “FANFARES baffle in its psychological complexity, continues to be admired and studied novelty shop filled with the macabre tributes and responses to Ensor’s work. from November 23, 2014 to January 25, 2015. DOCTRINAIRES / TOUJOURS RÉUSSI” internal contradictions, and sheer today by contemporary artists such masks that were sold for Carnival. (Dogmatic fanfares always succeed). eccentricity,” explained exhibition as Schulnik and Laurie Lipton whose Schulnik observes that self-awareness curator Scott Allan. “In a few short work follows his vision of a topsy-turvy, and self-understanding are key, and both Through September 7, Ensor’s years, a breathtaking trajectory took menacing world. We asked them to are bred through temporary isolation. masterwork will be on view alongside the artist from academic naturalist tell us about Ensor’s enduring legacy, “I think connecting with yourself is an more than one hundred of his paintings, to something so biting, defiant, and his influence on their work, and their important thing for an artist to do. It’s drawings, and prints in the exhibition bizarre that it still defies categorization reactions to Christ’s Entry into Brussels the only way to be authentic, and the The Scandalous Art of James Ensor, and eludes rational analysis.” in 1889. offering a vivid picture of how the artist only way to ever hope to connect with arrived at the painting that is considered A decisive moment in Ensor’s career Lipton begins by describing how the another human or entire audience for the pinnacle of his career. Even among came in 1883 when he became a work reveals its dissonance through that matter,” she says. “It’s a slippery his Impressionist contemporaries, with founding member of Les XX (The careful observation: slope between an artist’s isolation and whom he was often at odds, Ensor was Twenty), an association of avant- complete self-absorption, which seems considered avant-garde. He began his garde artists. He quickly emerged as “From a distance the painting looks like unhealthy. No one said artists were career by working in a conventional, the leader of a more radical faction a childlike carnival in sweet pastel hues. healthy though. Clearly Ensor lived for naturalist style, but by the 1880s his of the group that drew criticism for The closer you get, the more the tones his work and it shows.” work became increasingly satirical, the stylistic daring of their work. Just begin to clash, the perspective tilts For Lipton, distance from the world at bizarre, and fantastical. Christ’s Entry as Ensor secured his position as a every wrong way, and the people large can fuel creativity and innovation. into Brussels in 1889 represents an leader of a new generation of Belgian become the stuff of nightmares. Everything is ‘off’ in this picture; the elaborate assembly of scathing social modernists, he saw his preeminence “I think it is necessary for an artist composition, the color, and the crowd. commentary paired with a breakthrough threatened by a number of competing to dig deep within to find their I feel the urge to grab a pencil and painting style that features grotesque trends that Les XX was showcasing in unique vocabulary/iconography. Total correct the unwieldy vanishing points figures in stunning colors. its exhibitions—like Georges Seurat’s immersion in the self and subjectivity Neo-Impressionism—and which were and cockeyed horizon line.” Alison Schulnik surveys the work in her Los Angeles studio.

16 17