Exhibit Poster "The Intrigue" James Ensor (Photo: Carrie Jacobs )
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James Ensor Exhibit - Sompo Museum [Closed]

Get in Halloween mood with dark, carnivalesque art

Archived content

This exhibition ended in November 2012.

Last updated: Jul 10, 2020

Get in the mood for Halloween with some highbrow art appreciation. Visit Tokyo’s Sompo Japan Museum of Art in Shinjuku to view the exhibit “James Ensor in Context - Ensor and the History of European Art from the Collection of the Royal Museum of Arts Antwerp” on display until November 11th. James Ensor (1860-1949) was a famous Belgian Modern artist, prolific and influential in the art word in general, and on the impressionist and surrealist genres specifically. I was captivated by Ensor’s carnivalesque mask and skeleton series; sardonic, bizarre and coming to you just in time for Hallow’s Eve and Day-of-the Dead.

Belgium’s annual carnival and its accouterments influenced the young Ensor. His family ran a souvenir shop in Ostend and sold carnival masks, which allowed him to start his collection of the surreal masks that feature in his work. The masks are grotesque, half animal-half human, with exaggerated features. Ensor rarely left Belgium and worked in his parent’s attic, adding to the fascinating creepiness that stills enshrouds him and his work. It was in this environment that he created elaborate sets with his brightly colored mask, hats, feathers, capes and skeletons, freeing him from the confines of painting live models.

A Skeleton Fighting Over a Hanged Man, on display at the exhibition, is absolutely intriguing, dark in mood and colorful on the canvas. It is devilish and playful at the same time, bringing to mind the devil and his band of sadistic misfits in the iconic Russian novel the “Master and Margarita”. In the same vein, The Intrigue (1890) and The Skeleton (1896), are included in the “James Ensor in Context” Exhibit.

Ensor is known for much more than his fascination with the bizarre. He was a pioneer of modern art and the avant-garde; his work was cutting-edge and had a significant impact on expressionism and surrealism. The exhibit at the Sompo is quite enlightening, as they have paired each of his works alongside a piece that inspired him and elicited his interpretation.

In Belgium the “Bal du Rat Mort” (or Dead Rat Ball), started by Ensor and his friends, is still celebrated each March in Ostend. What an experience it would be to visit Belgium for the Rio-esque carnival season and to take in his works at the Royal Museum of Arts Antwerp. That will have to go on my bucket list, but for now neither you nor I have to leave Tokyo to see the works of the influential artist and get a taste of the bizarre.

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