James Ensor (1860–1949) was an outsider when he was alive. The somber naturalism or the sweet romantics did not appeal to him. He preferred the masks that he found in his mother’s store. These masks gave him his own unique view of people and the world. He painted life as a magical and grotesque masquerade and a danse macabre, a game of covering up and revealing: his characters are hiding behind strange faces, allowing us to feel their ugliness and loneliness. The misfit that Ensor was according to his contemporaries turned out to fit perfectly into the tradition of artists including Bosch, Arcimboldo and Goya. With his beach car, James Ensor travels along the beach. It is full of the weirdest creatures: dream characters, hideous monsters, creatures that are part animal and part human, clowns, angels, demons and plenty of masqueraded figures. It is a beautiful and colourful scene.
And right in the middle of this magical masquerade rides Ensor with his tall hat. Where will this adventure take him? The Big Masquerade is a dazzling tour of James Ensor’s beautiful world of visual art. Marije Tolman, winner of the Golden Pencil Award 2010, lures children into the strange corners of his imagination. The world she presents is silly and serious at the same time, light-hearted and sad, bright and dark – but above all it is a world that appeals to the imagination.
