Art: Shrill Entry

Belgium’s most famous modern artist, Baron James Ensor, was 89 when he died last year. He had crammed his house with souvenirs that ranged from a cigar butt once left there by Belgium’s King Albert to a great painting done by Ensor himself 62 years ago: The Entry of Christ into Brussels.

The picture had so shocked his contemporaries that they refused to exhibit it even in avant-garde shows. Ensor resolved to enjoy his masterpiece himself, hung it in an upstairs room and admired it daily. Publicly shown for the first time in 1929, it was hailed as a brilliant “expressionist” picture foreshadowing the works of Max Beckmann and Paul Klee. Connoisseurs clustered around the picture like cattle at a salt lick, but while he lived, Ensor refused to part with it. Last week it went for $40.000 to an Ostend casino proprietor named Gustave Nellens.

Dashingly, painted in bright colors, the huge Canvas swarms with festive Bruxellois, many in carnival costume. Almost lost in the riotous shuffle is the dejected figure of Christ mounted on a donkey. The quiet center of a scene as shrill and unsettling as an ambulance siren, He is one week from Golgotha.