Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans
29 October 2016 - 29 January 2017
The Sackler Wing, Burlington House
Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
£11.50 (without donation £10). Concessions available. Friends of the RA and under 16s go free.
Friends of the RA go free
The theatrical, the satirical and the macabre come together in arresting fashion in the art of James Ensor. Curated by Luc Tuymans, this exhibition presents a truly original body of work, seen through the eyes of one of today's leading painters.
Despite spending his whole professional life in the Belgian seaside town of Ostend, James Ensor 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.
Ensor’s childhood spent among the fantastical treasures of his family’s curiosity shop offers a clue as to how the seeds of this wild imagination were sown. 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.
We invited the artist Luc Tuymans, a fellow Belgian and admirer of Ensor, to curate this unique exhibition. Taking a personal view, Tuymans looks back at Ensor's singular career through a selection of his most bizarrely brilliant and gloriously surreal creations.
Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in association with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
£11.50 (without donation £10). Concessions available. Friends of the RA and under 16s go free.
Friends of the RA go free
Supporters
2009-2017 Season supported by
Supported by
Reviews
"...exemplary... gives the sharpest sense of Ensor’s evergreen originality and his singular vision of the world."
The Guardian
"Distrust, grandeur, decay, the shifting sands of meaning: this is a wonderful, unexpected show."
Financial Times
"The event of the autumn"
T J Clark, London Review of Books
James Ensor's world
The intense light of the North Sea coast had a profound effect on the Belgian painter James Ensor, as did his hometown Ostend’s colourful carnival tradition, and the contents of his family’s curiosity shop. Step into Ensor’s world in this short video – narrated in his own words, derived from his letters and his poetic musings on art. Watch this video on YouTube.
Gallery
The Intrigue, 1890
Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring, 1891
From Laughter to Tears, 1908
The Skate, 1892
The Skeleton Painter, 1896
The Dangerous Cooks, 1896
Plague Here, Plague There, Plague Everywhere, 1888
The Artist Surrounded by Evil Spirits, 1898
Self-portrait with Flowered Hat, 1883
Untitled, 1976
Limited edition print
Premonition by Luc Tuymans
We have published this limited edition print to celebrate Luc Tuymans’s curation of Intrigue. As a lasting legacy of his involvement in the exhibition, Tuymans has generously made this work which has been printed in the historic RA Schools.
The starting point for Premonition was a characteristically unsettling drawing on lined paper by Tuymans of the same name. This drawing also features on the cover of Tuymans’ book of drawings published in 1997.
On the image, Tuymans has said - "what interested me here was the idea of the clown as a disguise, the nature of friendliness as something deceptive, and of dangerousness, which is connected to anonymity. The stereotype of the clown’s face is enhanced by the sunglasses".
Tours
Get more out of the exhibition
Exhibition tours
45-minute introductory tours, free with an exhibition ticket, no booking required.
Tuesdays 2.30pm and Fridays 7pm
(1 November 2016 – 20 January 2017)
Friday nights at the RA
Open till 10pm every Friday
From exhibition-inspired food and drink to free talks inside the shows, there are plenty of reasons to visit the RA after a busy week.
Related articles
"I'm a creampuff gone rotten" – James Ensor on art and life
25 November 2016
James Ensor: A man of many masks
17 October 2016
