ENSOR JAMES

It was never a sure thing that James Ensor, the great Belgian painter ofmacabre and ghoulish scenes, would become a nationally revered figure.James Ensor was unusual in many ways. Apart from his training in Brussels,he spent his entire long life in Ostend, seemingly the opposite ofcosmopolitan. Later on he was expelled by the group Les XX for aparticularly controversial canvas: "The Entry of Christ into Brussels",which he had painted in 1889. An expressionist before the term was coined,he used the iconography of masks and skeletons to point up the essentialhorrors of life, and often underwrote his images with a sardonic gallowshumour. It has been said that he appropriated the subject matter of aBosch or Bruegel and revisioned them using the techniques of Manet orRubens. But this is to diminish his own unique take on both art andexperience. A genuine maverick in the way that so many Belgian artists are(lest we forget Magritte), James Ensor can claim a dark and distinctiveplace in the art histories of the last hundred years.