James Ensor at MOMA

If you love gut wrenching,expressionistic, figurative painting run to the James Ensor show this summer in NYC. He is up there on my list of favorite painters. He also
reminds me of the NYC painter-- Florine Stettheimer. Did anyone happen to see her retrospective at MOMA??? Wow that was Killer!!!!

The exhibition is at the Museum of Modern Art till September 21st then it goes to Paris and opens at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, October 2009–February 2010.
This is a must see if you are a freak for painterly, painting-- like I am!!!
Christ Entry into Brussels 1889
This painting is on view at the Getty Museum most of the time. If you
can't make NYC or Paris you can see this huge painting when it returns to LA.
It might be his greatest work and one of my favorite reasons for going to the Getty,
along with the view from the museum as the sun goes down..... Nice!
Somehow-- Ensor's work seems like outsider art.
I want to read more about him...I can't wait to see this show.

James Ensor (1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth. In both respects he has influenced generations of later artists. This exhibition presents approximately 120 works, examining Ensor's contribution to modernity, his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing. Examples of Ensor's paintings, prints, and drawings are installed in an overlapping network of themes and images to produce a complete picture of this daring, experiential body of work. Ultimately, this exhibition presents James Ensor as a socially engaged and self-critical artist involved with the issues of his times and with contemporary debates on the very nature of modernism. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, will travel to the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, October 2009–February 2010.