How can artists criticize a society through the theme of love and friendship?

	Usually, masks are meant to hide real faces by replacing them with others. In James Ensor’s paintings, it has the opposite effect ; he represents masks which depict the true face of characters wearing them.

	This ambiguous painting pictures people attending a wedding. In the middle of their 10 guests are the husband and the wife.
	 Usually, a marriage is a joyful occasion, but here, James Ensor displays a macabre and grotesque vision of marriage ; the husband seems to be unsure about what’s going to happen, almost sad, contrasting with the cruel grin worn by his wife. The man gripped by his spouse  seems to be looking at a presumedly dead baby thrown on the shoulder of a woman. That could predict a failed marriage or a bad omen. The couple doesn't seem to be communicating much. James Ensor may be representing a forced marriage, which was common in that time, explaining the emotions represented on the masks.
	The eerie masks depict the hypocrisy of the 10 guests. Despite the painting being very colorful, it goes along with the feeling of duplicity emanating from this carnaval scene. People attending the wedding are either invasive, inquisitive, frightening or ridicule, while they would normally feel happy and delighted on such a day ; it makes the viewer feel rather ill-at-ease and anxious. We don’t know what we are watching anymore, and the more we look at the intriguing scene the more we think it is absurd, and that is the aim of James Ensor.

	This anecdotal yet disturbing and unsettling scene in fact denounces the society we live in. As said before, it highlights the absurdity of social events due to the hypocrisy people demonstrate to each other ; that is to say that the painter points out the deviousness human wear in their daily lives, distorting and perverting social relationships, and that even when involved in friendship or love.