Özet:

Art, which glorifies people and enables it to reach its essence, is a mirror of society. As an individual of the society in which they live, painters occasionally presented the reflections of social events in their paintings in a critical language. One of these painters is the Belgian painter and print artist James Ensor, who has left deep traces in the history of art, lived between 1860 and 1949, is an important representative of surrealism and expressionism. The artist, who transforms the social realities into metaphors with the images he uses in his works, uses the skull and mask used in his works. symbolic images and the purpose of using them constitutes the main problematic of this study. In this research, a descriptive evaluation was made using the literature review and analysis method. In this context, the purpose of the study is to examine the images used by James Ensor, who uses rich symbolic images in his paintings, the symbolic meanings of these images, and the semantic dimensions left by all these images in the audience. In this research, first, the metaphoric images of the works of the artist in this context and the uses of them were determined and these images were evaluated by examining them symbolically. In the light of this information, it is concluded that the artist, who combines social reflections with existential philosophy, depicts the disappointments in the society he lives in with the symbolic images he uses in his paintings and thus makes a social criticism.

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