James Ensor is a painter’s painter. His practice was multifaceted, spanning drawing, etching, writing, performative monologues and the creation of a ballet—La Gamme d’Armour—in which he singlehandedly wrote the libretto, composed the music and designed the sets and costumes. He dealt with transgression, death, the grotesque, satire, the obscenities of organised religion and society. His exploration was unrelenting, often laced with wit and humour. He believed that art should lead to bliss; he had a peculiar perspective on life, which fed into every facet of his work. “What a wonderful, phosphorescent dream, to end in beauty, tenderly embraced by a passionate octopus!” he wrote in 1921.
The vast oil painting Christ’s Entry to Brussels in 1889 is undoubtably Ensor’s magnum opus. It is a reimagining of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, except in Ensor’s hands the holy city has been transformed into his own Belgium. Centre stage we find a golden haloed Ensor as Christ, riding through the boulevard on a donkey. It is a carnivalesque sight, a sea of bodies, heads, a marching band, caricatures and masks alternating in rapid succession. Red, gold, green and off-white sprawl in every direction. A banner with the words Vive la sociale—“Long live the social revolution”—hangs high overhead, a demonstration of Ensor’s solidarity with liberal social reform and a critique of Belgium’s powerful conservative institutions. There is parody here, too, of Pietro Lorenzetti’s 14th-century fresco of this same biblical event, seen in the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi.
There is a menacing nature to many of Ensor’s onlookers here, a gristly and bleak cast to the depiction of their flesh. Each head is grotesque, almost brutal; a cynicism pervades the expressions of those celebrating. The procession stampedes towards us, led by a comically neckless bishop.
More technically speaking, there is a tapestry-like quality to the surface of the painting. At times a rough application of colour—made up of daubs, dashes and dots—allows under-layers to remain partially exposed. We can see into the cracks and spaces between the colours, into an internal space beyond the image itself.
Yet this crowning achievement of Ensor’s—so steeped in Europe and its artistic traditions—does not reside in his homeland but at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, overlooking the sun-kissed, smog-soaked highways of La La Land.
It is both fitting and bewildering for this work to live in LA. On the one hand, it is a theatrical, cinematic portrayal of the heart and soul of Christianity, the bedrock of western values; where better to house a grand, satirical vision of the return of the Lord’s Only Son than in California, one of the least Christian states in America? Ensor-as-Christ fits the bill for a Hollywood blockbuster hero, both simultaneously revered and unbelievable.
On the other hand, the Wild West is full of treasure, LA perhaps a bit too preoccupied to come to a complete standstill to sit with a slow painting such as this. Christ’s Entry to Brussels in 1889 will no doubt endure the same struggle as practically all the people who come to the city with big hopes and dreams of making a name for themselves.
Personally, I would love to see Ensor’s grand vision of the return of Christ returned home to Ostend or Brussels. Ensor has a lot to give and much to teach, but to do so he needs to be seen; his work should be displayed where it commands attention. Just as we see so many people travelling to Rome simply to pay homage to Caravaggio, or to Arezzo to Piero della Francesca’s chapel, this painting alone could become a new point of pilgrimage for painters across Europe. Ensor’s opus has never been more necessary for contemporary artists; it’s about time it felt that way.
