This engaging volume describes the creation and restoration of the extraordinary large-scale drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthonya work by late 19th-century Belgian artist James Ensor (18601949)on the occasion of its first public showing in more than 60 years. The piece is composed of 51 separate sheets of paper collaged into a hallucinatory social critique and artists manifesto. Each sheet of the nearly six-foot-high work is reproduced at actual size, revealing Ensors remarkable technique and fertile imagination. Here, Saint Anthony is surrounded not with nature, as customary, but with the moral decay of society. Replete with tiny scenes depicting both sexual temptation and spiritual piety, Ensor splices potent imagery from travelogues, popular science, and technology magazines into a Symbolist masterpiece. Susan M. Canning, Patrick Florizöone, and Nancy Ireson analyze the drawings meaning; Herwig Todts details its origins and early history; and Kimberly J. Nichols recounts the works restoration.
Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago
Exhibition Schedule:
The J. Paul Getty Museum
(06/10/1408/31/14)
The Art Institute of Chicago
(11/23/1401/25/15)
