Mon portrait en 1960, James Ensor

Archive Label 2003:
James Ensor was a painter and printmaker known for his satirical, and often apocalyptic, depictions of humanity. Ensor extended his use of humor into the tradition of self-portraiture by projecting how he might look at the age of 100. Portraits, like other images, are also a symbolic rejection of mortality and a desire to leave behind something which, as Ensor’s skeleton suggests, will survive after the artist is gone.