Phantoms, skulls, skeletons and other macabre figures populate the paintings, drawings and prints of James Ensor. His works are bizarre, ironic, occasionally belligerent and provocative, but always buoyed by a keen sense of humor, and his nightmarish motifs reveal the absurd and grotesque about everyday life. Ensor's interests were wide-ranging; he was as enthusiastic about Rembrandt's prints as he was about the Belgian Carnival festival and Japanese masks. In turn, early twentieth-century artists such as Alfred Kubin, Paul Klee and the German Expressionists Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were inspired by his creative power and radical rejection of traditional European ideals of beauty. This volume presents nearly 60 paintings and an equal number of drawings, which are published here for the first time.