James Ensor, Occasional Modernist
Ensor's artistic and social ideas and of the interpretation of his art
By (author) Herwig Todts
In the course of the twentieth century, under the influence of the increasing success of Modernism, a misleading image of James Ensor emerged. One might even say that Ensor was confined within a modernist ‘straitjacket’. In order to understand the artist’s motivations, this book follows the advice given to the art critic Andre De Ridder by Ensor himself in 1930: ‘I recommend you re-read Les Ecrits de James Ensor, where I explain my research and defend my ideas’. Ensor’s writings can roughly be divided into two categories – his letters and ‘les ecrits’, encompassing his journalistic work, satirical exhibition reviews, comical speeches, words of thanks and praise, and open letters in brochures. The analysis of Ensor’s writings is no small task, for he gave little attention to structure and coherence, and employed a complex ‘wondermiraclelikefulistic’ language – archaisms, neologisms, staggering vitriolic rants, hyperboles, from which the essence of his personal views and beliefs is often difficult to distill. Nevertheless, his writings are a crucial source of knowledge on his opinions on Christian faith, rationality, hypocrisy, the dangers of an emerging Flemish nationalism, animal cruelty, the destruction of natural beauty and ancient monuments, and a number of other topics. Ensor believed art ought to be a source of ‘ravishment’ for both the viewer and the artist, and continually defended the right of the latter to create an incoherent oeuvre, experimenting with ever new and diverse ‘manieres’, styles, subjects, techniques and genres. This book explores the artist’s writings, ideas and works in greater depth than they have hitherto enjoyed in art-historical scholarship.
- By (author) Herwig Todts
Other Titles in this Series
Private Collectors in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent, ca. 1780-1914
Between Public Relevance and Personal Pleasure
Volume 9
The Aesthetics of Reaction
Tradition, Faith, Identity, and the Visual Arts in France, 1900-1914
Volume 5
Similar Books
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie
The Arts and Archaeology of Funerary Cultures in Islam
Volume 10.0
Die (Ent-)Politisierung der Kunstwissenschaft/(De)Politicising Art Studies
Marxistische Traditionslinien seit 1968/Marxist Traditions since 1968
Volume 27
Gender in Gandharan Art
Representations and Interactions in the Buddhist Context (1st-4th centuries CE)
