James Ensor
James Ensor

Author: Xavier Tricot

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300253979

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A Belgian of British origin, James Ensor (1860-1949) is without doubt one of the most complex artists of the second half of the nineteenth century. Without masters or disciples, the completely independent artist broke free from the era's artistic currents as he shifted cultural markers and tested the boundaries of visual arts. When he painted his first pieces, Impressionism reigned over Europe. In the same way as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch, James Ensor offers a radically novel vision without equivalent in the modern art of the late nineteenth century. Although James Ensor draws his inspiration from the Bible and historical writings, scholarly reference books and popular magazines, his own fantasies constantly feed his visual language. Unquestionably, carnival masks and skeletons have become his emblems. The concurrently enigmatic and prolific artist drew, engraved and painted still lives, portraits, landscapes, caricatures, as well as fantasy and religious scenes. A true anarchist at heart, he broached satirical, political, religious and historical themes with equal ease. Articulated like a biography, this book based on excerpts from unpublished letters offers an insight into the unusual life of an artist and his greatest masterpieces.

James Ensor, 1860-1949
James Ensor, 1860-1949

Author: Ulrike Becks-Malorny

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13:

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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.

James Ensor
James Ensor

Author: Patricia G. Berman

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9780892366415

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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.

James Ensor
James Ensor

Author: Luc Tuymans

Publisher: Royal Academy Books

Published: 2016-12-13

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9781910350454

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The theatrical, the satirical and the macabre come together in arresting fashion in the art of James Ensor. He was very successful in his lifetime and exerted considerable influence on the development of Expressionism. An innovator and an outsider, he rebelled against the conservative art teachings of the late 19th century academy in Brussels, drawn instead to the avant-garde salons where his radical creative vision could thrive. The imagery of masks and carnivals runs through much of his work, from vibrant colours and flamboyant costumes to an ever-present sense of drama and satire. Curated by Luc Tuymans, this exhibition will present a truly original body of work, seen through the eyes of one of today's leading painters. Tuymans will look back at Ensor's singular career through a selection of his most bizarrely brilliant and gloriously surreal creations. Exhibition: Royal Academy of Arts, London, Great Britain (29.10.2016 - 29.01.2017).

Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd
Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd

Author: Julian Palacios

Publisher: Plexus Publishing

Published: 2015-06-29

Total Pages: 841

ISBN-13: 0859658821

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Syd Barrett was an English composer and purveyor of some of the most intriguing music ever written. Famous before his twentieth birthday, Barrett led the charge of psychedelia onstage at London's famed UFO club. With a Fender Telecaster and a primitive Binson echo unit, Barrett liberated the guitar from being, in critic Simon Reynolds' words, 'a riff machine, and turned it into a texture and timbre generator.' His inspired celestial flights of improvisation, and his more structured and whimsical short songs indicated a mind of unusual inventiveness. Chief in Barrett's mind was a Zen-like insistence on spontaneity; each performance had to be unique, and Barrett strived to push his music farther and farther out into the zone of complete abstraction. This in-depth analysis of Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett's life and work is the product of years of extensive research. Lost in the Woods traces Syd's swift evolution from precocious young art student to acid-fuelled psychedelic rock star, and examines the myriad musical and literary influences that he utilised in composing his hypnotic, groundbreaking songs. A never-forgotten casualty of the excesses, innovations, and idealism of the 1960s, Syd Barrett is one of the most heavily mythologized men in rock, and Lost in the Woods offers a rare portrayal of a unique spirit in freefall.

Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum: Decorative Arts
Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum: Decorative Arts

Author: Charissa Bremer-David

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1997-11-13

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0892364556

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This beautifully illustrated work brings together more than one hundred objects from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of European decorative arts. Included here is a generous selection of French and Italian furniture from the mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Masterpieces by André-Charles Boulle, Bernard (II) van Risenburgh, and others reveal the virtuoso craftsmanship that makes these objects such compelling examples of the furniture maker’s art. Many of the Museum’s finest pieces of porcelain, glass, and tin-glazed earthenware are also represented. Tapestries from Gobelins and Beauvais, bronze firedogs from Fontainebleau, and a lathe-turned ivory goblet of astonishing complexity from Saxony are among the other highlights of this handsome volume.

Doctrinal Nourishment
Doctrinal Nourishment

Author: Theresa Papanikolas

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

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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 Honoré Daumier, Félicien Rops, George Grosz and Otto Dix.

Decadence and Dark Dreams
Decadence and Dark Dreams

Author: Ralph Gleis

Publisher: Hirmer Verlag GmbH

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783777435244

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"Enigmatic magic, erotic sensuality and dark dreamworlds all characterise Symbolism, which evolved as an art current from the 1880s on - with Brussels advancing to become a centre of activity in the development of European art. The tendency towards the morbid and the decadent was most pronounced in Belgian Symbolism. Many of the impulses for this avant-garde came from Belgian artists, such as the disreputable Félicien Rops, the subtle Fernand Khnopff, the occult Jean Delville and the eccentric Léon Spilliaert and James Ensor."--back cover.

Fernand Khnopff
Fernand Khnopff

Author: Michel Draguet

Publisher: Agrarian Studies

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300246506

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A comprehensive look at an important member of the artistic vanguard of late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe In this beautifully illustrated book, Michel Draguet, an internationally recognized authority on fin-de-siècle art, offers an enlightening examination of the life and art of Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921). Khnopff achieved widespread acclaim during his lifetime for his moody, dreamlike paintings, as well as his numerous commissioned portraits, designs for costumes and sets for the theater and opera, photography, sculpture, book illustrations, and writings. Khnopff was a reclusive personality, and in 1900 he focused his attention on the design and construction of a lavish, secluded home and studio in Brussels, a structure that became deeply entwined with the artist's work and sense of self. Although the house was demolished in 1936, Draguet uses new archival research to reconstruct its spaces and explore the home as emblematic of the artist, guiding the reader through Khnopff's very personal world and analyzing his art in the context of its generative surroundings. Distributed for Mercatorfonds