Colijn, resident:
Watch them jump and off they go. In a clown’s costume, wearing a pointed hat, holding a fish. And splash! Ensor’s beach theatre is actually a kind of carnival. On the dyke, the elite are elegantly dressed. In the water, they completely drop the chic facade. No more time for pleasantries, it can’t get crazy enough.
Actually, Ensor did the same thing here as in his famous paintings with the masks. He used the carnival as an excuse to show his characters as they really are. Jealous, angry, horny, sad, ecstatic: examples of raw emotion. He unmasks people by putting a mask on them. And here, in The Baths at Ostend, he also bares their souls, but by dressing them in a bathing costume. Drop the act, everyone is equal before the law. Or rather: everyone is equal before art!
Of course, The Baths at Ostend could only have been painted by James Ensor in the Ostend of 1890. There are so many details that embed the work in that time, that place and that artist. But it is also a work that still rings true today. After all, the artwork is about us. And perhaps, people, we have not really changed that much at all.