Schetsen van figuren en paarden 1880 - 1885

Curator: Welcome. We are standing before James Ensor's “Schetsen van figuren en paarden,” a graphite and pencil drawing made sometime between 1880 and 1885. Editor: It feels... incomplete, somehow. A fleeting glimpse, a city waking. There’s a strange energy here, figures appearing and disappearing like ghosts. Curator: Yes, notice the way Ensor employs the medium itself. The rapid, almost frenetic application of pencil, the erasure marks—they construct a surface rife with dynamic tension. Line and form dissolve into pure movement. It anticipates the fragmentation of cubism, doesn't it? Editor: I see echoes of much older traditions here, actually. Think about the commedia dell'arte figures that populate Ensor’s world; here they are stripped down to their bare essence: outlines in overcoats or perhaps hints of masquerade. It is a symbolic language. A city where identities shift. Curator: The city itself functions almost as a character, wouldn't you agree? Ensor depicts it in this work almost like a stage—observe how those verticals cut the scene, suggesting architectural forms of lampposts creating dynamic negative space, contributing significantly to the visual rhythm. Editor: Right, the cityscape, absolutely. Look, there, a man with a top hat; farther away, a whole series of figures bundled together—an entire society reduced to quick, efficient symbolism. Aren't those horses suggesting perhaps war steeds ready to be unleashed? Ensor seems always to tap into the universal human drama—isolation, connection, fleeting interaction—and these are on display. Curator: A potent synthesis! What at first appears fragmentary now seems, through your reading, remarkably whole. Editor: And you have unveiled an ingenious orchestration of line and space to reveal a much more nuanced view, and yet... with its enigmatic and ghostly mood still intact!