Experience

REPORT | Ensor 2024 exhibitions in Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus, MoMu, FOMU and KMSKA fine arts museum

Posted by Timothy on

Until January and February 2025 you can go and see James Ensor related exhibitions in four museums in Antwerp. under the umbrella name ‘Ensor 2024’ the Museum Plantin-Moretus, fashion museum ModeMuseum (MoMu), photography museum FotoMuseum (FOMU) and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, KMSKA) have put up temporary exhibitions.

As an Antwerp resident and Museum Pass holder, I went to see all of them.

Who was James Ensor?

James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX.

Ensor’s father, James Frederic Ensor, born in Brussels to English parents, was a cultivated man who studied engineering in England and Germany. Ensor’s mother, Maria Catherina Haegheman, was Belgian. 

Ensor himself wasn’t interested in studying and left school at the age of 15 to begin his artistic training with two local painters. From 1877 to 1880, he attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where one of his fellow students was Fernand Khnopff.

Ensor first exhibited his work in 1881. From 1880 until 1917, he had his studio in the attic of his parents’ house. His travels were very few: three brief trips to France and two to the Netherlands in the 1880s, and a four-day trip to London in 1892.

During the late 19th century, much of Ensor’s work was rejected as scandalous, particularly his painting ‘Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889‘ (1888–89). 

Ensor’s paintings continued to be exhibited and he gradually won acceptance and acclaim. In 1895 his painting ‘The Lamp Boy‘ (1880) was acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, and he had his first solo exhibition in Brussels.

By 1920 he was the subject of major exhibitions; in 1929 he was named a baron by King Albert, and was the subject of the Belgian composer Flor Alpaerts‘ ‘James Ensor Suite‘ and in 1933 he was awarded the band of the Légion d’honneur. 

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, after considering Ensor’s 1887 painting ‘Tribulations of Saint Anthony‘, now in MoMA’s collection, declared Ensor the boldest painter working at that time.

Even in the first decade of the 20th century, however, Ensor’s production of new works was diminishing, and he increasingly concentrated on music—although he had no musical training, he was a gifted improviser on the harmonium, and spent much time performing for visitors.

Against the advice of friends, he remained in Ostend during World War II despite the risk of bombardment. In his old age, he was an honored figure among Belgians, and his daily walk made him a familiar sight in Ostend.

He died there on 19 November 1949 at the age of 89. 

James Ensor.

1: ‘Ensor’s states of imagination’, Museum Plantin-Moretus 28.09.2024 – 05.01.2025

Museum Plantin-Moretus presents a remarkable graphic adventure with ‘Ensor’s States of Imagination‘. The young James Ensor experimented extensively with etching techniques for several years. He is not a born printmaker, but quickly develops a unique approach to the medium. With predecessors such as Rembrandt in mind, Ensor takes his own path. His studio becomes a testing laboratory for experiments in which chance sometimes plays a role.

‘Ensor’s States of Imagination’ brings together for the first time the most remarkable results of these experiments: preparatory drawings, copper plates and various states of prints. In this way, unexpected details emerge, depth is created in large crowds and new shapes take shape.

How did Ensor make prints? What techniques did he use? How did he experiment with this medium and which old masters inspired him? You will find out in this exhibition.

Ensor at Museum Plantin-Moretus.

2: ‘Masquerade, Make-Up & Ensor’, MoMu 28.09.2024 – 02.02.2025

In fashion museum MoMu, Ensor’s ideas about masquerade, (false) coquetry, seduction, deception, the artificial and the ephemeral are extended to today.

MoMu celebrates the painters of fashion: the craftsmanship and inexhaustible creativity of makeup and hair artists in a multimedia exhibition in which light, color, art, fashion and makeup meet.

Today, make-up and beauty have grown into a trillion-dollar industry that confronts people with their physical transience, imagined imperfections and existential fears. But makeup is also, like paint, a form of personal expression, artistic experimentation, joy and freedom. The exhibition explores how closely makeup is intertwined with many aspects of our humanity.

Ensor at MoMu.

3: FOMU 28.09.2024 – 02.02.2025

FOMU presents an exhibition by the American photographer Cindy Sherman, one of the most important living artists. Sherman is world famous for her satirical and socially critical portraits, for which she uses herself as a model. This is her first retrospective in Belgium, with both known and unknown works from leading collections worldwide.

Like Ensor, Cindy Sherman is known for her critical and ironic commentary on social conventions through masquerades. In her work Cindy Sherman asks critical questions about gender, stereotypes and age. Sherman’s broad spectrum of characters shows the artificial and fluid nature of identity, which seems more than ever to be a matter of choice, (self-)constructed and fluid.

FOMU joins ENSOR 2024 by translating the issues from James Ensor’s oeuvre into a contemporary artistic context.

Cindy Sherman exhibition at FOMU.

4: ‘Ensor’s wildest dreams. Beyond Impressionism’, KMSKA 28.09.2024 – 19.01.2025

The KMSKA – home to the largest Ensor collection in the world – shows how James Ensor broke the rules of art and then radically rewrote them. French Impressionism did not suit him. Everything that was creepy or grotesque, whimsical and funny, even more so. That’s where his and our ‘wildest dreams’ begin. 

Ensor’s ‘Oyster Eater‘ next to Édouard Manet, Claude Monet with ‘Adam and Eve‘, Ensor who competes with Edvard Munch or Emil Nolde. Visitors are treated to absolute masterpieces from renowned museums such as the MoMa and Metropolitan in New York, the Chicago Art Institute, Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery London.

The museum has the largest and most diverse Ensor collection in the world. Moreover, the Ensor Research Project is also housed here, the knowledge center around the modern master. The KMSKA is therefore the perfect place for the total picture that Ensor’s wildest dreams offer.

Ensor at the KMSKA.

So?

The Plantin-Moretus exhibition was quite interesting, showcasing an aspect of Ensor’s work I didn’t know. 

The MoMu exhibition was stretching it for me regarding to links to Ensor. But still, there were some.

But the Cindy Sherman exhibition at FOMU? No, that’s too far fetched. My guess is someone in power decided FOMU must participate in the Ensor 2024 scheme and the FOMU curators made their planned Cindy Sherman exhibition fit somehow. But no, I don’t see it. 

So if I’d make a list of priorities I’d say: go to KMSKA first. If you have time, go to Plantin-Moretus. Momu if you then have time left. And FOMU? Well yes, but not for Ensor. 

Art and museums in Antwerp