Vrouwenprofiel 1885

Curator: We are looking at James Ensor's "Vrouwenprofiel", a pencil drawing from 1885. Editor: There's a hushed intensity to it, don't you think? The figure seems lost in thought. There is some loneliness here, or contemplation, caught in all of these frenetic pencil scratches, and soft hatching. Curator: Absolutely, and this gets at a key aspect of Ensor’s artistic mission. While socially engaged, Ensor was also interested in the internal experience of individuals navigating rapid socio-political change in late nineteenth-century Belgium. Here, in rendering this woman’s face in pencil, Ensor reveals an introspection that many could relate to at that historical moment. This tension between external political concerns and psychological reality is central to much of his early symbolist work. Editor: And what of the profile? What does it mean to present her from the side? Does this distance reinforce that sense of interiority, making her less available, and perhaps more mysterious, to us as viewers? The swirls of pencil also create an odd dynamic space...almost like multiple faces crowding in upon this poor woman! Curator: I see it differently. I'd suggest that by only showing her profile, Ensor uses her unknowability as a stand-in for a more widespread anonymity emerging out of an increasingly bureaucratic and mechanized social world. This kind of symbolism runs throughout his work during the 1880s. In a society built around social position, so much of experience becomes performative, obscuring interior realities... Editor: Perhaps you are right, although, as an artist myself, I find that explanation quite bloodless. I suspect he might simply have liked the line of her nose and jaw. In any case, it remains an emotionally stirring work. Curator: I think that is quite perceptive: even if it doesn't convey Ensor's complete intent, the emotional resonance is clearly the thing to take away. Editor: Indeed, it’s the beauty that hits first, then the thinking starts to take hold.