54 - ENSOR, James (1860–1949).

ENSOR, James (1860–1949). Letter from the artist, “James Ensor,” Ostend, November 9, 1936, to engineers and urban planners; 2 pages, in-4. A fine defense of the Ostend docks against urban planners. Note: Ensor, speaking on behalf of a Rotary delegation, addresses engineers and urban planners, to vigorously and poetically defend the preservation of the Ostend Harbor basins, which some wish to modernize, and which have been a constant source of inspiration for him throughout his career, and which he has often depicted in his paintings and engravings. Although he has no expertise in locks, roadways, bridges, etc., he is keen to share his impressions, supporting the Rotary Club’s reports, which proposed “interesting plans aimed at preserving the first and second basins.” […] By preserving the first and second basins and their wide, solid quays, you would, dear fellow urban planners, be keeping a fine treat in store for yourselves. Please excuse my artist’s frankness, but I speak above all in the name of unadulterated beauty to save our magnificent bodies of water, and my fifteen hundred signatories nod in agreement with their caps, clappers, pens, and brushes; Flanders the Lion, Liège the Cock-a-Doodle-Do, and Michel of Brussels stand ready to defend them. You, gentlemen engineers, will speak again of necessity, of utilitarian modernism, and of the hoarse voices of the great railroads of heaven and earth. All such considerations should give way to pure beauty. Yes, gentlemen, lasting beauty is worth more than temporary and sterile utility”… He denounces their parks and flowers, which they impose everywhere, whereas “true beauty is content with simplicity, and frills grow tiresome.” How could you, to please a few gaping children—destroyers who wreak havoc indiscriminately, builders without rhyme or reason, constructors without head or tail—dare to disfigure and trivialize our beach fairy? No! I have faith. You’ll think big with our artists and our discerning visitors. You’ll respect our old pools—those inexhaustible sources of eternal and supreme beauty. And you, valiant sisters of Flanders and Wallonia, charming all-around helpers—rinse with large buckets, spray, flood, scrub, scrape, pick at, clean, mop, and sweep away the unrepentant destroyers without mercy. Let us fight and hope that a more sensitive modernity will emerge; let us claim victory for today and for tomorrow.”