James Ensor took on contemporary society, religion, politics, and art in this subversive scene of Christ entering modern-day Brussels amidst a massive carnival parade. The mural - scale painting, Ensor's largest and most ambitious, was calculated to provoke with its crude, thick patches of raw color, disorienting perspective, and irrepressible host of grotesque caricatures and masks. Ensor intended it for the 1889 exhibition of the avant-garde artists' association Les XX, but he did not finish it in time and ended up retaining it in his home, where it took pride of place and gradually attracted admirers, becoming a touchstone for Expressionist artists in the early twentieth century.
