Product Description
Coinciding with renewed interest in James Ensor, this catalogue raisonne comes as an essential and definitive volume for Ensor buffs and all serious libraries of modern art. A legend in his own lifetime, Ensor (1860-1949) was--alongside Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch--a fearless independent whose work led directly to the development of German Expressionism and French Surrealism. Ensor achieved fame as the "painter of masks," and for his bizarre still lifes and grotesque carnival scenes, in harsh, contrasting, brilliant colors, evolving out of the traditional Flemish dance of death. Now, the reader can explore the Belgian painter's oeuvre thoroughly, in this opulently illustrated, full-color, slipcased catalogue raisonne. A comprehensive illustrated chronology offers additional details about the artist's life and work, and forms an integral part of this splendid, highly valuable contribution to art historical research, ensuring the legacy of a great artist who continues to inspire contemporary art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

James Ensor
Terrific book of exceptional artist. Didn't get to see recent exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC so this book of it has excellent reproductions of the works .

A Surrealist before the Surrealists
This book is the catalogue for the current show at Moma. Being a lover of Ensor's gift as a colorist, I was a little disappointed with the quality of the reproductions: many of them are thumbnail sizes and, as far as the color plates of the exhibited works are concerned, they are somewhat dull and faded. Besides, Ensor's masterpiece, "The Entry of Christ in Brussels" (owned by the Getty Museum, which did not release it for the exhibition) is reproduced here in a thumbnail size, which completely anihilates the effect the huge painting usually has on the viewer. Even if it was not part of the exhibition, it deserved a better reproduction in the catalogue.

The value of this book mainly resides in the quality of the essays, which tackle such topics as Ensor as the painter of a fantasmagoric modern life, Ensor confronted to art history, Ensor and his own image, Ensor's vision of nature, etc.

In more than 10 years, this has been the first book in English on James Ensor, an unjustly overlooked figure of XXth art and a painter who inspired many artists after him, not least the Surrealists.

Fine Monograph on major artist
Difficult to review this book as I have read it while on an extended stay in NYC wherein the exhibition which it accompanies is being shown at the Museum for Modern Art. Ihave been able to spend substantial time with the pictures herein discussed. As to Ensor, I would say only that the range of his subject matter and methods is customarily neglected in favor of concentration on his "mask" pictures and the light palette he adopted for their presentation. In fact, he was creative in paint, drawing and prints, and a master in each as well as being among the best in satire. Unfortunately, there appear to be few, if any, other major retrospectives in the United States leaving most to rely upon the available texts.
For the many who will not get to see this exhibition, although it seems to be drawing an appreciable audience from around the world, I believe the monograph will serve as a useful orientation to his work. There are about half dozen essays by noted experts which are valuable and a broad range of reproductionsin color and black/white. Nearly all pictures colored in the original are colored in the book. Discussion of thepictures is enlightening while the picturesprovide good illustration for the essays since their exact locations in the volume are precisely designated.
Ishould note that the exhibition limits itself to two decades (of his very long life and career). The monograph provides sufficient information on the other years to serve the average person's needs, particularly since, like his French contemporary, Vuillard, he never married and lived most of his life traveling little and resident with his family
For those unfamiliar with his work, the volume, at Amazon's price, will be a bargain introduction with sufficient depth to intrigue and with a lack of technical or pretentious language which will please. Those with more familiarity with his work should find it a profitable review of his most productive years.
The book was produced by the Museum and meets the high standard that they set.

Ensor Uber Alice B. Toklas
James Ensor is perhaps the most underrated artist of all the late 19th to early 20th century artists. His work progressed from (Northern) Impressionism to become the most innovative, least understood work of the times. His paintings of Masks as subconscious symbolism prefigured psychoanalysis
by decades,his use of painting as social critique was at least 20 years ahead of German Expressionism, his use of "outsider" idioms were again decades ahead of Art Brut, his work inspired late 20th century greats such as Philip Guston and Jim Nutt. This is the most comprehensive book that I have seen documenting the life and works of this Belgian master, Susan M. Canning's
essays are very insightful(as are all the essays) and the quantity and quality of the reproductions make this book indispensable for any library of Modern Art. ... Read more

Product Description
Early in his career, Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949) broke away from Impressionism, rejecting its prettiness in favor of an original, highly dramatic style. Incorporating elements of satire, caricature, masquerade, and the grotesque, Ensor was a sharp observer of his social and political milieu and a skilled controversialist. Bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and not easily fitting into one particular movement or group, his drawings are increasingly valued for their innovative subjects and techniques, as well as the strong social criticism at their heart.

This volume, published to accompany the first major New York exhibition of Ensor's drawings, includes more than one hundred plates, most of them in color. Essays by Susan M. Canning (College of New Rochelle), Marcel De Maeyer (University of Ghent), and Robert Hoozee (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), along with a chronology by Xavier Tricot, serve to place Ensor's drawings in the context of both artistic and historical developments of his time and his oeuvre.

Catherine de Zegher is executive director of the Drawing Center in New York City and cocurator (with Robert Hoozee) of the exhibition "Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor."

Distributed for the Drawing Center ... Read more

Product Description
It was never a sure thing that James Ensor, the great Belgian painter of macabre 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 of cosmopolitan. Later on he was expelled by the group Les XX for a particularly 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 essential horrors of life, and often underwrote his images with a sardonic gallows humour. It has been said that he appropriated the subject matter of a Bosch or Bruegel and revisioned them using the techniques of Manet or Rubens. But this is to diminish his own unique take on both art and experience. A genuine maverick in the way that so many Belgian artists are (lest we forget Magritte), James Ensor can claim a dark and distinctive place in the art histories of the last hundred years. ... Read more

Product Description
The brash young artist James Ensor painted Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 during a period of extraordinary artistic and political fomentation in his native Belgium. It is one of the most dazzling, innovative, and perplexing paintings created in Europe in the late nineteenth century, rivaling any work of its period in audacity and ambition. Huge in scale, complex in design and execution, and brimming with social commentary, the startling canvas presents a scene filled with clowns, masked figures, and--barely visible amid the swirling crowds--the tiny figure of Christ on a donkey entering the city of Brussels. This insightful volume examines the painting in light of Belgium's rich artistic, social, political, and theological debates in the late nineteenth century, and in the context of James Ensor's exceptional career, in order to decipher some of the painting's messages and meanings. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Norbet Hostyn,curator of the Museum of Fine Art in Ostend, has produced a fascinating and comprehensive account of the world and ideas of the by turns celebrated and vilified James Ensor (1860-1949). He offers an illuminating introduction to the artist's life and oeuvre, accompanied by a selection of fifty representative works, each comprising a large, colour reproduction and an art-historical commentary. It is the story of a striking and controversial painter who was initially the focal point of a new school, but later became an eccentric with a finely tuned sense of image and business. ... Read more

Product Description
A sharp send-up of authoritarian hubris--in which bloated, self-satisfied, bare-bottomed public officials excrete a foul diet literally to be swallowed by the masses--the etching "Doctrinal Nourishment" (1889/95) is one of Belgian artist James Ensor's most politically scathing works. Through a close reading of this print in its political context, curator Theresa Papanikolas traces how Ensor's youthful immersion in Belgian anarchist circles led him to develop violent and grotesque imagery through which he hoped to expose the incompetence of unchecked authority and indict a society in crisis. This well-illustrated volume also puts Ensor's work into art-historical context by juxtaposing examples of French Romanticism, German Expressionism and Dada by a variety of artists, including Honore Daumier, Felicien Rops, George Grosz and Otto Dix. ... Read more