The Belgian painter James Ensor (1860–1949) is best known for his crowded scenes of urban life and strange scenes in which people wear skeleton masks. Nightmarish energy, somber quiet—he keeps the viewer off balance. This exhibition, however, is the first to focus on Ensor’s still lifes. His paintings are shown with those of Belgian contemporaries such as Antoine Wiertz and René Magritte, offering a fascinating overview of the genre from 1830 to 1930. —Elena Clavarino