Page 40 - Studio International - September 1971

has his talons in Christ's eyes. It is a gruesome
vision of suffering, made the more dramatic by
a masterly use of light. A later drawing leaves
no doubt about the true subject-matter of such
work. ENSOR and not INRI is written above the
cross, and the lance that pierces the artist's side
has Fétis written on it, the name of one of
Ensor's cruellest critics. He was therefore using
Christian stories to embody descriptions of his
own agonies.
If Ensor had not been mad before he was
certainly going mad now and, as often happens,
his madness was accompanied by a sometimes
childish obsession with excrement and sex.
Increasingly his work becomes the record of a
personality in decline, and the melancholy that
never left him became a virulent pessimism
which made him see the world decaying round
him. 'Our bodies begin to fail from our loth
year', he wrote, 'we are fated to descend and not
to rise...' Such a depressed state of mind added
urgency to his image-making and what
Baudelaire wrote of de Quincey seems equally
apposite of Ensor : 'The entire phantasmagoria,
beautiful and poetic though it was as a vision, 3 James Ensor
was accompanied by a heartfelt fear and Les Masques Scandalises
blackest melancholy.' 4 James Ensor
In 1887 with two great works, The Le Christ Agonisant
Tribulations of Saint Anthony (Museum of 5 James Ensor
Modern Art, New York) and the Fall of Le Foudroiement des
Rebellious Angels (Antwerp Museum), Ensor Anges Rebelles
returned to painting and to colour. The Fall is
an achievement which in its breadth and manner His palette had lightened and brightened to the Fanfares Doctrinaires, toujour reussi (sic)), his
of realization overshadows even The Entry of extent where it was more a tool for the hatred of humanity and especially of the mob,
Christ into Brussels. It is not a large picture description of emotion than nature, and he had his feelings of persecution (the easily-overlooked
(108 x 132 cm) but has the energy and drama fully developed an apparatus of symbol and Christ is, of course, Ensor himself), and his
of a great machine. Its power comes almost allegory wide enough to dramatize his traumas pessimism. It is also, it seems to me, a political
entirely from its half-realized quality, from the and obsessions. He had plenty of these to picture. Although Ensor was not a Socialist (his
way in which the complex tissue of brushmarks dramatize. The terrible death of his father made view of humanity was far too negative for that),
of varying lengths and thicknesses now comes his mental state decline even more. He now the strikes in the Belgian mines which paralysed
into focus as figures, horses and streams of firmly believed that the rest of his family was the country from 1886 to 1888 provide the
celestial light, and now returns to chaotic against him, felt suffocated by the narrowness contemporary background against which the
abstraction. If Ensor had not painted other of his existence in Ostend, but was unable to jubilant mob should be viewed.
pictures on similar themes as audacious as this escape in any way other than by painting. Like The Entry of Christ into Brussels marked the
one, it would have been tempting to dismiss Munch, Ensor produced his finest work when height of Ensor's notoriety and the final break
The Fall as a fluke, as a glorious aberration. But under the strongest psychological pressure. between the artist and the world. He submitted
it was not a fluke, and it is difficult to understand Ensor had The Entry of Christ into Brussels it to Les XX, the avant-garde organization in
how Ensor was able to pull off such a precocious in mind for at least three years before starting Brussels, of which he was a member, and which
and individual achievement at that time. He was work on it. The etchings on the life of Christ was one of the most advanced institutions on the
unaware of Van Gogh, the only other artist are obviously preparations for it, as is a large continent at that time. Les XX had often shown
anywhere near as advanced a colourist, and drawing, in the Ghent museum, which, although more discernment than similar organizations in
although The Fall is strikingly like many late obviously an early study for the final painting Paris, had shown Seurat's Grandejatte in 1887,
Turners, there is no evidence that Ensor (it was done in 1885), differs markedly from the and was to show Gauguin in 1889, and Van Gogh
actually saw any of them. oil. Slogans play a more important role in the and Cézanne in 189o. But the Entry was too
Other affinities with English art, best seen drawing, the figures are not masked and appear much for them.
not here but in the etchings and drawings, are in most cases to be portraits of actual people. Ensor's art now became increasingly one of
easier to recognize and verify. Ensor's version The drawing is strongly vertical, while the personal resentment and bitterness. Not only
of the grotesque owes something to Bruegel, painting is horizontal, which makes the unwanted in Brussels but also oppressed by the
Bosch and Callot (one etching, Le Pisseur, is ambiguous perspective of the latter even more shrewish bickering of his mother and aunt in
taken directly from a Callot) but it owes more marked. The original idea for the unusual Ostend, Ensor even decided in 1893 that he
to English caricature in general and to Hogarth subject probably came from Balzac's story would give up painting altogether and sell off
and Rowlandson in particular. Ensor saw Jesus Christ in Flanders, which Ensor had read, the entire contents of his studio. Fortunately
reproductions of both artists' works in books but the final version of the painting has almost no one was interested. Ensor found it difficult
shown him by his father and even did versions nothing to do with the story. It is a summation to understand why he had been rejected. He was
of them. of Ensor's art, a mixture of his sarcastic wit aware of his achievement, knew that he had
By 1887 then, Ensor had all the equipment (some of the banners, held high like palms, created a new vocabulary for the description of
necessary for the creation of his masterpiece. read: Phalange Wagner fracassant, and peculiarly modern experiences. 'Well before
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