Ensor is fashionable. In 2013 and 2014, after five successful exhibitions in Japan, the Ensor collection of KMSKA will be calling at prominent museums in Europe and the United States, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. KMSKA will take this new series of foreign exhibitions as an opportunity to further intensify its Ensor research.
KMSKA has, since the 1950s, amassed a substantial amount of expertise on James Ensor. The purpose of the Ensor Research Project is to take that knowledge one step further by focusing on the creative process underlying Ensor’s paintings.
The museum’s foremost Ensor expert Herwig Todts conducted extensive research on the artist’s life and on the reception of his work between 1880 and the present day, and also studied his letters and other writings. The most striking conclusion was that the Modernist content of the Ostend-born artist’s work is generally overestimated.
KMSKA also performs material technical research on all of its Ensor paintings. Each painting is analysed using X-rays, macro photography under normal and grazing light, as well as UV fluorescence and digital infrared imaging. In addition, researchers of the museum are studying the build-up of each painting: the support, the ground, the underdrawing and the paint layers are all meticulously described in terms of method, finish, materials used, and instances of degradation and previous restorations. Among other things, this approach has revealed that Ensor fundamentally altered the The Painting Skeleton (1896) during the creative process by overpainting his own face with the image of a skull.
"This approach has revealed that Ensor fundamentally altered the 'The Painting Skeleton' by overpainting his own face with the image of a skull."
Under the Ensor research project, more traditional art-historical research will of course also continue.
It is the museum’s intention also to apply any newly gained expertise in research on other paintings in public or private collections in Flanders and Belgium.
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