Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor

New York: Drawing Center, 2001. Hardcover. VG: Exlibrary book. Stamp on half-title page. Stamp on last page. Sticker and due date card on back pasted end page. Stamps on top and bottom text blocks.. A matte casebound book with the title in black down a yellow strip of a multi-colored spine. Pages: (6), 7-256. Profusely illustrated with both color and black-and-white images. "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." Contents are as follows: Introduction and acknowledgements / Catherine de Zegher -- Drawings and etchings / Robert Hoozee -- The devil's mirror: private fantasy and public vision / Susan M. Canning -- Catalogue -- Mystic death of a theologian / Marcel de Maeyer -- The grotesque in Ensor's oeuvre / Herwig Todts -- Chronology ; bibliography ; works in the exhibition / Xavier Tricot.