Meet James Ensor
From This Might Be A Wiki
Brian Doherty recording the song's vibraphone track, 1994
| song name | Meet James Ensor |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | John Henry, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity, TMBG Clock Radio, John Henry Factory Showroom |
| year | 1994 |
| first played | June 13, 1993 (334 known performances) |
| run time | 1:33 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh, John Linnell harmonizes |
Trivia/Info
- This song was written about the Belgian painter James Ensor, which John Flansburgh would elaborate on in a 1994 interview:
In my art history class, while in college, we were bored and all of a sudden [Ensor's] works came up and we were surprised at how exciting it was. He was an expressionist, like other 20th century expressionist painters, who was ahead of his time and was very eccentric. The line "Dig him up and shake his hand" is actually very specific - a parallel idea to a lot of his paintings which involve resurrections, skeletons and puppets being animated. It's not an accident that the language of the song reflects his work. He did a painting - titled something like "Self Portrait in 1970". It's a skeleton, wearing his clothes. He became a phenomenon right before the turn of the century. With the song, I'm trying to encapsulate the issues of his life - an eccentric guy who became celebrated and was soon left behind as his ideas were taken into the culture and other people became expressionists.
I went to art school, and took a couple of years of art history. The pocket biography part of it is essentially a synthesis of his career as described by my professor–going from being essentially and unknown artist (perhaps what we would call a folk artist in 2024) to being a celebrated figure in the second half of his life. The “repeated himself” line was really digging in on how mannered his output became after his success–kind of a cautionary tale about the trap of notoriety.
- In some performances of this song, the Johns vocalize the guitar solo.
Song Themes
Body Parts, Death, Drink, Educational, Eyes, Forgetting And Remembering, Friendship, Hands, Loneliness, Misanthropy, People (Real), Relatives, Religion, Windows
Videos
- In-store performance at Tower Records, New York, NY, recorded for Gigantic DVD (with "Boat Of Car"). Watch it on
– Recorded live on September 10, 2001
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