Blue Bottles And Chicken c. 1925

James Ensor concocted this domestic scene of blue bottles, fruit, and fowl with oil on canvas. I wonder if the painting began with the chicken, and how it became a painting about, well, everything. Ensor was a strange dude, and like many still-life painters, I bet he was trying to figure out how to make a painting that was also about painting, which is not the same as a painting *of* painting, you know? I can imagine him placing that cobalt blue bottle just so, next to a hunk of meat, thinking about the Old Masters, like Chardin, and how a brushstroke can become a feeling. Look at the brushstrokes around the chicken, they are gestural, alive, almost as if they wanted to fly off the canvas! What was he thinking when he made it? How the painting can be so morbid and sensual at once! It is an open question, and it’s up for grabs. Painting is like that – it's a conversation across centuries, like an ongoing game of telephone, with each artist adding their own twist.