The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
James Ensor · L’Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles en 1889 · an oil painting on canvas, landscape, more than four metres wide, at the scale of history painting · a street procession filling the lower two thirds of the field and advancing toward the picture plane, Christ small on a donkey in the middle distance, a red banner across the crowd, a reviewing stand at the right, a strip of sky · dated 1888, titled for the year to come · the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles · the single canvas, scored as the image as it now stands
Mode
A modern-life subject painted at the scale of a history picture; satire and the grotesque as the mode of seriousness, colour unmixed and harsh as the medium of judgment
Mythos
The Entry into Jerusalem, built as the structure of the whole: a city, a crowd with banners for palms, a king on a donkey, and behind the welcome the week that follows; joined to the carnival, the feast at which the fool is crowned
Phase
A procession in Brussels in a year still to come, painted and dated in 1888; kept by the painter and first shown in public in 1929
Presentation
One canvas in landscape format, more than four metres wide; the crowd filling the lower two thirds down a street in perspective, the banner across the middle distance, the stand at the right, a strip of sky
Register
Disgust and glee at a carnival pitch: raw reds, yellows and greens against chalky whites, with one small quiet disc of light in the middle of the din
Scale
One street, one city, one procession of hundreds, and one small figure in the middle distance
Governing Proposition
A street is packed from wall to wall with a procession that comes toward us: masked and painted faces in a front rank pressed against the picture plane, bands, clerics, skeletons, banners and placards above their heads, officials watching from a red-draped stand at the right. Far back in the throng, near the centre and smaller than any of the masks that face us, a haloed figure rides a donkey. Nobody looks at him. The canvas is dated 1888 and titled for 1889, so that it reads as a report from next year. Its wager is that the Entry into Jerusalem can be painted as a modern carnival at the scale of a history picture, in raw unmixed colour, and that the form itself, the saviour shrunk into the depth of his own parade while the masks advance on the viewer, can say what a mass society does with its prophet: it carries him along as one more emblem and attends to its slogans.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The canvas is wide and large, more than four metres across, the scale of history painting. James Ensor of Ostend dated it 1888 and titled it for the year after: L’Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles en 1889. A painting of something that had not yet happened, it is written in the form of a news report, the prophecy given as though it were a dispatch. It hangs in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The field is a street. A procession fills its lower two thirds from wall to wall and advances down a perspective toward the picture plane. Its front rank, masked and costumed, is pressed against the plane itself. Above the heads run banners and placards; across the middle distance a large red banner is stretched over the crowd. At the right stands a reviewing stand draped in red, with officials on it. Of the sky there is a strip only. And in the middle distance, near the centre, small, haloed, on a donkey, rides Christ.
The unit weighed is the one canvas as it now stands. Ensor’s other mask pictures of the same years, among them The Intrigue of 1890, and the etching he made after this painting in 1898 are context. The picture is weighed as an image, whole, in its composition and its colour. Whatever particular figures of the day its crowd may hold are not weighed; the parade is read without them.
Movement II
The banner across the middle distance reads “VIVE LA SOCIALE”. It gives the parade its politics, written in its own sky: without it the procession is carnival only. With it, the crowd is a party, the bands are a campaign and the masks are its supporters, and the haloed rider in the middle of it all is claimed by a slogan he does not carry.
The saviour arrives in the modern capital and nobody looks at him. The crowd has its banners, its bands, its officials and its slogans; he is one small item in the middle distance, smaller than any of the masks that face us. What the picture discloses holds beyond its year: mass politics takes the form of the religious procession it replaced, every party claims the prophet and none attends to him, and the face of the crowd is a mask that has become the face.
The mode is satire as well as disclosure. Much of what the canvas gives is a temper, disgust and glee at once, and a temper ranks below a meaning. The picture has also been read as a self-portrait of the artist as Christ among his critics, the painter received by the public that will turn on him. That second reading is the more personal, and its self-pity weakens the first. The meaning is in the structure, in the size of the rider and the direction of the crowd, more than in the sneer.
Movement III
The structure of the whole picture is the Entry into Jerusalem. There is a procession and a city, a crowd with banners in place of palms, and a king who comes on a donkey; and behind the welcome lies the knowledge that the same crowd will call for his death within the week. The archetype is not alluded to in a corner. It is the composition, and every part of the street serves it.
The title carries the myth into a named city and a named year, and the particular stays particular: Brussels, its parties, its bands, an official stand. A second archetype is joined to the first. The carnival, the world turned upside down, is the feast at which the fool is crowned, and Christ’s entry becomes that feast. The halo is carried along as one more emblem among the banners: the holy is taken into the spectacle rather than standing outside it, and the officials, clerics, bandsmen and skeletons are masks under the same law.
The depth has limits. The Passion that gives the Entry its weight lies outside the frame, supplied by the viewer rather than built into the picture, and the archetype is partly buried by the satire it carries. The rider is so small that the myth can be missed. That smallness is the argument, and it is also the cost: a viewer can take the parade and never find its king.
Movement IV
With Christ large and central, the inherited form of the subject would say that he is seen. Ensor’s form says that he is not. The crowd moves toward us down a street that narrows to the rider, so that the viewer stands where the next rank of the parade will be, inside the mob and in its way. The front rank of masks pressed to the plane makes the viewer part of the throng; the scale makes the crush exceed the eye.
The mask is form as knowledge: a face that is all surface, with nothing behind it, which is what the crowd has made of its members. The paint is laid on in slabs and in places scraped, and the flatness makes faces and banners one substance. The colour is unmixed and high, reds and yellows and greens against chalky whites, orchestrated so that the crowd has a pulse across four metres without the surface collapsing. The masks of the front rank, each made of a few slabs and strokes, are economical and sure.
Elsewhere the making slackens. The perspective of the street is uncertain, the crowd’s scale shifts in ways not always meant, and passages in the middle distance are summary. The stand at the right and some of the upper banners are composed as additions rather than as parts of the one movement, and the top third reads as a frieze set onto the street. In the middle ranks mask follows mask in a count of faces, more than the point of a mob needs. The crudeness of manner is chosen; the unresolved space is not.
Movement V
In 1888 the inheritance was the Belgian realism and Impressionism that Les XX championed in Brussels, and the official history painting whose scale this canvas borrows. The departure is from both: a modern-life subject at the size of a history machine, faces made masks, space crammed to the plane, colour harsher and flatter than anything in Belgian or French painting of that year. The mask and the grotesque crowd came from carnival and from the caricaturists, Daumier among them; no painter had put them at this scale and with this seriousness.
The cost is on record. The canvas could not be shown, the painter’s standing with his own avant-garde collapsed in these years, and the picture stayed with him, unseen by the public, until 1929. By then Expressionism had happened. Ensor’s effect on Nolde, on Die Brücke and on the Belgian Expressionists ran mostly through his prints, his other mask pictures and his name, and only afterward did this canvas become the type of the mass procession in modern painting, with the mask crowd of Nolde’s religious pictures and the carnival crowds of later German painting in its line.
After 138 years the canvas is whole, its figures and colour legible as painted, and it has outlived the parties and bands it names: the parade reads without them. Among neighbours it stands below The Scream at 8.7, the more compelled and more consequential image of the same years, and level with The Kiss at 8.3, which it overtakes on the orders it holds. The halo is still there in the middle distance, a small disc of light in the din, and the front rank is still coming toward us.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged subtractively, the structure is compelled. Remove the mass of the crowd and Christ is no longer lost in his own procession, which is the picture’s argument. Remove the stand at the right and no state watches the crowd go by. Remove the banner and the parade has no politics, only carnival. Remove the front rank of masks against the plane and the viewer is not made part of the throng. The scale, more than four metres, is compelled too: the crush has to exceed the eye. But much is permitted. Mask after mask in the middle ranks could be fewer or other without loss, and whole passages are a count of faces rather than a structure of them. The excess is partly the point, and more than the point needs.
Score: 7.8 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated. The saviour arrives in the modern capital and nobody looks at him: the crowd has its banners, its bands, its officials and its slogans, and the haloed rider is one small item in the middle distance, smaller than the masks that face us. The proposition outlasts 1888. Mass politics takes the form of the religious procession it replaced; every party claims the prophet and none attends to him; the crowd’s face is a mask that has become the face. Held below the gate because the picture’s mode is satire as well as disclosure, and much of what it gives is a temper of disgust and glee, which ranks below a meaning; and the self-pity of the reading that makes the painter the Christ of this crowd weakens the first.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The elevation is of one dark kind: the grotesque raised to a scale where it becomes dread. Before more than four metres of faces advancing outward the effect is a crush, and the colour, raw reds and yellows against chalky whites, turns the festival toward a fever. There is a second height in the halo, a small disc of light in the middle of the din, the one quiet thing in the field, and it gives the sublime of the overlooked. But the picture does not rise again and again. Much of its surface is comic or caustic rather than elevated; its terror is felt mainly as pressure in the front rank, and its beauty comes in passages of colour, not as a sustained transport. The lack of frequency holds this axis lowest.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The archetype is built, not alluded to. The Entry into Jerusalem is the structure of the whole picture: a procession, a city, a crowd with banners in place of palms, a king who comes on a donkey, and behind the welcome the knowledge that the same crowd will call for his death within the week. The title carries the myth into a named city and a named year, and the particular stays particular: Brussels, its parties, its bands, an official stand. The carnival is a second archetype, the world turned upside down, joined to the first: the Entry becomes the feast at which the fool is crowned. Held just below the gate because the Passion that gives the Entry its depth lies outside the frame, and because the rider is so small that the myth can be missed.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The inheritance was double: the Belgian realism and Impressionism that the Brussels avant-garde of Les XX championed, and the official history painting whose scale this canvas borrows. The departure is from both. A modern-life subject is painted at the size of a history machine; the faces are masks; the space is a stage crammed to the plane; the colour is unmixed, harsh and flat in a way nothing in Belgian or French painting of that year matches. It anticipates by about two decades the masks and crowds of Nolde and the German Expressionists. The cost is on record: the canvas could not be shown, the painter’s standing with his own avant-garde collapsed in these years, and the picture waited some forty years for a public. Held below 9.0 because the mask and the grotesque crowd came from carnival and caricature.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Substitute another form and the picture loses most of what it knows. With Christ large and central, the inherited form of the subject, it would say that he is seen; with Christ small and deep in the perspective and the masks pressed forward, it says that he is not. The perspective is the argument: the crowd moves toward us down a street that narrows to him, so that the viewer stands where the next rank of the parade will be, inside the mob and in its way. The mask is form as knowledge, a face that is all surface with nothing behind it. The paint, laid on in slabs, makes faces and banners one substance. Held at 8.5 because the stand at the right and some of the upper banners are composed as additions, and the top third reads as a frieze set onto the street.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The evidence is a long record of readings that has not run out. The picture has been read as anarchist satire and as anti-socialist satire; as a self-portrait of the artist as Christ among his critics; as a Belgian political cartoon with particular targets; as a carnival picture; as a document of the mass age; and as a forerunner of Expressionism. These readings coexist rather than displacing one another, which is the axis’s evidence. Formally the canvas keeps yielding on return: the individual masks, the placards and the play of scraped and laid paint are not used up in one viewing. Held below the top because part of the return is to a crowded inventory rather than to a depth, and because the meanings, once stated, are fairly settled.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Published but long unseen, so force and reach are weighed apart and then together. The intrinsic force is high: the canvas reorganises what a large modern painting could be, with mass society as subject, the grotesque as the mode of seriousness, unmixed colour as the medium of judgment and the crowd as protagonist. The discount is real: the picture was not seen in public until 1929, by which time Expressionism had happened, and Ensor’s effect on Nolde, on Die Brücke and on the Belgian Expressionists ran largely through his prints, his other mask pictures and his name. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the mask crowd of Nolde’s religious pictures and the processions and carnival crowds of later Expressionist and Neue Sachlichkeit painting stand in its line, credited late and discounted.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Form first: whole after 138 years, the composition, the figures and the colour legible as painted, nothing that makes the work lost. Fabric second: no part that carries meaning has gone. Presence last, and charged slightly: the picture spent its first forty years with the painter, unseen by the public; since 1929 it has been exhibited, and at the Getty it is one of the museum’s best-known pictures. Its surface is fixed to a moment, Belgian politics of the 1880s with their parties and bands, and it has already outlived those conditions: the parade reads without them. The usual figure for its span, not the highest that presence can lift it to.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Command of the medium, judged as for any painting. The colour is orchestrated with real control: the reds of the banner and the stand, the yellows and greens of the masks and the chalky whites give the crowd a pulse across four metres without the surface collapsing. The scraped passages are deliberate, and the masks of the front rank, faces made of a few slabs and strokes, are economical and sure. Against that, the perspective of the street is uncertain, the crowd’s scale shifts in ways not always meant, and passages in the middle distance are summary to the point of slackness. The crudeness of the manner is chosen and is not charged; the places where the manner covers a failure to resolve space are. The making carries the colour and the masks, and not much else.
Score: 8.2 / 10
One law governs: everything is spectacle and everything is mask. Take the two most distant elements, the halo in the middle distance and the painted faces of the front rank. They obey the same law, and that is the point: the halo is one more emblem in a parade of emblems, a sign carried along with the banners, so that the holy is taken into the carnival rather than standing outside it. The officials on their stand are masks too, as are the clerics, the bandsmen and the skeletons. The range is wide, sacred, political, festive and deathly, and the law holds across it. Held below the upper band because the coherence is partly that of one register, the satiric grotesque, and narrowness of register is not coherence; and the stand sits slightly outside the street’s physics.
Score: 8.3 / 10
For a single canvas the orders held are many, and they are joined in one procession rather than listed: the sacred in Christ, his halo and the clerics; the state in the officials and the civic occasion; politics in the socialist banner and the slogans; the crowd and the city as a mass; art and its public, the artist read as the scorned prophet; death in the skeletons of the throng. They share one street and one perspective, and each bears on the others: the state reviews the sacred, the crowd consumes the political, the artist is the sacrifice. Family, labour and the natural order are absent or nearly so, and the sky is a strip. A high figure for a painting, below Las Meninas, which holds a court, a family, the act of painting and the viewer in one room.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.0, then The Swerve at 8.9 and The Living Form at 8.5. A canvas whole after 138 years that has outlived the politics it names; a modern carnival painted at the scale of history painting in raw unmixed colour, the turn paid for with some forty years unseen; and a form in which the perspective is the argument, the saviour shrunk into the depth of his own parade while the masks advance on the viewer.
Limiting Dimension
The Sublime at 7.6: one dark elevation, the grotesque raised to dread, and one quiet disc of light, without the frequency of height that the upper figures require. Then The Inevitable at 7.8: a compelled structure carrying a great deal of permitted matter, mask after mask in the middle ranks. Then The Encompassed at 8.0, a high figure for a painting, with family, labour and the natural order absent. Then The Made at 8.2: the colour and the front rank sure, the street’s space unresolved.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three of five: The Imperishable at 9.0 and The Swerve at 8.9 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment, The Archetypal Deep and Pressure on Tradition, each at 8.4, fall short of it by a tenth: the disclosure shares the field with a temper of disgust and glee, the myth’s Passion lies outside the frame, and the reach came late and largely through other works by the same hand. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.0. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 99.9, an average of 8.325 that displays 8.3, in Tier IV, three tenths above the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas as an image and a composition and of its history in outline; known loosely in its secondary inscriptions and in many of its individual masks. No image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the single canvas as it stands: James Ensor, Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (L’Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles en 1889), oil on canvas, dated 1888, in landscape format and more than four metres wide, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Its form is whole; its condition is weighed on The Imperishable alone. Ensor’s other mask pictures, among them The Intrigue of 1890, and his etching of 1898 after the painting are context and are not scored. Only the titles and the words of the large banner are quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the canvas’s exact dimensions, where the date and signature stand on it, the wording of the other placards, any likeness of the painter in Christ’s features, the identity of any official or public figure in the crowd, the earlier drawings in which the subject may first have appeared, the picture’s showings and deposits before it reached Los Angeles and the year it did so, its conservation history, debates within Les XX over the painter, and the particulars of his contacts with later painters.