Between Street and Mirror

Between Street and Mirror

The Drawings of James Ensor

Catherine de Zegher, editor

$34.95 Cloth/jacket
ISBN: 0-8166-4012-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4012-6

The first major book devoted solely to the drawings of this influential artist.

Early in his career, Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949) broke away from Impressionism, rejecting its prettiness in favor of an original, highly dramatic style. Incorporating elements of satire, caricature, masquerade, and the grotesque, Ensor was a sharp observer of his social and political milieu and a skilled controversialist. Bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and not easily fitting into one particular movement or group, his drawings are increasingly valued for their innovative subjects and techniques, as well as the strong social criticism at their heart.

This volume, published to accompany the first major New York exhibition of Ensor's drawings, includes more than one hundred plates, most of them in color. Essays by Susan M. Canning (College of New Rochelle), Marcel De Maeyer (University of Ghent), and Robert Hoozee (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), along with a chronology by Xavier Tricot, serve to place Ensor's drawings in the context of both artistic and historical developments of his time and his oeuvre.

“A valuable, well-argued account of how Ensor’s satirical drawings drew inventively on popular culture to address the historical moment.” —Times Literary Supplement

“What holds most strongly in this expertly produced book are some images in which Ensor’s densely naturalistic renderings—of a sleeping woman, of a dark iron stove—are circled by fantastic, fly-weight sketches of a Greek chorus of freaks and gremlins. The effect is pure Freud, with Jugendstil nightmares bubbling out of Ensor’s stolid bourgeois renderings.” —Jed Perl in The New Republic

Catherine de Zegher is executive director of the Drawing Center in New York City and cocurator (with Robert Hoozee) of the exhibition "Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor."

168 pages | 30 halftones, 80 color illustrations | 8 x 10 | 2001



Between Street and Mirror The Drawings of James Ensor Catherine de Zegher, editor		$34.95 Cloth/jacket ISBN: 0-8166-4012-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4012-6
The first major book devoted solely to the drawings of this influential artist. Early in his career, Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949) broke away from Impressionism, rejecting its prettiness in favor of an original, highly dramatic style. Incorporating elements of satire, caricature, masquerade, and the grotesque, Ensor was a sharp observer of his social and political milieu and a skilled controversialist. Bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and not easily fitting into one particular movement or group, his drawings are increasingly valued for their innovative subjects and techniques, as well as the strong social criticism at their heart. This volume, published to accompany the first major New York exhibition of Ensor's drawings, includes more than one hundred plates, most of them in color. Essays by Susan M. Canning (College of New Rochelle), Marcel De Maeyer (University of Ghent), and Robert Hoozee (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), along with a chronology by Xavier Tricot, serve to place Ensor's drawings in the context of both artistic and historical developments of his time and his oeuvre. “A valuable, well-argued account of how Ensor’s satirical drawings drew inventively on popular culture to address the historical moment.” —Times Literary Supplement “What holds most strongly in this expertly produced book are some images in which Ensor’s densely naturalistic renderings—of a sleeping woman, of a dark iron stove—are circled by fantastic, fly-weight sketches of a Greek chorus of freaks and gremlins. The effect is pure Freud, with Jugendstil nightmares bubbling out of Ensor’s stolid bourgeois renderings.” —Jed Perl in The New Republic Catherine de Zegher is executive director of the Drawing Center in New York City and cocurator (with Robert Hoozee) of the exhibition "Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor." 168 pages \| 30 halftones, 80 color illustrations \| 8 x 10 \| 2001