Flemish-Belgian painter James Ensor grew up in the back of a carnival and theatre store, so naturally he painted things associated with carnival and the theatre, including his 1888 Masks Mocking Death and 1899 Self Portrait with Masks. According to one critic, his skeleton mask works were reflections of ‘the crowd within him, the cacophony in Ensor’s head’.
Interestingly, I discovered this AFTER I selected the two works to translate, had almost finished the piece, and went looking for reference to write the accompanying statement. At this point in the ShortKnee translations, I was beginning to have dark thoughts on where this kind of work could lead me. On the one hand, the rapturous colours of carnival and the participation of the ShortKnee and the Vecco and others as mere players, the other, delving into the grim origins of each character.
This translation uses five self-portraits created one sticky July evening in 2009 when I was in the deepest doldrums. http://artstung.com/?p=78 .
I have used the canvases as removable heads on the headless kraft paper bodies, adapting the colour scheme with a heavy-handed wielding of brush, to show the red power fabric essential to the Egungun masquerade, and to reflect the moods of the canvasses at that time. The faces, temporary masked in white chalk, speak to the bends and twists of my painting life but do not quite capture the manic turmoil of identity knocking around in my head, at that time, and on days when it gets so hot, the paint dries on the brush before it hits the canvas. Death appears in the three Bawon Samdi to the left, in a decayed landscape, recognisable as the town of Saint George.
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| Mocking death
The fabric designs are extracted from two sources: original handmade batik scraps from my friends Chris and Lilo at Art Fabrik, and Amerindian pottery sherds found on Carriacou, one of Grenada’s grenadines.
This image is part of my Chantuelle Translations series, articulating my response to the socially sanctioned slow and painful death of the ShortKnee, our indigenous artform. I have translated the works of over 19 artists on war, migration, desolation and isolation, in particular with reference to works including or featuring pierrot, harlequin, clown or acrobat figures, precursor to our present day ShortKnee. ShortKnee can be traced back to the spoken word traditions of the West African Chantuelle, oral libraries whose recollections made bearable the suffering of slaves on the plantations of Grenada, fused with French Pierrot elements, and wrapped in six and a half yards of vulgar fabric that is breathtaking in sunlight masquerade. Once a way to disguise and compromise, the ShortKnee is today in this artist’s opinion, the most compelling icon of Grenada.
Tempera and oil pastel on brown kraft paper, 30 in by 87 in, unframed.
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