On Saturday 25 March 2023 at 14:30, Hannah Rose Blakeley (Princeton University) will give a lecture for the Vrienden van Mu.ZEE in Ostend. De lecture will take place in the auditorium of Mu.ZEE, Romestraat 11, 8400 Ostend. Vrienden van Mu.ZEE and students can join for free, non-members of the Vrienden van Mu.ZEE are welcome as well (€ 5 entrance). Registration until 24 March via Gregory.Boite[at]muzee.be .
In Revelry and Shadow: Carnival in the Art of James Ensor and Léon Spilliaert
Celebrations of Carnival, extending from the Middle Ages through the present, create spaces of collectivity, play, liberation, and transgression, but also of alienation, grotesquerie, and disguise. While Europeans have celebrated Carnival in some form for centuries, the tradition—and its representation in visual art—has persisted with unusual vigor in Belgium. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, James Ensor (1860-1949) and Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) recorded the figures, masks, parades, costumes, and energies that flooded the streets during Carnival season. This lecture will place these artists in conversation with contemporary literary voices such as Victor Hugo, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles De Coster while exploring how Ensor’s and Spilliaert’s work engages the topsy-turvy world of the Carnival, upending social conventions, flouting hierarchies, and reconfiguring both social and political relationships.
