In Your Wildest Dreams: Ensor Beyond Impressionism and Ensor’s States of Imagination
Joe Lloyd | The Burlington Magazine | 1st January 2025
Living in coastal Ostend, Ensor would keenly observe the town’s annual carnival. While disapproving of the bourgeoise revellers he was so captivated by their ghoulish masks that they overtook his paintings and eventually made his name. Placing ensembles of colourfully masked figures in mundane settings made them even more disturbing, leading some critics to acclaim him as a “proto-surrealist”. Sadly he stayed with mask motifs too long – what was “sinister” in 1890 was, by the new century, “tame”.