Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1901 - 1921

James Ensor wrote this letter to Philip Zilcken in Ostend, on June 21, 1901, and it's a flurry of script, looping up and down like a little dance on the page. The ink is thin, almost transparent in places, and you can see how the nib of his pen must have caught on the paper, creating these tiny, spidery lines. It's a list, it seems, of his 'caux forts' or etchings, and there's a frustration, a real agitation, in the way he’s scratched out words, or crammed them in at the end of a line. That frenetic energy reminds me of his paintings, those chaotic scenes filled with masks and skeletons, all jostling for space. Look at how the letters themselves become almost abstract shapes, individual marks adding up to a whole. You can see the artist's hand, his presence, in every stroke. For me, that’s what art is all about – that direct connection between the artist and the work, that glimpse into their process. You might see a connection between Ensor and someone like Alfred Kubin; both share a similar interest in the grotesque, a similar taste for the macabre.