Deadman Walking vs. Mask Confronting Death

Note: This article was published in our OCT 2020 Issue on October 31, 2020.

In 2019, I went to the MOMA with a friend of mine to look at the exhibits that were up on display. We weren't looking to see anything specific, but whatever we found interesting enough to tickle our creative whistle. We happened upon an exhibit by Belgium artist James Ensor where I was stunned to see his 1888 oil painting "Mask Confronting Death". Not simply because it was a very beautiful and haunting painting, but because just weeks prior, I had just finished a preliminary sketch for a painting I was planning at the time called "Deadman Walking" that was seemingly identical to the structure of Ensor's painting. I was so puzzled by how close they were in design that I almost trashed the idea for my painting altogether. It's always a little discouraging having an idea that you later realize has already been made. At the same time, great minds think alike, and history doesn't repeat itself––it just rhymes. I knew that my piece stood on its own, but at some point, I would eventually have to address my fascination with their similarities.

The idea for "Deadman Walking" was inspired by a Polaroid mistake process that I was playing around with. See, polaroids, as we know, are self-developing or "instant" film, and for many standards, the chemicals are held in the white border stripe at the base of each film sheet. When the photo is taken, the image prints out between two rollers allowing the developing materials to be pressed into frame. As of recent, many spectra polaroid cameras have been tending to jam up, not allowing the film sheet to print through the rollers, thus not developing the image. When this would happen to my camera, I had to go in and manually pull the film out with my fingers. To not waste my film, I would take my finger or some sort of blunt object and push the chemicals into the picture frame creating this very cloudy effect filled with hues of orange, blue, green, and white. Each shape was different, and every cloud structure was unique. But I was still a little unsatisfied with the result. It felt just as empty as the blank picture frame.

Fellow artist Nate Oliver came over for a studio visit, and I told him of my dissatisfaction with the pieces but did not know how to expand it. He told me that I should try to find some sort of image to bring out from the abstraction of the cloud forms. As soon as he said that, I saw the skull in the cloud as prominent as the dominating lines in my illustrations. I couldn't unsee it. The more I looked into the Deadman's face, the more the structure of the image bloomed around it like a flower.

The Deadman was holding a white plastic bag like one that you would get from a bodega with "thank you" written all over the front of it. He has this awkward elongated smile that gives this sense of uneasiness or discomfort to his expression. His teeth have this arch you might see when someone sucks their thumb too much as a child, and their features form around that. His cranium is long and stretched out like how you would see in Egyptian art during Akhenaten's reign. His right arm holding the bag was extended forward, and the left arm had disappeared behind his back with his shoulder cocked a little askew as if he was positioning himself to walk between a narrow opening. Directly behind him, there is a couple dressed in heavy coats with very concerned, worried, and distasteful expressions on their faces. Next to them is an older man with a scraggly beard and hood. His eyes carry dark bags of shadow so that they aren't seen very clearly but felt. Next to him is a man with a large nose and almost a snobbish demeanor as if he is looking down on the Deadman walking past, as if he's been intruded upon by his presence. To the left of the Deadman is a younger man with a kind of crooked, almost broken looking, nose wearing a green trapper hat, a wool/fur-lined coat and smoking a cigarette. Again with a look of distaste and disgust smeared across his face. Next to him in the foreground is a man in a beanie facing the scene so his back is to the viewer. His figure is almost being used to show the radius of the group and give the feeling that everyone is enclosing around the Deadman.

The background is built up of various narrow converging streets resembling a New York facade but with a taste of Europe. The streets bash together near the center of the piece, meeting an arched window to pave an entryway to somewhere else. The buildings are close up on the sidewalks, and the fire escapes are facing the street. There is a figure of a man looking out his window watching what is assumed to be a sunset on a side street. Around the corner from that is a 20-4-7 corner store with a fruit stand outside. There is a shirtless man standing in the middle of the street screaming at the top of his lungs. His arms are open and seemingly inviting, but his body is tense as if he's expelling something from within him.

Though differing in detail, style, and direction, James Ensor's "Mask Confronting Death" has an almost identical structure and parallel conceptual intent. In Ensor's painting, Death is placed in the center wearing a drooping red hat with a feather in it. He seems as if he's sinking into what looks like a large ruff or layered costume draping of some sort. Surrounding Death are five figures wearing an array of pastel-colored garments and colorfully shrill carnival masks. The background is a misty pastel white with a very faint figure in the left-hand corner from what looks to be part of an underpainting that's shown through. That figure alone broadens the sense of theatricality. This makes it seem as though there is a crowd hidden beneath the smoke watching this performance unfold.

At the time he made "Mask Confronting Death" Ensor had been dealing with the recent death of his father. His interest in confronting the idea of death head-on is evident to me with the central placement of the figure. The rest of the image then grows from beneath that central point. The chin of Death is reseeding into his clothes, and the expression of the figures around him are so comical and mocking. You get this feeling of awkward discomfort coming from Death. Margaux Stockwell said in his review of the painting for Singulart Magazine, "it is the macabre masked figures that provoke the most fear and uncertainty in the viewer, as the figure of Death is mocked and surrounded and seems to almost retreat into his cloak in fear." Ensor used the iconography of the macabre mask in a number of his pieces. The reference stems from growing up in his parents' curiosity shop that sold carnival costumes and masks and theatrical things of that nature. He spoke of his use of the mask, saying, "The mask means to me freshness of color, sumptuous decoration, wild unexpected gestures, very shrill expressions, exquisite turbulence." If you tie that into dealing with the death of his father and his face-off with understanding his own mortality through painting, it is safe to say that this piece can represent a kind of bullying his own understanding of his existence and his intentions as an artist.

The MOMA Gallery Label described the scene by saying, "the fantastical masked inventions appear to come alive and challenge Death." One thing that I find interesting is the true expression of the surrounding figures is hidden beneath these masks that displays this everlasting expression. It makes the image a lot more mysterious and frightening. Death is the only figure whose face is not hidden. Adel Chowdhury wrote in a paper for Baruch College, "maybe this could be about how death is certain and you can't hide from it with disguises." It gives the figure a sense of eternal hierarchy in the piece at the top of a pyramid, or like the infinite curvature of spacetime singularity.

James Ensor chose to use the iconography of a skull to confront his idea of death. In my piece "Deadman Walking" I used the same iconography to confront the idea of feeling dead. Both of our central figures have a sense of uneasiness to them with a tense, awkward presence. Our images in full are both grown around the presence of our central figure. Instead of being demeaning and mocking of the deadman, my supporting figures are disgusted, concerned, and unforgiving of his presence. Looking as if the crowd is closing in on him, bringing all the attention and wonder to him and what he will do next. In "Mask Confronting Death", because there is such a bare background, the attention is on the group as a whole and how they are operating. Whereas in "Deadman Walking" because it is such a lively background and the group so bunched together so chaotically, the attention is on the individual components of the image and how they ultimately come together as a whole.