Constant
Netherlands, The, 1920 - 2005
(b Amsterdam, 21 July 1920).
Dutch painter, printmaker and writer. He studied for a year at the Kunstnijverheidschool (1938) and then at the State Academy (1939–42), both in Amsterdam. His work was initially conventional in style and included religious subjects. From 1941, however, he became deeply interested in the work of Cézanne, Cubism and German Expressionism, all of which he learnt of through books. A few of his surviving works from 1945 and 1946, such as Still-life with Bottle (1945; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.), exhibit these influences. During this period he also developed theories concerning art and society, inspired by Marxism.
In Paris in autumn 1946 Constant met Asger Jorn. He found confirmation for his ideas in Jorn’s work, which was more advanced in its development. As a result fantastic animals appeared in his work from 1946, for example Two Beasts (1946; Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.), clearly showing the influence both of Danish experimental painters such as Jorn and of Miró. Jorn also encouraged Constant to found De Experimentele Groep in Holland, inaugurated on 16 July 1948 in Constant’s house; the core of the group included Karel Appel and Corneille. In November these three artists were the co-founders, in Paris, of the Cobra movement. Constant set forth his ideas in a manifesto, published in the first issue of the periodical Reflex (1948). This manifesto, published a month before the inauguration of Cobra, was one of the most coherent statements of the ideas behind the movement.
Constant’s primitivistic work of the Cobra period (1948–51) was based primarily on children’s drawings. Perhaps more than any other member of the group he attempted to put Cobra’s professed anti-aestheticism into practice with the aggressive character of his imaginary beings, seen in Fantastic Animals (1947; Ålborg, Nordjyllands Kstmus.; for illustration see COBRA). The vigorous expression achieved in this way reaches a climax from 1950 in a series of works, on the theme of war, in which the composition is based on mangled human bodies, such as Devastated Land (1951; Schiedam, Stedel. Mus.).
After 1952 Constant’s priority was no longer painting and he evolved ideas about a playful living environment for the future. The forms that he used in his work in this period—a few paintings and metal sculptures—are geometric and delineated in flat planes of colour; works such as Composition with 158 Blocks (1953; The Hague, Gemeentemus.) seem to show an awareness of Mondrian’s work. Between 1956 and 1969 he produced a series of blueprints for an ideal city of the future, which he called Nieuw Babylon, and in which context he designed an architectonic form for the society of the future as predicted by Marx. This Utopia could supposedly be realized when a work-free era would come into being through mechanized production. The new situation would bring a new type of person into existence, one who was free to express his formerly repressed creative impulses. In effect the profession of artist would then be abolished, as it would be common ground. With these ideas, he joined in with Jorn’s Mouvement International pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste (1953–7) and the Internationale Situationniste (1957– 69), and later, in 1965, with the Provo movement in Amsterdam.
By this time Constant had resumed painting; for some time his work was devoted to frequently disturbing visions of life in the future. As his painting became more and more precise he linked himself consciously from the mid-1970s with a number of great painters of the European tradition. In this work, often incorporating complex literary symbolism, he cited Titian, Rubens, Cézanne and, in Liberty Insulting the People (1975; P. Nieuwenhuys-Kerkhoven priv. col., see 1980 exh. cat., p. 117), Delacroix. The extreme contradictions that the viewer confronts in Constant’s work were explained by the painter in Marxist terms as an expression of the dialectic contrast that supposedly governs all life. His paintings, watercolours and prints, despite their diversity of subjects, are in general characterized by a strongly emotional line and form as well as a palette dominated by pale colours punctuated by several strong accents.
PUBLISHED WRITINGS
‘Manifest’, Reflex, 1 (1948) [whole issue]
‘C’est notre désir qui fait la révolution’, Cobra, 4 (1949), pp. 3–4
‘New Babylon, Versuch einer alternativen Umweltplanung’, Befreiung des Alltags, ed. F. Böckelmann (Munich, 1970)
New Babylon, intro. H. Locher (The Hague, 1974)
A propos de Cézanne (Amsterdam, 1980)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Dotremont: Constant, Bibliothèque de Cobra (Copenhagen, 1950) [Dan. and Fr.]
Constant, Amsterdam (exh. cat., Bochum, Mus. Kstsamml., 1961)
Constant: New Babylon, imaginäre Stadtlandschaften (exh. cat., Krefeld, Mus. Haus Lange, 1964)
Constant (exh. cat., The Hague, Gemeentemus., 1965)
H. van Haaren: Constant (Amsterdam, 1967)
Constant, von Cobra bis New Babylon (exh. cat., Munich, Gal. Heseler, 1967)
C. Lakerveld: ‘Constant’, Künstler, Theorie, Werk (Keulen, 1971)
F. de Vree: Constant (Schelderode, 1972)
F. Kelk: Constant, een illustratie van vrijheid [Constant, an illustration of freedom] (Amsterdam, 1974) [pubd on the occasion of Constant’s award of the David Röell Prize and used as a cat. for the drgs exh. at Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.]
Constant, schilderijen, 1969–1977 (exh. cat., Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus., 1978)
Constant, schilderijen, 1940–1980 (exh. cat., intro. J. L. Locher; The Hague, Gemeentemus., 1980)
Constant, 1945–1983 (exh. cat., intro. K. Honnef; Bonn, Rhein. Landesmus., 1986)
W. Stokvis: Cobra: An International Movement in Art after the Second World War (Barcelona, 1987) [contains complete manifesto]
WILLEMIJN STOKVIS
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In 1956, the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys started working on a visionary architectural proposal for a future society; he didn't stop for almost twenty years. Having been a co-founder of the Cobra group of artists in the late forties, he abandoned painting in 1953 to concentrate on the question of "construction". He became a founding member of the Situationist International in 1957 and played a central role in their experiments until his resignation in 1960. New Babylon, as his project would eventually be called, is a situationist city intended as a polemical provocation.
New Babylon was elaborated in an endless series of models, sketches, etchings, lithographs, collages, architectural drawings, and photocollages, as well as in manifestos, essays, lectures, and films. New Babylon is a form of propaganda that critiques conventional social structures.
New Babylon envisages a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play, in which traditional architecture has disintegrated along with the social institutions that it propped up. A vast network of enormous multilevel interior spaces propagates to eventually cover the planet. These interconnected "sectors" float above the ground on tall columns. While vehicular traffic rushes underneath and air traffic lands on the roof, the inhabitants drift by foot through the huge labyrinthine interiors, endlessly reconstructing the atmospheres of the spaces. Every aspect of the environment can be be controlled and reconfigured spontaneously. Social life becomes architectural play. Architecture becomes a flickering display of interacting desires.
Constant always saw New Babylon as a realizable project, which provoked intense debates at schools of architecture and fine arts about the future role of the architect. Constant insisted that the traditional arts would be displaced by a collective form of creativity. He positioned his project at the threshold of the end of art and architecture. Yet it had a major influence on the work of subsequent generations of architects. It was published widely in the international press in the 1960s and Constant quickly attained a prominent position in the world of experimental architecture. But this influence would eventually be forgotten; the project has not been displayed since Constant stopped working on it in 1974.
Constant died 1 August 2005.
source
Text by Mark Wigley from 'New Babylon. The Hyper-architecture of Desire' [website lost]
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