Understanding Constant’s New Babylon: A Place That Can Never Be?

Figure 1: Constant in his workplace at Wittenburg, Amsterdam, with several works from his New Babylon project, 1967. Image: Leonard Freed/Magnum/Hollandse Hoogte

Jip Hinten Student Number: 10474617 Master Kunstgeschiedenis

Supervisor: Dr. Marga van Mechelen Reader: Dr. Christa Maria Lerm Hayes

Date submitted: 2 February 2017 Universiteit van Amsterdam Word Count: 22,308

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Summary

The objective of this text is to add to and correct several understandings of the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuy’s life project New Babylon on which he worked for almost two decades, from roughly 1957 until 1974. The main incentive for this research has been the finding that while the project New Babylon has been studied by many scholars during and long after Constant worked on it, this has not only lead to a thorough understanding of the project, but also to the exact opposite. As New Babylon is structured around several paradoxical ideas and concepts such as freedom and control, reality and fantasy, art and society, several generalizations have been made that represent the project in a far too simplistic way. Among these more general interpretations of New Babylon there seem to be two stances: New Babylon should be considered as reality, and, New Babylon should be considered as a fiction. While both these singular interpretations of the project are problematic in themselves, it is especially distressing that the first of the two stance seems to have been getting the upper hand. The goal of this text is thus to add to the collective effort of grasping the meaning, function, and usefulness of Constant’s New Babylon. The question posed by the title of this thesis “a place that can never be?” is meant as a starting point for a more thorough investigation of the project New Babylon itself, as well as other artistic projects. Besides thoroughly analysing Constant’s project, on a more general level, I wish to point out important similarities across various artistic practices, artists, and artworks, and in this process shed light on some of their differences as well. To do so, this text has been divided into three chapters. Chapter one, called Revisiting New Babylon, consists of an extensive analysis of Constant’s New Babylon project, approaching it from an art historical rather than an architectural point of view. The project will be placed within a broader societal perspective as well, to demonstrate how on the one hand society has influenced New Babylon, but also how Constant has influenced society with New Babylon. Besides addressing the society out of which New Babylon emerged, the focus of my argument lies with the art historical context out of which it originates. Constants involvement with the Cobra movement and Situationist International are addressed, along with the influence of contemporary theorists, among whom two of the most important are Asger Jorn and Aldo van Eyck. The main question this section addresses is what new insights we can gain from removing New Babylon from the architectural realm it has been wrongfully placed in, and instead analyse it as an inherently artistic project. Chapter two, called Presenting New Babylon Today, positions Constant’s project within the twenty-first century. It will begin by providing a brief retrospective of

Hinten 3 several exhibitions of New Babylon, to analyse the different ways in which the project has previously been presented. While Constant’s exhibitions of New Babylon have often been object to studies, they have not yet been thoroughly analysed altogether. Furthermore, this chapter includes a close reading of the New Babylon exhibition held at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague in 2016, as well as the concurrent exhibition held at the Cobra museum in Amstelveen. In exploring these most recent exhibitions in relation to past exhibitions, I have analysed whether the project is in fact presented differently than it has been before, and what those differences are. Has the focus on New Babylon shifted from the field of architecture to the field of visual art? And does this presentation of the project within the socio-political context of the twenty-first century provide room for new understandings of the New Babylon? Does it provide a context from which New Babylon can be approached within our contemporary society? The final Chapter, The Aftermath of New Babylon, begins by briefly analysing the relation between art and social change. After this it provides several examples of works of art and artistic practices that are either directly inspired by Constants New Babylon, or elaborate on very similar ideas. The artists and collectives that are discussed include: Los Carpinteros, Carsten Höller, Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich, and Atelier Van Lieshout. By highlighting the similarities and differences of these projects, my aim is to evaluate the influence New Babylon has had on the art world, as well as emphasise the uniqueness and scope of the project once again. In this text I am thus not only concerned with providing a thorough revision of Constant’s New Babylon once again, but aim to do so from a different point of view than has been done before, to add to the vast scholarly field exploring the oeuvre of Constant, by claiming the necessity to understand New Babylon, for it to be at least in part, an artistic project.

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Table of Contents

Summary…………………………………………………………………...p. 3

Introduction………………………………………………………………..p. 7

Chapter 1: Revisiting New Babylon…………………………………...p. 15 1.1 Constant Nieuwenhuys: Provocateur until the End p. 16 1.2 The road to New Babylon: From CoBrA to Situationist p. 24 International 1.3 New Babylon: Creativity as Highest Ideal p. 38 1.4 Beyond Art: New Babylon and Society p. 49

Chapter 2: Presenting New Babylon Today………………………….p. 59 2.1 Exhibiting New Babylon: A Retrospective p. 64 2.2 New Babylon anno 2016 p. 73

Chapter 3: The Aftermath of New Babylon…………………………..p. 82

3.1 Art and/as Social Change p. 84

3.2 Utopian Art After New Babylon p. 95

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………p. 106

Bibliography p. 110

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Acknowledgements

After working on this thesis for almost a year, it has finally come to an end. I could not have finished it without the help and support of the several people. For that I hereby say thank you all. I would like to thank one person in particular here, namely my supervisor Marga van Mechelen. Thank you for your endless patience, valuable critical input, and support the past months.

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Introduction

I am. We are.

That is enough. Now we have to start.1

Utopia: an ideal place that can never be. It was Sir Thomas More who coined the term utopia in 1516 from the Greek ou-topos, meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’ and the almost identical eu-topos, meaning ‘good place.’ After the earliest incarnation of a utopia in Plato’s Republic, More asks a more direct question about this philosophical concept by ascribing a double meaning to his imagined society: can a perfect place ever exist in the real world?2 More’s Utopia is constructed around a paradox: while it is clearly a critique on the society More himself lived in, it is also unmistakably a fictional place. It is this paradox that is inherent to the project that Dutch artist Constant

Nieuwenhuys (1920-2005) dedicated almost twenty years of his life to: New Babylon.

While New Babylon is just one of the many utopias –and not to forget dystopias- that were envisioned after More’s key publication, there is something that cannot quite be grasped about New Babylon that has made it stand out, and still makes it stand out today. It does not come as a surprise then, that the venerable subject of utopia in general, and New Babylon in specific, has gotten its fair share of attention.3

Around the turn of the twentieth century, when society was rapidly changing as a result of globalisation and the rise of the Internet, a renewed interest emerged within contemporary art among artists, curators, art fairs and museums to yet again turn towards utopian future visions as a source of inspiration and exploration. This, as

Martin van Schaik calls it, “utopian frenzy” that took place at the end of the previous millennium, came with a flood of books, essays and exhibitions about utopias and ideal

1 Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2000(1918)), 1. 2 George Sanderlin, “The Meaning of Thomas More’s “Utopia””, College English 12:2 (1950): 74-77. 3 For different philosophical understandings of utopias see for example publications by Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Jurgen Moltmann and Max Horkheimer. Hinten 7 worlds within the intellectual and artistic market.4 Even the rise of the latest format of artistic display, the biennial, can in itself be seen as an embodiment of a utopia. As

Hans Ulrich Obrist argues “biennials are both places and non-places”. 5 It seems like we, as citizens of the world, are more than ever referring back to this ancient search for happiness, freedom and paradise. As Theodor Adorno puts it, we are desperately looking for “a fantasy of an exotic vacation from insistent, plaguing social problems;

Utopia has become a deserted island of cliché. 6

In result, the largest part of publications on the topic tends to focus on the architectural aspects or moral merit of utopian projects. Given the formally inspirational effect the project has had on well known architects, such as Aldo van Eyck and

Superstudio, and more recently Rem Koolhaas and RAAAF,7 New Babylon has not only been celebrated as the perfect example of such an utopia, it has also been presented as a project that could actually be realized.8 The publication of an extensive study on New Babylon by architect and theorist Mark Wigley “Constant’s New Babylon:

They Hyper-Architecture of Desire” in 1998 and the related exhibition held at the Witte de With Center for contemporary art in Rotterdam, played an important role in once again putting New Babylon in the spotlights of the international art world from an architectural point of view. Despite my personal disliking of Wigley’s architectural approach, which I will go further into when discussing New Babylon in chapter 1, the exhibition at the Witte de With Center did put forward an important view on Constants project. Even though he stopped working on his project in the 1970s, the Witte de With

Center claimed this renewed interest in New Babylon was an opportunity to “shed light on contemporary architectural and artistic experiments. Much of Constant’s work resonates with current investigations, from the concern with electronic space down to

4 Martin Van Schaik, “Introduction,” in Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations, 1956-76 by Martin Van Schaik, Otakar Marcel (New York, London: Prestel Publishing, 2005) 5 Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ways of Curating (New York: Penguin Books, 2014),130. 6 Ibid. 7Henny de Lange, “Durf eens een bunker door te zagen”, Trouw, 28 May 2016. 8 Van Schaik, “Introduction,” in Exit Utopia. Hinten 8 specific model-making techniques.”9 The exhibition was followed by a symposium and exhibition in New York in 1999, titled “Constant’s New Babylon: Another City for

Another Life.” Thirty years after Constant had put his project aside, it was exhibited in the United States for the first time. In 2002 Constant’s models were exhibited at

Documenta 11 in Kassel. In the following years New Babylon keeps surfacing again and again during thematic exhibitions, in publications, and the work of individual artists.

During Art Basel in 2015 a salon talk was held with Ludo van Halem, curator of 20th century art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Mark Wigley, in which they discussed the relevance of New Babylon within contemporary art. In the summer of 2016, an exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague took place in which the full New

Babylon project was presented once again. This continuation of interest for New

Babylon calls for the question why this project is still considered to be relevant over fifty years after Constant first initiated it. What makes this project more interesting and relevant than any other utopian future vision?

Constant’s future visions were closely linked to the changing society of the

1950s and 60s in which they originate, but many of the concepts he was concerned with are again subject to change, causing for debates in our contemporary society.

Technology is developing faster than ever before, and concerns about controlling the climate are becoming more serious every day. Our freedom to move around the globe without restrictions is under threat. Furthermore, there seems to be an increasing focus on the concept of creativity, both within the academic and professional world, challenging our understanding of what it actually means to be creative. However, whether we are moving towards a conception of creativity and autonomy as Constant foresaw it is disputable.10

9 “Constant- New Babylon. Saturday 21 November 1997- Saturday 10 January 1998”, Exhibitions – Our Program – Witte De With. Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Web. 15 March. 2016. 10 See for example Dick Schwaab, Ons Creatieve Brein (Amsterdam: Atlas Contact, 2016) Hinten 9

Why Constant’s New Babylon again?

An unavoidable question with a subject as vast and thoroughly studied as Constant’s

New Babylon is: why write another research about New Babylon? Is there really a need for another analysis of the utopian visions of Constant, a need to yet again delve into his project? What could possibly be the value, of yet another text about Constant, other than simply rehashing what has already been written? Similarly, these same questions can be asked about the 2016 exhibition of New Babylon at the Gemeentemuseum in

The Hague. Why organize another exhibition of Constant’s project?

Even though New Babylon has been exhibited mainly within art institutes and museums, the main bulk of research that is focused on New Babylon does so from an architectural point of view. The Gemeentemuseum, however, explicitly states they want to focus on the artistic aspect of New Babylon:

“After mounting major exhibitions on New Babylon in 1965 and 1974,

the Gemeentemuseum received almost the entire project for its

collection. In recent years, interest in New Babylon has rocketed. The

Gemeentemuseum has now joined hands with Madrid’s Museo

Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to create a new exhibition

focusing not just on the architectural aspects of New Babylon, but also

on the project’s status as a single vast ‘work of art’.”11

It is of course important not to fall blindly for the trap museums tend to create.

Obviously they will argue the exhibition they organise is relevant, highly necessary, and different than exhibitions on the same topic that have been held before. However, their arguments are based on thorough art historical research and their exhibitions can thus function as a valuable resource as long as they are taken into consideration with a cautious mind, and eye.

11 “Constant-New Babylon. To Us, Liberty.” Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2016. Web. 15 March 2016.

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Besides museums, there seems to be an interest for themes that focus on ‘The

Future’ in art fairs and biennales and thus among artists. Some prominent examples include the 2015 Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, titled All the World’s

Futures, the art manifestation Yes Naturally held at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague in 2013, and the project Utopia Station initiated by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2003.12 New

Babylon not only serves as a platform that continues to inspire architects, curators, museums, and artists, and even the design of airports and shopping malls,13 and in effect provides grounds for new interpretations of the project itself, but New Babylon can also provide a base on which we can build our understanding of several developments within the contemporary arts and its relation to visions of the future and society. As Constant himself stated in 1949 “Art should function as a weapon of the human spirit, as a tool for the construction, the transformation of the world, and the artist as a diligent worker who subordinates all his abilities, all his activities to the common effort and who does not seek to be great but to be useful.”14

Can we use, or even need art to explore future visions? The distance between art and real life has closed under the influence of globalization.15 As Arthur Danto described “the art world stands to the real world in something like the relationship in which the City of God stands to the earthly city.” 16 According to Pamela M. Lee, the work of art itself functions as a mediator between these two formerly separate realms.17

However, I believe that a certain distinction should still be made between actual society and the artistic realm, as “fiction’s power lies in its ability to open up fictional worlds for our reflective engagement.”18 In this thesis I therefore propose that it is necessary to

12 Obrist, Ways of Curating, 130-134. 13 For example, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, or the shopping mall “New Babylon” in The Hague 14 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “C’est notre désir qui fait la revolution”, in Les artistes libres, Cobra 4 (1949). 15 Pamela M. Lee, Forgetting the Art World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012), 186. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ananta Ch. Sukla (ed.) Fiction in Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 4. Hinten 11 acknowledge that New Babylon was in essence a utopian artistic project, and not an architectural project that was created to be realized in the end.

Structure

Among the interpretations of New Babylon, (even by Constant himself), there seem to be two stances: New Babylon should be considered as reality, and, New Babylon should be considered as a fiction. The first stance seems to be getting the upper hand.

Even though perhaps rather ambitious, my goal is to provide some further steps in the collective effort of grasping the meaning, function, and usefulness of Constant’s New

Babylon. The question posed by the title of this thesis “a place that can never be?” is meant as a starting point for a more thorough investigation of the project New Babylon itself, as well as other artistic projects. Besides thoroughly analysing Constant’s project, on a more general level, I wish to point out important similarities across various artistic practices, artists, and artworks, and in this process shed light on some of their differences as well. To do so, this text will be divided into three chapters.

Chapter one, called Revisiting New Babylon, is the largest section of the text and mainly consists of an extensive analysis of Constant’s New Babylon project, approaching it from an art historical rather than an architectural point of view. To establish in what ways Constant’s project was influenced by the society and politics from which it emerged, the Netherlands in the 1950s, 60s, and not to forget 70s, and how the project in its turn influenced society around it, several factors will be addressed. An increase of the population, along with people’s sudden ability to spend more free time, vastly changed the structure of Dutch society. The political movement

Provo emerged, and new futuristic architectural projects were proposed and sometimes even realised. 19 I will briefly contrast contemporary ideas within architectural theory to New Babylon, and not, as is usually done, place them along the

19 An interesting project in relation to the work of Constant is the “City for the Future” (1960-65) project by Dutch architect Willem Brinkman (1931). While the visual similarities are compelling, Brinkman’s focus was on how Constant’s ideas could be applied in a form of utilitarian architecture and thus will not be discussed thoroughly as this is not the approach I will follow in my research. Hinten 12 same line, to emphasise the artistic qualities of the project. However, besides addressing the society out of which New Babylon emerged, the focus of my argument lies with the art historical context out of which it originates. Constants involvement with the Cobra movement and Situationist International will be addressed, along with the influence of contemporary theorists, among whom two of the most important are Asger

Jorn and Aldo van Eyck. The main question this section aims to address is what new insights we can gain from removing New Babylon from the architectural realm it has been wrongfully placed in, and instead analyse it as an inherently artistic project.

Chapter two, called Presenting New Babylon Today, positions Constants project within the twenty-first century. It will begin by providing a brief retrospective of several exhibitions of New Babylon, to analyse the different ways in which the project has previously been presented. After this, the main focus of this section will be a close reading of the New Babylon exhibition held at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague in

2016, as well as the concurrent exhibition held at the Cobra museum in Amstelveen, exploring whether the project is in fact presented differently than it was in past exhibitions, and what those differences are. Has the focus on New Babylon shifted from the field of architecture to the field of visual art? And does this presentation of the project within the socio-political context of the twenty-first century provide room for new understandings of the New Babylon? Does it provide a context from which New

Babylon can be approached within our contemporary society?

The final Chapter, The Aftermath of New Babylon, will begin by briefly analysing the relation between art and social change. After this it will provide several examples of works of art and artistic practices that are either directly inspired by Constants New

Babylon, or elaborate on very similar ideas. The artists and collectives that will be discussed include: Los Carpinteros, Carsten Höller, Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich, and

Atelier Van Lieshout. By highlighting the similarities and differences of these projects, my aim is to evaluate the influence New Babylon has had on the art world, as well as emphasise the uniqueness and scope of the project once again.

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As this outline suggests, I am concerned with not only providing a thorough revision of Constant’s New Babylon once again, but aim to do so from a different point of view than has been done before by claiming on the necessity to understand New

Babylon, for it to be at least in part, an artistic project. It should then not come as a coincidence, or surprise, that Constant himself eventually returned to one of the most classic forms of visual art at the end of his career: painting.

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Chapter 1: Revisiting New Babylon

“In art freedom manifests itself in its highest form. The creative imagination. Art creates an image of the world that didn’t exist before. No. More than that. An image that was unthinkable before.” - Constant, 199120

The main question this section will address is what new insights we can gain from removing New Babylon from the architectural realm from which it is often approached, and instead analyse it as an inherently artistic project.

A specific emphasis will be laid on the way in which Constant’s understanding of humanity and society has evolved throughout his career, as this can contribute to a more thorough understanding of the changing nature of New Babylon.

Figure 2: Constant, La liberté insultant le peuple, 1975, Oil on linen, 140 x 150 cm. Available from : Stichting Constant, stichtingconstant.nl. Image : Tom Haarts

20 Quote from Constant’s acceptance speech “Verzet ook nu” after receiving the Verzetsprijs in 1991, published in Verzetsprijzen 1991: teksten uitgesproken bij de uitreiking 4 mei in De Nieuwe Kerk te Amsterdam (Nijmegen: SUN, 1991). Translated from Dutch by author. Hinten 15

1.1 Constant Nieuwenhuys: Provocateur until the End “No artist tolerates reality.”21

“The past invariably mirrors our own times.”22

It was one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century, Friedrich Nietzsche who argued over a century ago that no artist should tolerate reality. No longer than a decade ago, a Dutch architecture student called Martin van Schaik claimed that the past invariably mirrors our own times. These two statements provide the starting point for my analysis of the ideas and practice of Constant Nieuwenhuys. However, there seems to be no better way to commence a study about an artist than by closely looking at the actual work produced by that artist. It is therefore that I would like to begin with an image of the painting La liberté insultant le peuple (fig. 2), which Constant finished in 1975. At first sight, this work might not seem like the most obvious point of departure for an attempt at a deeper understanding of Constant’s life project New Babylon. As a matter of fact, La liberté insultant le peuple appears to defy most of the values and ideas New Babylon stands for. The freedom of the inhabitants of New Babylon, who are no longer burdened by labour and can spend their days indulging in creativity and a higher level of autonomy, shaping the environment around them as they please, does not seem to be reflected in the blood-shed representation of chaos depicted on this painting. Both the title and the image itself allude to the fact that by the 1970s Constant was no longer dreaming of the utopian society he had envisioned before. As the title indicates, the work represents ‘the insulting freedom of the people; it is as if Constant has realized total freedom does not necessarily lead to peace, but can also lead to the opposite.

After working on his life project New Babylon for almost two decades from the

1950s until the early 1970s, in 1974 Constant Nieuwenhuys leaves most of the project to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, clears out his studio, and starts painting

21Friedrich Nietsche as cited in Oscar Levy (ed.) Friedrich Nietzsche. Complete Works (London 1909-15) vol. 15: The Will to Power, translated by Anthony M. Ludovici (London 1909-15) 74. 22 Van Schaik Exit Utopia. Hinten 16 again. Even though there are still architectural structures visible in his paintings, which refer to his earlier work, the utopian undertone of Constant’s New Babylon seem nowhere to be found. Instead of continuing to depict his ideas of a better society,

Constant gradually turns towards representing the grim reality of the world around him.

The horrors of the war in Vietnam, refugees in Kosovo and famine in Africa are clearly inspiring his work from the late 1960s onwards. While the topics Constant touches on in the 1970s were very much reflecting the developments of society and the art world around him, the medium and style Constant chose to depict these topics shows a sharp contrast to the changing art world around him. In opposition to the mechanical collages of Pop-art, the lean towards three-dimensional work of minimal art, and the dematerialization of the art object that lead to conceptual art, Constant decided to return to one of the most traditional techniques within art history: oil painting. He reverts to several of the classical masters of art history such as Titian, Delacroix, and

Cézanne. Especially Cézanne is of great interest to Constant, as he writes about him in the publication À propos de Cézanne, and further develops his colorism creating depth and space solely with colour without using lines.23 It should be noted that Constant’s return to painting cannot blindly be taken as an abandonment of New Babylon altogether. As some scholars have argued, Constant used painting as a means to an educative end. Since the models he created for New Babylon were not always as successful tools for conveying his ideas, Constant believed painting could be used to

“make the unknown visible,”24 as he felt that paintings could function as “a window onto a different world.”25

While this return towards painting was criticized by some of his contemporaries, others were more appreciative. Rudi Fuchs was one of the art critics who responded in a more positive way to Constant’s paintings, as in 1995 he states the following in the

23 Trudy van der Horst, Constant: De late periode (Nijmegen: BnM uitgevers, 2008), 240-250. 24 Constant Nieuwenhuys, Catalogus Constant Schilderijen 1940-1980 (voorwoord J.L. Locher) (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 1980) 25 Ibid. Hinten 17 foreword to the catalogue of the paintings of Constant: “Some consider Constant’s return to painting a return to tradition. I, however, do not share this opinion. I consider his development from the seventies as a deeper penetration into the garden of painting.”26 Constant’s choice to begin painting again, in contrast to what many artists around him were doing, is one of the many times during his career he, as it seems, deliberately chose a different direction than his contemporaries. As Constant said himself “I am not a designer but a provocateur.”27 This, I believe can be argued to be the idea that lies at the core of his career, and what led him to create his New Babylon.

26 Marcel Hummelink, Constant. Paintings 1948-1995 (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1995), 4. 27 Constant as cited in Freddy de Vree, Constant (Schelderode: Kunstforum, 1981) Hinten 18

Figure 3: Constant, Pélérins d’Emmaus, 1936, Oil on jute, 85.5 x 80 cm, Private collection. Available from : Stichting Constant, stichtingconstant.nl.

Figure 4: Mrs E. Kookorris-Syrie, COBRA members bringing their work to First International Exhibition of Experimental Artists, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, November 1949, black and white photograph. Available from: tate.org.uk. Courtesy: W. Stokvis Archive, Amsterdam

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Figure 5: Constant, The Little Ladder, 1949, oil on canvas, 90 x 75 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

Figure 6: Constant, Compositie met 158 blokjes, 1953, oil on panel, 122.1 x 121 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

Figure 7: Constant, Compositie met blauwe en witte blokjes, 1953, oil on wood, 60 x 59.8 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.

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Figure 8.1: Exhibition 'Man and House' at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 1952- 1953. Available at:http://www.sikkensfoundation.org/en/sikkensprijs/aldo_1960.html

Figure 8.2: Reconstuction of ‘een ruimte in kleur’ in the exhibition ‘Constant. Space + Colour’ at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, 28 May- 25 September 2016. Image by author.

Figure 8.3: Reconstruction of of ‘een ruimte in kleur’ in the exhibition ‘Constant. Space + Colour’ at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, 28 May- 25 September 2016. Image by author.

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Figure 9: Constant, Constructie met gekleurde vlakken, 1954, iron, plexiglass, 119.5 x 62 x 57,2 cm, Collection Fondation Constant longterm loan to Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Image by author.

Figure 10 : Constant, Construction aux plans transparants, 1954, aluminum, plexiglass, 76 x 76 x 50 cm, Collection Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Image : Tom Haarts. Hinten 22

Figure 11: Constant, Design for a gypsy camp, 1956, stainless steel, aluminium, Perspex, wood and oil paint, height: 10,2 cm, section: 125 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

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1.2 The road to New Babylon: From Cobra to Situationist International

“It is a matter of achieving the unknown by a deregulation of the senses”28

Quoting Arthur Rimbaud in relation to his New Babylon project in 1974, Constant summarizes an important aspect of the utopian society he envisioned, namely the achieving of the unknown. While he refers to Rimbaud more specifically in relation to his Door Labyrinth that he created especially as the closing ‘work’ for the final exhibition of New Babylon in its entirety held during his life (of course he did not know this at the time), this achievement of the unknown through the process of deregulation, is a concept that can be applied to the whole project of New Babylon, and, as I would like to argue, perhaps to Constant’s entire career. As I indicated already Constant referred to himself as a provocateur; and, as I will demonstrate also acted accordingly.

However, his life and art should not be interpreted as being motivated by random acts of rebellion, but as a well thought out search for an alternative society, in which art was not only a means to an end, but also the end itself.

In “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia,”29 1996, Hilde Heynen offers an interesting and refreshing view on Constant’s New Babylon, connecting the project to the idea presented by Theodor W. Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory (1970) that the involvement of art with utopia gives rise to one of the most central antinomies that determine the present condition of art:

“One of the crucial antinomies of art today is that it wants to be

and must be squarely Utopian, as social reality increasingly

impedes Utopia, while at the same time it should not be Utopian

28 Arthur Rimbaud as cited by Constant in “New Babylon, een schets voor een kultuur,: in New Babylon, exhibition catalogue (The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1974), 57. 29 The essay is part of a larger study published in the book Architecture and the Critique of Modernity, 1999. Interestingly, while the focus of her research lies with architecture, she does not approach Constant’s New Babylon from within this field of studies, but instead focuses on it’s qualities as a work of art, building her argument around a vast visual analysis of the project. Hinten 24

so as not to be found guilty of administering comfort and

illusion.”30

Drawing on Hegelian dialectics,31 Heynen goes on to describe New Babylon as follows:

“As a project that strives to be an embodiment of the utopian end

situation of history, it is based on the negation of all that is false

and fraudulent in the present societal condition. The ultimate

quality of the project however does not stem from its potential to

offer a harmonic or idyllic image of this future. On the contrary,

New Babylon does not lend itself as an instrument of semblance

or consolation. It truth lies in its very negativity and in the

dissonances that pervade the images of harmony.”32

As I will demonstrate, this ‘negative’ quality of New Babylon, can be argued to be rooted in the writings and art produced by Constant leading up to the project, and were already present at the beginning of his life and career. Furthermore, it is also this negation of the ‘present societal condition’ combined with the paradoxical qualities of

New Babylon that places the project in line with the dialectical process advocated by

Hegel. In linking the ideological basis of his project not only to the direct society from which it emerged, the 1950s and 60s of the Netherlands, but tracing it back to his entire artistic career, the artistic qualities can be emphasized and argued to be of more significance than the architectural qualities of the project. Having established some of the basic conceptions to keep in mind when revisiting ‘the road to’ Constant’s New

Babylon, I will now turn to addressing several key moments that are of relevance to his

New Babylon project in particular. Since his life and career have been thoroughly

30 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 47. 31 Esepcially Hegel’s rejection of the traditional reduction ad absurdum argument, that states “when the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, then the premises must be discarded altogether, leaving nothing,” is relevant in relation to New Babylon, as the project is build around several paradoxes. See: Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 383. 32 Hilde Heynen, “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia” Assemblage 29 (1996): 38. Hinten 25 discussed by scholars, I will not resort to a full revision, but instead focus on several key moments to substantiate my argument.33

Born in 1920 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Constant developed an interest in art at an early age34, at first mainly focusing on the traditions and techniques of the great masters. In an interview in 2005 he describes how impressed he was by the work of Delacroix that he saw at the exhibition A Hundred Years of French Painting at the

Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. And how the first thing he took from the library when, at the age of 18 or 19 he enrolled as a student at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, were

Delacroix’s diaries.35 Clearly, early on in his career he developed an interest in the expression of ideas through text, and not solely through paintings or images. As is generally known, Constant’s ideas radically changed when he travelled to Paris for the first time in 1946. It was here that he met the Danish painter Asger Jorn, with whom two years later he started the Cobra group. Constant’s Cobra membership was short- lived,36 but it was during these years that Constant wrote his first manifesto in 1948 to promote and explain the visions of the Reflex Experimental Group.37The main idea that drove this group of artists was that the process of creating art, and the experience upon which it is based is more important than the individual artist or even the final work itself. Furthermore, they believed that the artist and the art that they created should be continuously changing. It was within this manifesto that Constant stated: "A painting is not a structure of colours and lines, but an animal, a night, a cry, a man, or all of these together.”38 This emphasis of the liveliness of painting was a clear protest against the cold, abstract works that were created by members of the Dutch movement De Stijl. It

33 See for example, Trudy van der Horst, “Biografie van Constant. Amsterdam, 1920 – Utrecht, 2005” in exhibition catalogue Constant New Babylon. Aan ons de vrijheid (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2016): 226-239. 34 He was only sixteen years old when he made his first painting De Emmaüsgangers (Pélerins d’Emmaus) see fig. 3. 35Linda Boersma, “Constant”, BOMB 91 (2005). 36 He was only a member of the Cobra group from 1948-1951 37 He founded this group together with Karel Appel, Corneille and his own brother, Jan Nieuwenhuys 38 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Manifesto”, Reflex: orgaan van de experimentele groep in Holland 1 (1948). Hinten 26 is also the first moment that demonstrates the way in which Constant constructed his ideas about society, in the form of a negation of the existing consensus. As Mark

Wigley has indicated, it is within the paintings Constant created during this period that the architecture and violence present in New Babylon is already clearly visible. As

Wigley argues, and I agree, “the combination of human tragedy and architecture which is either falling apart or being constructed is absolutely a constant in Constant.

Architecture from the beginning and violence from the beginning.”39This violence is also reflected in “C’est notre désir qui fait la revolution,” one of Constants most militant yet beautiful texts in which he takes a stance against the work of Mondrian and De Stijl:

“To create means to produce that which was unknown before,

and the unknown instils fear in those who believe that they have

something to maintain or to guard. We however, who have

nothing to lose but our shackles, we are not afraid of the

adventure. The only thing we risk exists in the loss of a rather

sterile virginity, the virginity of the abstract. We must soil the

virginal purity of Mondrian, be it merely with our misery. Isn’t

misery to be chosen before death, at least for those who are

strong enough to fight?”40

The rebelliousness that can be derived from this quote is very much in accordance with the still rather young and anarchistic persona that Constant aims to be during the late

1950s. Poet Gerrit Kouwenaar, who had a close friendship with Constant, describes him as follows:

“Constant had fairly long hair and a melancholic moustache. He

was wearing an eccentric purple suit that was too loose for him,

and high shoes with bare feet, like some of the dandies on prints by

39 Mark Wigley in “Salon/Architect Talk/ Constant’s New Babylon”, Art Basel, June 2015. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgv4cL77n38 See for example Constant’s painting The little ladder, 1949 (fig. 5) 40 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Begeerte heeft ons aangeraakt”, typoscript (1949). The Hague, RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kusntgeschiedenis, archive Constant. Translated by the author. Hinten 27

Dubout. I immediately admired him. Those days he lived in de Pijp

and smoked from a red-stone pipe, of which the head resembled a

grinning devils face.”41

The way Constant dresses in his younger years reflects a carelessness, but one that seems to be carefully constructed. He is a good singer, can play the guitar and has a broad repertoire including flamenco music. 42 While I do not want to present my argument too simple or bluntly, it can be suggested that the free, careless, but also slightly decadent lifestyle of the Experimental Group did reflect the way in which they painted.

While the Dutch public had finally gotten used to the idea of avant-garde painting in the form of the prim clarities of the works of now internationally praised artists like Mondrian, they were not ready yet to accept the messy, wild images created by the Cobra group. However, Willem Sandberg, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, did appreciate the art made by the Cobra group, and thus became an influential patron and promoter of their work. In 1949 Sandberg supplied the group with large canvases, which they used to create paintings that would be shown on the First

International Exhibition of Experimental Art (fig. 4) held that same year at the Stedelijk

Museum in Amsterdam.43 Two flourishing years followed for Cobra, culminating in the

Cobra exhibition in 1951 at the Palais de Beaux-Arts. The exhibition, on which work by

33 artists from 11 different countries was presented, was partly financed by collectors.

As a result, many of the participating artists had no close ties to the revolutionary foundations of Cobra at all. Cobra did not manage to resist the market it had tried to rebel against and by 1951 it had become a part of the established art-world. As a last

41 Opening statement by Gerrit Kouwenaar for the exhibition by Constant in the Amsterdam Gallery Le Canard at 26 January 1952, as cited in Van der Horst, “Biografie van Constant.” Translated by the author. 42 Van der Horst, “Biografie van Constant”, 228. 43 Many of the works created at that time have now become iconic works for the Cobra period. Hinten 28 gesture of revolt against the art world the demise of the group was announced in Cobra magazine soon after the exhibition.44

After the acceptance and thus end of Cobra as an avant-garde movement,

Constant turned a completely different way once again. He moved towards the cold abstraction he had been fervently criticizing the years before.45 In 1952 he went to study in London for three months after receiving a scholarship from the Arts Council of

Great Britain. The city was just recovering from the bombings of World War II and was being rebuild in a clean and practical, but according to Constant immensely dull way, resulting in a built environment with no room for creativity and play. Looking back at his

New Babylon project in 1981 Constant explains to Freddy the Vree that the turning point in his career was this moment he briefly turned towards abstraction in 1952: “ I felt it was necessary to jump over that hedge and browse in that cold abstraction.

Because I realized that, while we were busy with Cobra, the people around us had erected entire new city districts, which were part of that abstraction froide: straight lines, steel structures, large concrete surfaces. I wanted to explore this area for myself, aesthetically. (…) It eventually led me to New Babylon.”46

After his stay in London, Constant moves back to Amsterdam in the summer of

1952, where he further develops his interest in spatial architecture and its relation to three-dimensional works. His time in London made him think about the question of how art can contribute to an encompassing intensification of life. As a result, Constant produces two-dimensional works that are radically different from his Cobra work, constructing collages and reliefs with interlocking colour planes, and works such as

Compositie met 158 blokjes, 1953, (fig. 6) that show a resemblance to Russian

44 “If a gang of avant-gardists wants to have a utopian impact, it must vanish into the world it hopes to change.” As cited in Carter Ratcliff, “Snakes & ladders. The Cobra group, sons of the surrealists”, Tate Magazine 4 (2003). 45 Even though he created works that visually were in line with De Stijl paintings, this did not mean that completely adopted their ideology or suddenly agreed with their ideals. See paragraph 1.3. for a more elaborate explanation of Constant’s brief turn to abstraction. 46 De Vree, Constant, 33. Hinten 29 constructivism. In 1953 he makes the relief Compositie met blauwe en witte blokjes,

(fig. 7) for the first time adding an extra dimension to the two-dimensional painting.

Together with architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) he creates a space for the exhibition Man and House at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 1952-1953 (fig.

8)47 Their exhibition was awarded with the Sikkens Prize in 1960 for their “active and creative contributions to the synthesis of space and color.”48 They linked the connection between space and color to the integration of art and society; something that had been highly valued since members of De Stijl experimenting with this. It was especially the manifesto “For a spatial colorism” published in 1953 as an appendix to the publication that accompanied the eponymous exhibition Man and House that had left a huge impression. In their manifesto, Van Eyck and Constant, the architect and the artist, declare that color is not used to its full capacity within modern architecture. They argue color appears in a random and passive way, and as a result does not have the emotional impact on space it should have, since color is equally important to determine a space as the constructive elements of the space. “Color is nothing other than the color of the form and the form is nothing other than the form of the color.”49 Color should not be seen as something to be added after construction, but should be realized in relation to it. Constant continues to explore the relationship between architecture and colour in the following years.

Of course, not all Constant’s contemporaries immediately accepted his new ideas about the interaction between the artist and the architect. The Dutch architect

Gerrit Rietveld responded to Constant’s manifest with quite some critique, confronting

47 Constant and Van Eyck had worked together before, though not as closely as they did in 1952. Three years earlier they both participated in the First International Exhibition of Experimental Art in 1949; Sandberg had commissioned van Eyck to design the exhibition. 48 “Aldo van Eyck and Constant Nieuwenhuys” SikkensFoundation (1960). Available at: http://www.sikkensfoundation.org/en/sikkensprijs/aldo_1960.html 49 Constant Nieuwenhuys, Aldo van Eyck, “Voor een spatiaal colorisme”, Forum. Maandblad voor architectuur en gebonden kunst 8:10 (1953): 360-361. Translated by author. Hinten 30

Constant with several flaws in his theories.50 Rietveld’s criticism deeply influenced

Constant, causing him to not only rethink his manifest but also question the entire role of the artist. He expresses his doubts in a letter to Rietveld, in which he really seeks to justify the way in which art and the artist can add something valuable to architecture.

He comes to the conclusion that, even though the traditional role of the individual artist creating autonomous paintings no longer has any use, the artist’s understanding of colour is still of value. He explains in his letter,

“With the disappearance of the need for the most individual painting

by the individual painter, does in no way disappear the need for the

typical color-plastic nature of the painter.” 51. He goes on to state,

“With the emergence of a new, more static form of society in sight,

we have to take into account that the revolutionary task of the “Free”

artist is not everlasting, even though for now his revolutionary and

his social activities can function side by side. The gradual ceasing of

the revolutionary function of the artist can however not be seen as

an impoverishment, since the many milestones on the way from

chaos to order do not constitute an objective of art. The objective of

art is the regulation that lies at the end of that road. When this

objective has been reached, the personality of the painter might

become less interesting in our individualistic eyes, but his task does

definitely not become less important for society.”52

Constants ideas started to become more and more influenced by the rapidly changing environment around him: he wanted to break with the monotony of urban planning in which rows of blocks of similar houses were built all over the Netherlands,

50 Despite, or perhaps because of their discussion about the role of colour in architecture, Rietveld invites Constant to design the colorscheme of the interior of a model home for the Dutch department store de Bijenkorf that Rietvveld designed for Martin Visser in 1954. 51 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Letter by Constant to Gerrit Rietveld,” RKD- Netherlands Institute for Art History. Translated by author. 52 Ibid. Hinten 31 and oppose the political power structure of the 1950s.53 During these years Constant seeks a connection with like-minded artists and architects. He visits the Congrès

Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, works together with architects, among whom were Stephen Gilbert, a former Cobra member and Nicolas Schöffer, a Hungarian sculptor. Together with with Schöffer and Gilbert he establishes the collective called

‘Néovision,’ in 1954. The artists challenge Constant to experiment with three- dimensional sculptures, leading him to create Constructie met gekleurde vlakken

(1954)(fig. 9) and Construction aux plans transparants (1954)(fig. 10). He adopts the angular shapes of Gilbert and Schöffer but soon replaces these with more curved shapes as he believes that constructions based on “l’infini des paraboles” have a stronger effect on the surrounding space than constructions that are based on the closed shape of a box.54 Constant’s move into a different direction leads him to again break with yet another group of artists.

Shortly after this, Constant is invited by Asger Jorn to join him in Alba, Italy, at a congress initiated by ‘Mouvement pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste’ (International

Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus) dedicated to ‘Industry and the Fine Arts.’ Despite their differences on a personal level, to put it lightly, they kept in contact after their break in Denmark, exchanging ideas about the role of art in society.55 Constant gives a lecture at the congress, Demain la poésie logera la vie (Tomorrow, Life will Reside in

Poetry) in which he pleads for an architecture that is liberated and stimulates creativity.

He encourages architects to grasp the opportunities of new technological developments, declaring “scientific techniques seem only to be awaiting an aesthetic with a clear outlook for their deployment.” 56 He elaborates on an article he wrote

53 Van der Horst, Constant. De late periode. 54 Marcel Hummelink, Apres nous la liberté: Constant en de artistieke avant-garde in de jaren 1946-1960 (Amsterdam: s.n. (uitgave in eigen beheer), 2003), 130. 55 Constant’s wife Matie had left him for Jorn a few years earlier, resulting in a break of their friendship. 56 Written in Paris, 19 August 1956, by Constant as a statement to the First World Congress of Free Artists, which was held in Alba, Italy, between 2 and 8 September 1956. Translated from Hinten 32 earlier, “Le technisisme”, in 1956. In this text Constant sketches the large gap that has emerged between the visual arts and architecture, because of the fact that artists have not engaged with the aesthetic possibilities of modern materials such as Plexiglas, plastic, metal and concrete. As a result, most industrial products have are lacking in their aesthetic design and visual art is used purely as a decorative tool in the built environment, Constant pleads for a new type of aesthetics which he calls “technicism.”

He furthermore expresses his affinity for architecture and the freedom he sees in it as a way of expression when he states “[architecture] will be capable of incorporating into its aesthetic the manipulation of volumes and voids of scultpure, and the spatial colorism of painting, in order to create one of the most complete of all of the arts, at once lyrical in its means and social in its very nature. It is in poetry that life will reside.”57 During his time in Alba, Constant notices the ruthless living circumstances of the gypsies, which inspire him to create his Design for a gypsy camp in Alba (1956) (fig. 11). This design will later be recognized to be his first New Babylon model.

When looking at Constant’s oeuvre until the late 1950s it seems to be built up of clearly distinguishable, and contrasting periods. While in 1948 he created the manifesto of the Experimental group, in which he argued for the destruction of the emptiness of the work of Mondrian and De Stijl, he later turned towards creating art that seemed to be as abstract and cold as any typical De Stijl work. Then, after this turn to abstraction, he completely abandoned painting and began to construct sculptures made out of Plexiglas and iron wire. Still, that was not exactly right for

Constant, as he believed solely creating art was too individualistic. It was then that he began his search for an alternative society, constructed around manifestos, models, drawings, and ideas.

French by Stephen Wright, published in Mark Wigley, Constant’s New Babylon. The Hyper- Architecture of Desire (Rotterdam: 010 uitgeverij, 1999), 78. 57 Constant, “Demain la poésie logera la vie” Hinten 33

Figure 12: Asger Jorn and Guy Debord, The Naked City. Illustration de l’hypothèse, 1957, Lithographic poster, 35 x 49 cm. Permild & Rosengreen, Copenhagen.

Figure 13: Constant, Space Circus, 1958, wire and copper, 105 x 90 x 100 cm, Gemeenteemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

Hinten 34

Figure 14: Constant, Sectoren in berglandschap, 1967, perspex and oil paint on wood, 7 x 63.5 x 83.3 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

Figure 15: Constant, Adieu la P, 1962, oil on linen, 112,5 x 145,5 cm., Collection Fondation Constant, long-term loan to the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen. Image by author.

Hinten 35

Figure 16: Constant, Homo Ludens, 1964, oil on canvas, 160 x 185 cm, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Image: Fondation Constant, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam/ Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Figure 17: Constant, New Babylon – Holland, 1963, Ink on street map, 59 x 59.9 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

Hinten 36

Figure 18: Constant, Erotic Space, 1971, oil and lacquer on canvas, 164.5 x 178.8 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

Hinten 37

1.3 New Babylon: Creativity as Highest Ideal

“Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming

and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our

lives.”58

Long before Joseph Beuys, who in the 1970s argued that everyone ‘is an artist,’

Constant already promoted similar ideas. However, Constant believed that it was not enough to simply declare that everyone is an artist, but also, as he stated, “figure out how this creativity can be woken up (“chaqu’un est un createur qui sommeille”).”59 This, according to Constant, could only be achieved by social means, instead of only artistic or cultural means. While he did not explicitly refer to these changing social means, presenting New Babylon as a revolution while he was working on the project, he has indicated in retrospect that he did strongly believe in the idea of revolution when, in

1999, he indicates what was needed was “a social turnover, a revolution.”60 Constant began to clearly develop his ideas for such a social revolution when he met Guy

Debord in 1956 during his stay in Alba.

Debord, who founded the International Lettrists and practiced as a filmmaker, author as well as activist, wanted to create a radical movement abandoning traditional arts and instead focusing fully on the study of psychogeography. Within psychogeography the boundaries between life and art have been dissolved; the movement focuses on the effects of the (constructed) geographical environment on the behaviour and emotions of individuals.61 In 1957 Asger Jorn and Guy Debord bind their forces, bringing together the Mouvement pour une Bauhaus imaginiste and the

International Lettrist, naming it the Situationist International (SI). Jorn and Debord

58 Joseph Beuys as cited in Caronline Tisdall, Art into Society, Society into Art (London: ICA, 1974), 48. 59 Constant as cited in Benjamin Buchloch, “A Conversation with Constant, 30 October 1999” in Catherine de de Zegger and Mark Wigley (eds.) The Activist Drawing, Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (New York: The MIT Press, 2001) 60 ibid. 61 Ewen Chardronnet, “The History of Unitary Urbanism and Psychogegraphy at the Turn of the Sixties”, theanarchistlibrary.org (2003). Hinten 38 created maps to illustrate their ideas, publishing them together with explanining texts

(fig. 12). At first Constant is reluctant to join their movement, as the SI is not a group as diverse as Constant was longing for and seemed to be more concerned with the individual goals of the artists. However, in collaboration with Debord, Constant decides to define his visions in the Declaration d’Amsterdam in 1958. They call their newly defined movement “unitary urbanism,” which they explain as “the unceasing complex activity that focuses on consciously recreating the human environment in accordance with the most progressive understandings on every level.”62 Constant eventually agrees to officially join the movement. He focuses on visualizing the ideologies of unitary urbanism by building models and constructions, drawing maps and sketches, and writing texts. Seeing the work Constant is creating, Debord refers him to Johan

Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. In this book,

Huizinga describes a new type of man, who, instead of the Homo Faber who spends most of his time working, spends his time playing freely; naming this new type of

‘playing man’ Homo Ludens.

Huizinga explores the different qualities and elements of play in culture and civilization. He sees culture and civilization as emerging from a type of play while also being a type of play stating, “Civilization arises in and as play, and never leaves it.”63

He emphasises that an essential characteristic of play is that is a voluntary action, a type of freedom, in the sense that it is an act that is freely engaged in and also an expression of one’s freedom. He places play outside our ordinary, daily life, in a different reality with its own borders and rules. Agreeing with Huizinga, Constant writes the following in 1966, adding his own ideas about the potential influence of automation:

“Huizinga justly locates the figure of the homo ludens among the social elite, the non- working ruling class, disregarding the working masses. The automation, that separates

62 Constant and Guy Debord, “La déclaration d’Amsterdam.” Internationale situationniste 2 (1958), 31. 63 Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971 (1938)), 173. Hinten 39 production from human workforce, has opened the way to a massification of this homo ludens.” 64

Constant sees a more inclusive potential in Huizinga’s ideas, explaining, “The merit of Huizinga is his recognition that a potential homo ludens hides in every person.

The liberation of this ludic potential of mankind coincides with his social liberation.”

65However, there are some key differences between Huizinga’s theory and the way in which Constant wanted to implement the homo ludens in society. Huizinga developed his theories in the nineteen-thirties, and believed that play was gradually becoming suppressed in society as a result of the increasing dominance and efficiency of technology. As Constant describes in 1963, Huizinga positioned his homo ludens outside of reality in the past where man could escape the unsatisfactory circumstances of society. 66 Constant opted instead for a new homo ludens of the future, which would not be placed outside real society, but become its new inhabitant. For this to be possible, society itself would thus have to change into a society that could be freely constructed according to anyone’s individual needs. 67

Quoting Marx in a conversation with Buchloch, Constant explains how his views are different from those of Marx and Huizinga. He indicates that while Marx argued, “A man cannot always be a painter. He is only a painter when he paints,”68 Constant himself, believed that being an artist, a homo ludens, should be a permanent state of being, and not a temporary one. Furthermore, for Constant technological developments would not be an obstruction of freedom, as Huizinga believed they were, but instead facilitate the very freedom envisioned by Constant. It is in here that Constant’s support of technology clearly separates him from many artists and intellectuals around him at that time.

64 Constant Nieuwenhuys, Johannes Lodewijk Locher, New Babylon (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 1974), 66. 65 Ibid. 66 Constant, “Lezing voor het Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in Londen, 1963”, in Constant. New Babylon. Aan ons de Vrijheid. (The Hague: Hannibal, 2016) 67 Ibid. 68 Constant as cited in in Buchloch “A Conversation with Constant”. Hinten 40

Even though Constant was offering a response to the ideas he presented together with Debord in the first manifesto of the SI, they were clearly moving in different directions by 1960, leading to Constant to resign from SI that year. It was, however, Debord who summarized Constant’s project under the name New Babylon. It seems as if Debord was, at least in part, critiquing Constant’s project by naming it New

Babylon; as we all know the story of the tower of Babel did not end well. Still, Constant liked the name. Babylon to him represented suggestions of human hubris, a non-

Christian morale, of an unknown prosperity and of fantastic life forms. New was also fitting, because of its international character.

The main critique Debord and the SI had on Constant’s strategy for developing his critique was that according to them Constant focused too much on devising a

“concrete model” of the way society would look when unitary urbanism would be realized. They felt he was concerned too much with the “structural problems of urbanism;” Constant’s focus on the ‘technical problems,’ removed the critical potential of the project. About halfway through the 1960s, when Constant’s project started to gain more attention form the public and media, the SI even accused Constant of

“functioning as a public-relations officer for capitalism, in that his project tried to integrate the masses in a totally technified environment.” 69It is this point of critique that demonstrates that Debord perhaps misunderstood Constant’s intentions. It was namely exactly Constant’s concern with these technical issues that was one of the main conditions, or foundation even, upon which New Babylon was based. With his New

Babylon project he wanted to create minimal conditions for behaviour that should remain as free as possible. Every restriction of freedom and movement and the creation of mood and atmosphere should be avoided. As he explained, “Everything must remain possible, everything could happen; the environment should be created by the activity of life, and not the other way around.”70 For Constant the best way to

69 Heynen, “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia”, 27. 70 Constant, “Lezing voor het Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in Londen, 1963”. Hinten 41 achieve such an environment was to fully embrace the possibilities offered by technological progress. His embrace of technology is also emphasised by the brief period, while he just began working on New Babylon, during which he created several models and drawings inspired by space travel.71 When in 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik into space, Constant designed models inspired by this topic such as the sculpture Space Circus, 1958 (fig. 13).

However, the endless open space that this newly explored territory beyond the Earth itself provided, does not seem to be reflected in Constant’s descriptions of New

Babylon. He does refer to open spaces, but these are merely the spaces to be left alone by human life, the remaining spaces outside the sectors of which New Babylon is to be constructed describing them as “extensive open green spaces where nobody lives and where no buildings are to be found.”72 He even specifies that this separation and even overcoming of nature and thus a total control of the environment is one of the key aspects of New Babylon, stating “Far from a return to nature, to the idea of living in a park as individual aristocrats once did, we see in such immense constructions the possibility of overcoming nature and of submitting the climate, lighting and sounds to our control.”73 According to Constant, there need to be clear, temporary, boundaries provided for humans to freely change and move them as they please.

In 1964 Constant moves to a new studio at Wittenburg in Amsterdam. There he has the space to create models and drawings of a larger size. He produces scale models with sectors and dynamic labyrinths in diverse landscapes (see for example fig.

14). In his designs for models, Constant uses numerous small nails, screws, cogs and other small ironware, which he buys at the market at Waterlooplein. This attention to detail is something that, according to Mark Wigley, and here I agree with him,

71 In 1955 Constant was commisioned to create several monumental constructions for the reconstructive exhibition ‘E55’ in Rotterdam, which left him occupied with the theme of space travel for several years. See, wall text “Space travel ”, Constant Space+ Colour (Amstelveen: Cobra Museum of Modern Art, 2016). 72 Constant, “New Babylon: An Urbanism of the Future”, Architectural Design, 34:6 (1964): 304- 305. 73 Constant, “Another City for Another Life,” Internationale Situationniste, 2 (1958). Hinten 42 distinguishes the work of Constant as art, as opposed to simply architectural models.

As Wigley explains,

“[Constant] became a hyper-architect (…). The most obvious

symptom is the models that form the centrepiece of the project.

They are unmistakably architectural, yet have the quality of

refined artworks, employing materials and finishes rarely seen

in architectural models of the time. The construction of the

model itself was as radical as the space it proposed.”74

It is true that Constant’s models are very much aesthetically pleasing; he himself emphasised this aspects of his models when presenting them. 75 However, here

Wigley’s analysis of the artistic qualities of the project remains rather superficial.

Scholars tend to have difficulties in pinpointing exactly what it is that makes Constant’s project different from the work of architects. Often the ‘aesthetic quality’ is referred to as something that separates it from architecture. As Ludo van Halem for example explained in a talk he had with Wigley in 2015 at Art Basel, “We still have to keep in mind that it is still a work of art, that these models are not part of just an idea or a theory, they are also in a way aesthetic objects.”76 Still, the fact that his models are nice to look at does not offer an explanation to the complexity of Constant’s work, and the way in he believed how the visual arts can be of meaning within society. I would here like to briefly return to Heynen’s analysis of Constant project, as she takes her analysis one step further, explaining not only how Constant’s oeuvre corresponds with society, but also how it functions as a form of self-critique.

As I have indicated, critics such as Wigley and others have described

Constant’s models as aesthetically pleasing. It was also Wigley, who, in his analysis of

Constant’s work has indicated that Constant has an extraordinary way of working,

74 Wigley, Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, 78. 75 See Chapter 2: Presenting New Babylon for more information on Constant’s focus on the presentation of his work in exhibitions. 76 Ludo van Halem in Salon/Architect Talk/ Constant’s New Babylon. Hinten 43 when it comes to the order in which he uses his materials. While an architect would usually first make a sketch after which he or she would create a model, Constant seems to have reversed this order, as the drawings of New Babylon “consistently came after rather than before.”77 Interestingly, Constant’s first solo exhibition, held at the

Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1959, consisted of only models, without any drawings or paintings presented. Constant even literally said goodbye to the act of painting with his work Adieu la P in 1962 (fig. 15). However, his goodbye did not last long as only two years later Constant already began painting again, visualizing his homo ludens in a liberated and undefined space (fig. 16). As Hilde Heynen argues, the paintings and drawings that represent New Babylon might be understood as “a critique of the simplistic way in which the models and narratives present the society of the future, rendering visible many contradictions and incommensurabilities.” 78 This

‘simplicity’ of the models to which Heynen refers relates to the fact that within the models, only the architectural structures of New Babylon are presented, like an empty template which has yet to be filled in. This liberated, borderless, utopian space can of course be filled in many different ways, once humans are added. The first few years

Constant worked on New Babylon, he still focused on designing its physical shape.

Occupied with the technicalities of New Babylon, working on his models and placing his structures on actual street maps (see fig. 14&17) he believed that people would act accordingly once they would inhabit his utopian space. However, as the project evolves

Constant begins to recognize the flaws of his utopian world. In his drawings and paintings especially, he explores the darker side of New Babylon, no longer able to conceal its imperfections and dissonances. In paintings such as Erotic Space,

1971,(fig. 18) he represents human like figures as bloody and twisted chunks of meat, leaning towards the visual imagery of artists such as Francisco Goya or Francis Bacon.

77 Mark Wigley, “Paper, Scissors, Blur” in Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon (New York: The Drawing Centre, 1999), 10. 78 Heynen, “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia”, 35. Hinten 44

As Heynen puts it, the dismantling of all conventions to which Constant strives leads to “a zero point of human existence in which the authenticity that is striven for is reduced to a torrent of perceptions and sensations and nothing more than that- no longer an ideal but a caricature.”79 Heynen articulates this side of New Babylon quite beautifully; expressing the difficulties we can, and probably will have when trying to imagine this society as actually existing. She goes on to argue that through these paintings, Constant provides a “multi-layered commentary on the impossibility of giving utopia a concrete form,” within the project of New Babylon itself. However tempting it is to go along with Henyen’s conclusion, the premise that a utopia cannot be given a concrete form, we do have to be wary of the way in which she discards Constant’s models and texts as being too simplistic, or perhaps positive. After all, it is Heynen herself who, as I have indicated before, introduces the concept of the antinomy to New

Babylon, which should ideally not lead to favouring New Babylon to the side of reality on the one hand, or imagination on the other.

79 Heynen, “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia”, 28. Hinten 45

Figure 19: Gerrit Burg, Single-Family Dwellings Designed by Willem Wissing in Hendrik-Ido Ambacht, gelatin silver print, c. 1956-1957, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2016.

Figure 20: Constant, Ode à l’Odéon, 1969, oil and laquer on canvas, 190.7 x 200.2 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, long term loan Fondation Constant, Amsterdam.

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Figure 21: Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture, Approach to Crystal House, 1919. Available at: http://www.hiddenarchitecture.net/2015/11/alpine-architecture.html

Figure 22: ‘PROVO’. Newspapers announcing council candidates, including Constant, 1965. RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kusntgeschiedenis, archive Constant.

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Figure 23: Yona Friedman, Spatial City, project, Perspective, 1958/1959, n.s., MoMA, New York.

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1.4 Beyond Art: New Babylon and Society

“An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision,” James McNeill Whistler.“ Art is not

what you see, but what you make others see,” Edgar Degas. “I definitely believe that

art is the best way to produce social change,” Pedro Reyes.

These, and many more similar quotes reflecting on modern and/or contemporary art can be found and are recited over and over on blogs, websites, and sometimes even t- shirts. The exact source or text in which the artists made these statements can often not even be traced back anymore, and it is safe to say that the words are often twisted to create better slogans or one-liners to promote a connection between artists, art, and society. While such quotes might seem a bit tacky, they do in fact reflect a certain tendency within the arts that from the 1990s onwards seems to have grown to become a trend. Claire Bishop has identified this trend among artists to become more directly involved with society as the “social turn.”80 The quotes however also reflect several aspects of Constant’s idea about the link between art and society, as well as how others have described his art. There is a strong sense that Constant’s art is about promoting a certain vision to others in order to instigate social change.

As Wigley recently explained about Constant’s New Babylon in 2015, “what he was trying to do was to put this concept in people’s minds. If this concept were deeply in everybody’s minds then it would actually happen. And it would not happen exactly the way he drew it, because he does not want to be the one to determine how people will live. Of course this is a paradox: someone has the idea that everybody should have their own idea what to do.81Here Wigley points out yet another of the many paradoxes at the core of New Babylon. More importantly, this discrepancy demonstrates how

Constant’s way of instigating social change through his art is different, and I believe potentially more effective, than projects that are categorized under the social turn

80 Bishop explains the social turn as “the recent surge of artistic interest in collectivity, collaboration, and direct engagement with specific social constituencies.” Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”, Artforum (2006), 179. 81 Mark Wigley in Salon/Architect Talk/ Constant’s New Babylon. Hinten 49 within the arts.82 Wigley emphasises that Constant was aiming to get a ‘concept’ in people’s minds, and not directly changing society itself by actually building a New

Babylon-like community to physically demonstrate its potential.

I have established by now, that what Constant did do was creating spatial models and sculpture like objects, to explain what his ideal society would look like.

Following the ideas of Heynen, I have indicated that Constant perhaps felt his models did not convey his ideas clearly enough, and as a result started painting again to demonstrate how human beings could function within New Babylon. However, in her analysis Heynen leaves out a major part of the project, namely the intangible, theoretical part. It is in these texts, that Constant has a similar approach towards the models that form New Babylon, namely, filling in their empty spaces. It is also through these texts that Constant became most involved with the real society in which he lived and worked. I have made clear from the beginning that Constant’s aim was to use his art to promote a certain ideal for society. It is not a coincidence that he became involved with politics, as besides architecture, politics have a major influence on the way in which society is structured.

Constant worked on his project for almost two decades, and therefore the historical context and society in which New Babylon was created went through several changes. While the project was started in the late 1950s, Constant only stopped working on it in the 1970s. The changes society underwent, as well as Constant’s view of these changes, are clearly reflected in New Babylon. However, the influence went the other way as well, society is not only reflected in the project, but the project itself also influenced the social, political, and cultural context around it.

As Buchloch indicates, there are not only paradoxes within New Babylon itself, but also a historical paradox is present that relates directly to the interaction of the project with what was happening in the society around it. He explains that in New

82 I will return to these different approaches towards instigating social change through art in Chapter 3: The Aftermath of New Babylon. Hinten 50

Babylon there seems to be an emphasis on an “abstract universalist model of creativity,” that according to him is typical to the social context of the 1950s and 60s, a sort of “fetishization of human creativity as the supreme value of all.”83

He goes on to argue that Constant refrains from addressing the “conditions of alienated labour,”84 that are a direct result of the increasing mechanization. He only focuses on the question of how we can liberate a universal form of creativity. However, in society itself there is a “rise of the society of the spectacle” going on, which has as a result the

“total elimination if not prohibition of every single state of creativity, of every single moment of free time, which is transformed into industrialized leisure.”85 So there are two things happening at the same time. On the one hand there is Constant developing his ideas of a new, completely emancipated space full of ludic creativity, while in reality a society of total control is constructed that “operates within the deepest recesses of human desire and human leisure and free-time activities.”86

As Constant proclaims in one of his readings, “the artist traditionally seeks to represent the world, but it is more important to transform the world and make it more liveable.”87 With New Babylon, this is exactly what Constant aimed to do. Instead of taking the existing society as a point of departure, to him the only way to evoke real change was to create an environment that was completely different from his current society. It is for this idea that his line of though has been compared to the ideas of a group of radical architects, who, in 1919 and 1920 deliberately removed themselves from the realistic architectural realm, into an imaginary space of utopian ideas. I am referring to the “Glass Chain” (“Die Gläserne Kette”), or Crystal Cain, initiated by Bruno

Taut. Driven by taut, the group of architects conducted a form of utopian correspondence for which they communicated their ideas to each other anonymously using letters with mostly annotated drawings (Figure 21). In 1999 Constant himself

83 Buchloch, “A Conversation with Constant”. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Constant, “Lezing voor het Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in Londen, 1963”. Hinten 51 directly refers to this connection, comparing his own ideals to those of Taut, reciting him as follows: “Let us be consciously imaginary architects, since we know very well that only social transformation and radical political transformation can create the basis for actual work.”88

The increasing population and the expansion of mechanised traffic, caused for unrest and a feeling of insurrection among Dutch society. Constant was well aware of these changes and the concerns about them. He stated, “we cannot allow traffic to fade away social spaces in cities, like what is happening now, and that the population increase transforms our entire landscape into one continuous strand of urbanization, death and sterile, without any possibility to achieve a richer life.”89Responses to this unrest came not only from Constant and other artists, but also from other groups in society. Within politics the well-known anarchistic Provo movement emerged. They too despised the monotony of new urban planning, with their endless blocks of similar looking houses (see for example fig. 19) as well as the monotony of life in general.

They protested against the established order by engaging in protests and activities that were similar to the happenings that were already being organized and thought out by the SI several years earlier. In the 1960s the broader public also began to pick up

Constant’s New Babylon, as a result of the many exhibitions organized around the project.90 He became a well-known persona and artist within the Netherlands and the rest of Europe as well.91 He publishes a bundle of his readings Opstand van de Homo

Ludens in the 1969. His popularity spreads, leading to Constant having a short-lived exchange with the Provo movement in 1965, who adopt his ideas on living a free life,

88 Original quote in German: ”Seien wir mit Bewusstsein imaginäre Architekten, denn wir wissen dass nur eine Umwälzung uns zum Werk führen kann.” As cited in Buchloch, “A Conversation with Constant”. 89 Constant, “Lezing voor het Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in Londen, 1963” 90 See section 3.1 for more information on the different exhibitions organized in relation to Constant’s New Babylon. 91 He is invited to work on several company and municipal assignments together with specialists, among which the construction of the thirteen meters high structure De poort van Constant (1963) in Amsterdam, as well as the design of fountain in Leiden in 1969. Hinten 52 proud to be unemployed and promoting a life full of play, acting like homo ludens (fig.

22).

Among the realm of architects a response also came to the changing society, in the form of new futuristic architectural projects, which were often proposed and sometimes even realised. One of those was the “City for the Future,”(1960-65) project by Dutch architect Willem Brinkman (1931). As architect Brinkman, and others with him, indicated Constant’s approach toward society was different. Brinkman explained in an interview in 1967, “I greatly admire Constant. He definitely has a vision. His ideas about the playing man of the future, the man who will live completely different because there will be a time in which he no longer works, those are very clear ideas. Still, he is a sculptor. He speaks from his matter, we from ours. We still have to think about that little window frame and door.”92 It is exactly this freedom from practical restrictions that indeed differentiates Constant as an artist from the architects around him, allowing him to think more revolutionary than any professional architect could ever do.

Despite the freedom to be truly radical as an artist, not limited by any rules and restrictions from real life, it is as if Constant did not want to fully commit to this freedom.

As I have already indicated briefly before, when looking at New Babylon several aspects can be identified that suggest that Constant had a longing to be in control.

Furthermore, his desire to be in control can be linked to his cautious approach towards revolution. From several texts, as well as the structure of New Babylon, it becomes apparent that Constant, while striving for social change, wanted to make sure such change would occur in a regulated manner. When it comes to the concept of revolution, his ideas are very similar to those of Friedrich Schiller, almost so as if

Constant was directly influenced by him.93 As Schiller proclaimed in The Aesthetic

92 “Interview Willem Brinkman”, De Volkskrant, 1967, RKD Archive. 93 I have not been able to find any source in which Constant indicates that he has been inspired by Schiller in any way, however there are several scholars who have made this link. See Dick van Lente, “Huizinga’s Children: Play and Technology in Twentieth Century Dutch Cultural Criticism (From the 1930s to the 1960s)”, ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology, 19 (2013): 52-74. Also see: Jos de Mul, “Database Architecture: Hinten 53

Education of Man, 1795,94 man can only realize his essential humanity during play. And with play he meant a similar form of play as Constant adopted, namely that of an utopian activity in which, as Schiller indicates, the two drives at the core of humanity, rational thought and sensuous desire, which are usually in conflict with each other, can be harmonized. Shocked by the aggression of the French Revolution, Schiller believed that social change should not be evoked by terror, but instead by creating a society of play in which people could create and enjoy beauty. According to Constant, art could evoke change when it was bound to two essential elements: theory and discipline.

These elements had been missing in the movements in which he took part before -

Cobra lacked a solid theory and thus had no clear direction, the Situationist

International did not have enough discipline to create any actual change- and it seems that the only remaining option or him was thus to obtain complete control over his own project.

As Freddy de Vree observed in 1981, Constant tends to work behind a barricade of manifests: “Even while he was being an advocate of the spontaneous, he did not reveal his own spontaneity.”95 However, De Vree has made this statement too easily. Constant did indeed promote spontaneity and creativity, but this should be applied or practiced in a responsible and self-reliant way, well thought out, and not, as

De Vree implies in a reckless manner. It is therefore not odd at all that Constant produced so many manifests. However, they did not function like a barricade as De

Vree suggests, but rather as a clear foundation. When looking at Constant’s texts about New Babylon, a strong sense of control is present at certain moments. In 1959, while Constant was still a member of the SI, his revolutionary spirit is still very much present. In the “Une autre ville pour une autre vie,” he explains how he believes that the built environment can stimulate social change, and how is conception of this

Anthropological Reflections on the Art of the Possible”, The Journal of Asian Arts & Aesthetics 3 (2009): 1-14. 94 Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man (London: Penguin Classics, 2016 (1795)). 95 De Vree, “Constant”. Hinten 54 environment is thus a social one. Under the pressure to built new cities, according to

Constant what is created as a result instead are “graveyards of reinforced concrete” in which the inhabitants are “convicted to die of boredom.”96 Instead, what Constant demands is adventure. This can only be achieved in a completely new environment, since “a green city in which far removed, isolated skyscrapers make social traffic and communal activities impossible.”97

New Babylon’s environment is presented as an environment in which everything can be changed by anyone as they please. What is interesting, however, is that in 1959 Constant also, deliberately or not, shows that the environment will be controlled at some moments. He explains, “the ambiances will be constantly changed according to plan, using all available technological means, by specialised artists, who thus will be professional situationists.”98 Architect and urban planner Yona Friedman has also identified this aspect of control in Constant’s conception of play. He explains that the play of Constant “includes a director, a chef d’orchestre. There is a leadership.

You need only to look at the project, how his models are: in departure they are fixed.

That’s his personality. He doesn’t want it, but the director is there.”99Interestingly,

Friedman himself worked on a project that is very similar to Constant’s, namely the

Spatial City (fig. 23) in 1958-9. What is interesting is that while visually the projects look rather similar, both were based on a structure that would be elevated above the current existing cities and spread out like a sort of network, their ideological basis is inherently different. Even though Friedman has a background in architecture, his envisioned society was not based on ant new ‘rules,’ and can thus be argued to be freer than New

Babylon. By setting clear rules enforcing creativity for everyone, it is as if Constant wants to promote total freedom, but is also afraid to loose control. Furthermore, it is

96 Constant, “Une autre ville pour une autre vie”, Internationale situationniste 3 (December 1959): 35-41. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Yona Friedman, “In the air. Interview with Yona Friedman, 28 October 2001”, in Exit Utopia, 32. Hinten 55 interesting that Constant envisions that specialised artists will be in control of the atmosphere. While he promotes the abandonment of all professions, he creates suggests a new profession for the one aspect of New Babylon that will be central to the life of all inhabitants: creativity. It is clear that Constant is not able to fully let go of control, but also cannot completely let go of the role of the artist in society. Even in a society that is based on creativity, he wants to ensure that the artists are still present and can control society in a different manner than the ‘other’ inhabitants. In his text,

Constant goes on to argue that New Babylon is not only necessary but also possible, stating “If the plan that we have sketched here is in danger of being perceived as a fantasist dream, we stress in return that it is enforceable from a technical point of view, desirable from a human point of view, and essential from a social point of view.”100This clear longing for revolution that is present in the early sixties, seems to disappear after one of the key events of the 1970s, that turned around Constants believe in the potential of New Babylon. In 1968 student revolts rose all around Europe and the

United States, of which the uprising in Paris had a direct impact on Constant, who was in Paris at the time the Odéon theatre was occupied.

In opposition to many of his contemporaries Constant, after the student revolts, lost his hope for a revolution that could instigate a lasting effect on society. While others were inspired and motivated by May 68 to regain their belief in utopianism and the positive effect that critical, engaged art could have on society,101 Constant steadily removes himself from the utopian realm and begins to look at the grim reality around him. He no longer expected a revolution for the masses to take place in the near future at all, but merely saw his design for “another city for another way of living,”102 as a kind of strategy for survival in difficult times. It is in this same year that Constant stops

100 Constant, “Une autre ville pour une autre vie“. 101 For example, Wim Beeren regained his hope for revolution and change after May 68, and thus also distances himself from Constant in a speech for the Council of the Arts in 1968. 102 Constant, “Une autre ville pour une autre vie“. Hinten 56 working on his models.103 In his text “De dialektiek van het experiment” in 1965, he already declares that even though he could visualise unitary urbanism, the situation of everyday life was fundamentally different from the society that was essential for realizing such a revolutionary program. Because of this Constant believed unitary urbanism would be limited to isolated experiments and a theoretical program or agenda.104 It is for this reason that the student revolts that took place in may 1968 in

Paris did not give Constant new hope for a revolution, but instead only confirmed the ideas he already had. While the movement was lead by slogans such as “Be realistic, as for the impossible,”105 and “Take your desires for realities,”106 which could easily fit within the free and peaceful society that Constant envisioned, the revolts did not structurally change anything as these ideals did not lead a centralized group of like minded people at all. The direct effect of the revolt was merely that what Constant seemed to fear the most for his New Babylon, namely that a loss of control would lead to chaos.

Constant did not express his views of the student revolts through many texts or speeches, but instead responds to the events he paints the work Ode à l’Odéon (fig.

20). This work, which according to Constant was his first painting after New Babylon,107 expresses his feelings towards the events in a rather ambiguous manner. While he indicated that the painting was the first work after New Babylon, it represents a structure that seems to literally represent the models and structures he had been creating the years before. However, the painting does seems to function like a turning point in Constant’s vision of New Babylon. In opposition to the aesthetic models and revolutionary, incentive texts in which Constant describes New Babylon, in Ode à

103 One year later, in 1969 the definitive end of SI also came. The student revolts in 1968 had, as promising as they had seemed, turned out afterwards to be just that: expectations that did not become reality, leading to the SI to loose their believe in revolution just like Constant. 104 Constant “De dialektiek van het experiment,” in Constant (The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1965) 105 Charles Paz, “The meaning of May 1968,” internationalviewpoint.org, 14 June 2008. 106 Ibid. 107 Constant as cited in Boersma, “Interview with Constant”. Hinten 57 l’Odéon, society has cautiously but very presently entered the former utopian space.

The result is a conflict between utopian and dystopian visions, presented in the form of an ambiguous space. This quality already becomes apparent in Constant’s painting

Homo Ludens, which he made several years earlier. There too concepts such as chaos and joy, violence and festivity, creation and destruction, are all inextricably linked. These ideas are visually reflected in the painting with its colourful surface covering up the darkness beneath. As Heynen argues, in Ode à l’Odéon this tension becomes even more apparent, depicting “an unending space in the manner of Piranesi, an interior without any world outside consisting of a large number of walls, palings, and ladders.[…] one experiences this space as ambiguous and opaque.”108

The moment Constant returned to painting, the artistic qualities of not only these paintings, but the entire project become more explicit, and even unavoidable. As

Trudy van der Horst argues: “The creative process moves from reality into a conception of this reality. Culture becomes utopian. The plan for New Babylon should be viewed in light of this idea. Constant does not want to become a ‘utopiste,’ someone who explores impossibilities. Henri Lefebvre calls him a ‘utopien’: someone who creates possibilities.”109Following Lefebvre’s line of thought, I believe that it is indeed necessary to acknowledge that New Babylon was, in the first ten years that Constant worked on it, in essence a utopian artistic project, and not an architectural project that was created to be realized in the end. It is exactly this clear removal from reality that provides the project with its power of persuasion.

108 Heynen, “New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia”, 38. 109 Van der Horst, “Biografie van Constant, Amsterdam, 1920 – Utrecht, 2005”, 237. Hinten 58

Chapter 2: Representing New Babylon Today

“Exhibitions are kind of ephemeral moments, sometimes magic moments, and when

they’re gone, they’re gone.”110

This section will position New Babylon within the museum of the twenty-first century by closely looking at the exhibition of the project held at the Gemeentemuseum The

Hague in 2016, exploring whether the project has been presented differently than it was in other past exhibitions.

Furthermore, it will be explored whether this presentation of the project within the twenty-first century stimulates new understandings of the project.

Figure 24: Constant, Diorama II, 1963, wood and glass, 53.2 x 53.2 x 17.5 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

110 Hans Ulrich Obrist as cited in “The Man Who Made Curating an Art,” New York Observer, 16 December 2012. Hinten 59

Figure 25: Exhibtion poster, Constant. New Babylon, 15 June – 1 September 1974, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

Figure 26: Constant, Ovoid Construction II, 1957, 103 x 63.8 x 60,6 cm, plexiglass, steel, stone, Collection Fondation Constant longterm loan to Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

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Figure 27: Constant, Principle of a Covered City. Spatial “Plan.” Ink on paper, 11 x 16 cm. Published in Internationale Situationniste, no. 3, December 1959. Collection of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague

Figure 28: Exhibtion poster, Constant | schilderijen plastieken New Babylon, 1 October – 21 November 1965, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

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Figure 29. Catalogue for the exhibition Constant | Schilderijen plastieken New Babylon from October 1 - November 21, 1965, Gemeentemuseum The Hague.

Figure 30: Constant, Greetings from New Babylon, 1963, oil on linen, 160.2 x 185.1 cm, Collection Rijksdienst voor Cultureel erfgoed on loan to Cobra museum of modern art.

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Figure 31:Constant, New Babylon – Amsterdam (Atlas van New Babylon), 1968, gouache and ink on cityplan, 200 x 300 cm, Amsterdam Museum.

Figure 32: Ludieke trap, in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 1969. Image taken during the opening of the exhibition ‘Weg wezen. Recreatie vroeger, nu en straks’ on 20 november 1969. Image: Amsterdam Museum.

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2.1 Exhibiting New Babylon: A Retrospective

“New Babylon is the work of the New Babylonians alone, the product of their culture.

For us, it is only a model of reflection and play.”111

In 1974 Constant presents the complete New Babylon project for the last time, leaving it to the museum and public with the words cited above. It is as if Constant is saying farewell to New Babylon with this final exhibition, once again indicating that society is not yet ready for the utopian world he envisioned. He emphasises that instead of realizing the project it should be used for reflection and play. The exhibition was held at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, from 15 June until 1 September 1974 (fig. 25).

After the exhibition New Babylon remained stored away for over two decades. The first large exhibition devoted to the project again was organized in 1999 at the Witte de

With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam in collaboration with the Drawing

Centre in New York, where the work was presented afterwards. While these exhibitions did stimulate a renewed interest in the project, especially among scholars and critics, it took yet another 16 years until New Babylon was exhibited in its entirety again at the

Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 2016. Before I will turn to this most recent exhibition, I will now first briefly look at several earlier exhibitions on New Babylon, to demonstrate how Constant used these exhibitions to further develop his project.112

Constant’s first solo exhibition, called Constructies en Maquettes, was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 4 May to 8 June 1959. As the title indicates, it consisted of ‘constructions’ and ‘models,’ such as Oval Construction II, 1957 (fig. 26), which were presented without any sketches or works on paper. This singular focus on structures was very much in line with the work Constant was creating at that time. By only presenting spatial objects, Constant made clear to the public that he had left painting behind and moved on to a new phase. This allowed for a close focus on the

111 Constant, “New Babylon,” in Constant, Locher, New Babylon, exhibition catalogue (1974) 112 For a complete overview of exhibtions of Constant’s New Babylon and other work see: http://stichtingconstant.nl/exhibitions Hinten 64 materials Constant used. Combining metal wire, steel and Plexiglas, the models were not only innovative and modern in their shape but also very much for their material.

It was in this same year that the first drawings of New Babylon were published, but only after the exhibition ended in December 1959. Constant published these drawings along with his essay “Un autre ville pour une autre vie,” in the third issue of the Internationale Situationniste magazine. The two small ink sketches Constant published represent the basic concept of New Babylon and were printed alongside a photograph of one of his models. The first sketch (fig. 27) consists of a plan constructed on a number of different overlapping grids that define a seemingly amorphous space: the constantly changing foundation of New Babylon. A second sketch showed a section of a sector demonstrating how the space defined in the plan would be elevated from the ground supported by columns. As Wigley has indicated, the plan is a key drawing of New Babylon as it captures its basic concept, but not defines the space like a schematic sketch or overview of a sector would do, thus emphasising its changeable nature. 113 By deliberately separating his drawings and his models

Constant made a clear statement. Reversing the order of a more traditional architectural project, he placed himself outside of the architectural realm while at the same time showing the ambiguity of his position as an artist.

During the years that followed, several small exhibitions were organized in relation to New Babylon in galleries as well as museums throughout Europe. Constant created more and more sketches and drawings, which also made their way into these exhibitions. However, drawings never seemed to take the lead. Until the mid 1960s, the ratio of quantity would remain photographs, then models, and only then drawings. In

1965 the first large retrospective exhibition of New Babylon was held at the

Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. The exhibition was called Constant | schilderijen plastieken New Babylon (fig. 28), and consisted of a variety of works from different

113 Wigley, “Paper, Scissors, Blur”, 12.

Hinten 65 periods and media. Many paintings from Constant’s Cobra period were included, as well as his colder abstract works he created the years after. As a result, the exhibition provided a complete overview of the way in which Constant’s work and career had developed from the 1940s onwards, similar to the two recent exhibitions organized collaboratively by the Gemeentemuseum and Cobra museum in 2016.

While models and photographs had been the main presence in the exhibitions until then, by 1965 more paintings were included, not only from the period prior to New

Babylon, but also several that represented a grimmer picture of Constant’s former utopian society. For example, the painting Greetings from New Babylon, 1963 (fig. 30) clearly shows that Constant no longer believed in New Babylon as an ideal, creative and peaceful society, but instead began to see it as a society led by aggression and chaos. Constant furthermore began to experiment with the way in which he presented his models, hanging some of them from steel wires attached to the ceiling of the exhibition space.114

In addition to the exhibition Constant wrote an article attempting to explain his work and clear some of the confusion the show might have evoked among the public.

The article, called “De dialektiek van het experiment,” was published in the exhibition catalogue and tried to overcome the difficulties of understanding the technical and stylistic diversion of his work. While in the article Cosntant clearly aims to justify his own work, he does not refer directly to himself but instead identifies with “the artists who, shortly after the war, designated themselves with the term ‘’experimentalism’.”115

He did not specify which artists met this definition, but he did clearly explain their agenda: they had been opposing all aesthetic values for over 17 years, whether these were advocated by a large part of humanity or a miniscule avant-garde faction.”116 To motivate this agenda he referred back to the manifesto he wrote in 1948 for the Cobra

114 “Presentation of the New Babylon Models”, wall text, Constant – Ne Babylon. To Us, Liberty (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 2016) 115 Constant De dialektiek van het experiment”. 116 Ibid. Hinten 66 group, emphasising the two main characteristics of what he called “the experimental method.”117 First of all, the process of creation was more important than the result.

Second, the artist would focus on that what was ugly or out-dated according to the status quo.118 Constant argued that projects like his New Babylon were now possible because the creative process had slowly been freed from all aesthetic considerations.

Artists no longer had to be concerned with the question whether their work would be perceived as ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful.’ Instead, experimentalists from different disciplines could now work collaboratively on the merging of different forms of art. The less beauty, or aesthetics were of concern in the arts, the more space would become free to create art and experiments that could contribute to actual changes in society.

Up to this exhibition, Constant created work in his studio, which he then exhibited in different formats and combinations. In 1968, however, he was commissioned to make work as part of his New Babylon project by the Amsterdams

Historisch Museum, the current Amsterdam Museum. To celebrate the new location of the museum, the exhibition Getting Away: Recreation in the Past, Present and Future was organized for which Constant was asked to create a geographical map of New

Babylon stretching out over Amsterdam. Constant had already made several maps for which he drew the sectors of New Babylon on maps of different cities, creating an Atlas for New Babylon. The maps were usually around 50 cm’s wide, but for the Amsterdam

Museum Constant made a much larger work of 2 by 3 meters (fig. 31). In addition to the map he designed a playset for adults, called the Ludieke trap, (Ludic stairs) (fig.

32). This installation made it possible for the public to experience some of the play that

Constant envisioned the inhabitants of New Babylon would engage in on a daily base.

As has become clear, Constant’s believe in revolution or art as a tool for social change did not last much longer. By 1974, the student revolts of 1968 had long proven

117 Marcel Hummelink, “Een dier, een nacht, een schreeuw, een mens. Eenheid en verscheidenheid in het oeuvre van Constant.” In Constant: schilderijen 1948-1995 (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1995), 12. 118 Ibid..

Hinten 67 to be unsuccessful according to Constant, and he was no longer actively involved with politics. Instead, he had returned to painting, leaving New Babylon behind. The final exhibition of New Babylon initiated by Constant in 1974 at the Gemeentemuseum was more than just a presentation of the work. It was a large-scale exhibition with which

Constant drew a line under the project, leaving most of its parts to the museum.

Symbolically, it ended with his Door labyrinth, of which part has been reconstructed for the most recent exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum. This playful installation allowed the visitors to temporarily feel like a real homo ludens. However, the door labyrinth did more than that, it also emphasised the dualism of New Babylon, the two sides it had developed for Constant. While on the one hand a labyrinth stimulates play, adventure and creativity, it can also evoke more negative feelings of fear, aimlessness and even aggression. It is on this conflicting note that Constant left his project behind, stored for a future generation.

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Figure 33: Constant, Gezicht op New Babylonische sectoren, 1971, photo-montage, 135 x 223 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague

Figure 34: View of exhibition entrance ‘Constant. To us, liberty’ at Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 28 May 2016 – 25 September 2016. Available at: http://www.lost- painters.nl/gemeentemuseum-den-haag-constant-new-babylon/

Figure 35: Overview of “Towards a synthesis of art,” in the exhibition ‘Constant. To us, liberty’ at Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 28 May 2016 – 25 September 2016. Available at: http://www.lost-painters.nl/gemeentemuseum-den-haag-constant-new-babylon/

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Figure 36: Reconstruction of ‘Ludieke Trap’ in the exhibition ‘Constant. To us, liberty’ at Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 28 May 2016 – 25 September 2016. Available at: http://www.lost-painters.nl/gemeentemuseum-den-haag-constant-new-babylon/

Figure 37: Constant, Construction in Orange, 1958, metal, Perspex, wood, 24.6 x 110.2 x 100.5 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague. Image by author.

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Figure 38: Overview of ‘Constant. Space + Colour,’ Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterlveen, 28 May – 25 September 2016. Available at: https://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/gallery/show/15412

Figure 39: Overview of ‘Constant. Space + Colour,’ Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterlveen, 28 May – 25 September 2016. Available at: https://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/gallery/show/15412

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Figure 40: Constant, Floor plan of the door labyrinth for the exhibition in the Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1974, pen ink and gouache on paper, Fondation Constant, Amsterdam. Image by author.

Figure 41: Plan overview of ‘Constant. Space + Colour,’ Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterlveen, 28 May – 25 September 2016. Available at: http://www.unstudio.com/projects/exhibition-design-constant-nieuwenhuys

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2.2 New Babylon Anno 2016

“Up until today, and perhaps especially in our current society, a source of inspiration for

many.”119

As current director Benno Tempel proudly announces in the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition Constant- New Babylon. To us, liberty, the history of New Babylon is inseparably connected to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.120 Presumptuous or not, it would be ignorant not to agree with his statement. As I have indicated in the previous section, over the past few decades the museum had not only hosted the three, arguably, most important exhibitions of New Babylon, in 1965, 1974, and 2016, but also served as the place for conservation of and research into Constant’s life project. The museum owns the largest collection New Babylon works, and, according to Tempel, the international attention for the project keeps on growing. Interestingly,

Tempel aims to promote New Babylon especially to those professionals who are not always concerned with the art world, as he stated “we want to show New Babylon as much as possible worldwide, so it can keep to inspire young city planners, economists and political leaders.” 121 To do so, in 2016 the Gementemuseum organized an exhibition in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofiá in

Madrid.122 As is indicated by the Gemeentemuseum, it is the most complete overview of Constant’s New Babylon project since the exhibition in 1974. However, for this exhibition the museum has decided to not only focus on the project itself, but also on the period before and after Constant worked on New Babylon. The Gemeentemuseum has furthermore collaborated with the Cobra Museum for Modern Art in Amstelveen,

119 “Constant- New Babylon. Aan ons de vrijheid”, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Available at: https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en/node/15324 120 Benno Tempel, “Voorwoord,” in Constant-New Babylon. Aan ons de vrijheid (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2015), 7. 121 Benno Tempel, as cited in “150 werken van Nederlandse kunstenaar Constant naar Madrid”, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Available at: http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/organisatie/nieuws/150-werken-van-nederlandse-kunstenaar- constant-naar-madrid 122 The exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofiá was held from 21 October 2015 until 29 February 2016. At the Gemeentemuseum the exhibition Constant – New Babylon. To us, liberty, was held from 28 May untill 25 September 2016. Hinten 73 where concurrent to the New Babylon exhibition, the exhibition Constant. Space +

Colour was organised by guest curator Ludo van Halem.

The question I already put forward in the introduction is: why organize yet another exhibition of New Babylon, and why organize it at this moment? The main argument put forward by the Gemeentemseum is that New Babylon has remained a source of inspiration to many, and might even be of more relevance in our current society than it has ever been before. Furthermore, they indicate that, in opposition to the tendency over the past decade to focus on the architectural aspects of New

Babylon, they will focus on the project’s status as “a single vast work of art.”123 Of course, we should not fall blindly for these arguments; it is only logical that a museum will plead the exhibition they organize is relevant, innovative and different from former exhibitions on the same topic. However, exhibitions organized by major institutions are also (in most cases) based on thorough art historical research and can thus function as a valuable resource.124 I will now first turn to discussing the exhibition Constant – New

Babylon. To us, liberty, followed by a brief discussion of the exhibition Constant. Space

+ Colour, in order to draw several conclusions about whether these exhibitions have been successful in stimulating new understandings of New Babylon.

Constant – New Babylon. To us, liberty.

The starting point of the exhibition Constant – New Babylon was to present New

Babylon a work of art, while at the same time focus on the work leading to the project and the social context in which it was created. To do so, the museum decided to present Constant’s work in a chronological order. In this way the story of New Babylon could be told in a clear way that was easy to follow for a broad audience. The exhibition was divided into five roughly chronological sections: Cobra. War &

Revolution, 1948-1951; Towards a synthesis of arts, 1951-1956; A world without borders, 1956-1958; New Babylon in progress, 1958-1966; and New Babylon.

123 “Constant- New Babylon. Aan ons de vrijheid”, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (2016), Available at: https://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en/node/15324 124 Of course, they have to be taken into consideration with a cautious mind, and eye. Hinten 74

Destruction & Confusion, 1966-1974. In addition four topics were highlighted in separate sections: New Babylon under development; After New Babylon; Presentation of the New Babylon Models; and New Babylon as a labyrinth.

Visitors were introduced to the exhibition with a blow up of the work Gezicht op

New Babylonische sectoren, 1971 (fig. 33). This image immediately set the tone of the exhibition, introducing the visitors to the visual structure of New Babylon (fig. 34). The accompanying wall text to the exhibition further introduced New Babylon as the starting point for the exhibition. Both the project as well as the context in which it was created are mentioned, highlighting how the ideas Constant expressed in New Babylon already came into being before he started working on the project, when he was still part of the

Cobra group. In the closing sentences the relevance of the project in our contemporary society is emphasised explaining “as a result of extensive globalisation and the technologisation of today the project is more topical than ever before.”125

In the first room of the exhibition, “Cobra. War & Revolution,” the visitor is introduced to Constant’s role in the Cobra movement. Not only mentioning Cobra, but also “War & Revolution,” again indicates the scope of the exhibition. The works of art are positioned in a broader historical and societal context, to explain not only what the artists did but also why they were motivated to do so. Their political motivations are also mentioned, indicating that Communism was a major influence on the focus on collectivism of the Cobra group.

The following room “Towards a synthesis of arts” focused on Constant’s short lived abstract period stimulated by the time he spent in London (fig. 35). Furthermore, his interest in architecture is introduced. The projects he collaborated on with Aldo van

Eyck and Gerrit Rietveld are mentioned and also shown through photographs and other archival material. Visitors are referred to the the exhibition at the Cobra museum, where these projects have been reconstructed. The room provided a good overview of

125 “Introduction: Constant – New Babylon. To us, liberty”, wall text, Constant – New Babylon. To us, liberty (The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 2016) Hinten 75 the different media and techniques Constant experimented with during this early period leading up to New Babylon, showing paintings, models, spatial structures and archival material, as well as adapting the room itself integrating one purple wall. Among the archival material, correspondence between Rietveld and Cosntant was presented which provided interesting insights into the doubts Constant had during this time about the function of the artist within society. This exemplifies the multiple layers of complexity presented in the exhibition, allowing the visitors to decide for themselves how much information they wish to obtain.

The following space, “A world without borders,” presents the beginning of New

Babylon. Focusing on the time Constant spent in Alba and his first model he created in relation to New Baylon, namely, Design for a Gypsy Camp in Alba (1956).

Furthermore, Constant’s interest in space travel and the models he designed as a result are presented, including the short film Gyromorphosis (1957). Guy Debord and the Situationist International are introduced to the story as well, leading up to the next section.

The section dedicated to the time that Constant mainly worked on New Babylon was divided into two parts: “New Babylon under development” and “New Babylon in progress.” In the first part Constant’s ideas about New Babylon were described, explaining what sort of society he actually envisioned, mainly focusing on the architectural structure. “New Babylon in progress” focused on Constant’s interaction, or as they call it ‘flirtation’ with the Provo movement, placing his work and influence in a broader perspective beyond the walls of his studio. Several exhibitions Constant collaborated in, such as the Nieuwe Beelden exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in

Amsterdam in 1965, are mentioned. Especially the way in which Constant tried to engage the audience is emphasised, with the ‘playful staircase’ he produced for the

Amsterdam Museum as the prime example.

The fifth and final section, called “New Babylon. Destruction & Confusion,” focused on the period in which Constant returned to painting, taking Ode a l’Odéon,

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1969, as a starting point. Interestingly, in the exhibition it was argued the painting “can be seen as an optimistic painting, expressing the hope that the Paris students might make a difference.”126After this, paintings depicting situations within the setting of New

Babylon are introduced such as Erotic Space, 1971 and Le massacre de My Lai, 1972.

It is indicated that these paintings reflect real life events of violence and aggression within the setting of New Babylon. However, because Ode a l’Odéon, is presented as still having a positive outlook on the student revolts, the step towards these far more negative paintings seems rather illogical. Having simplified Constant’s outlook on society the critical note about his work here is lost in favour of the story the museum wants to tell.

Besides the main storyline presented in five different, roughly chronological sections, four additional topics were addressed. “New Babylon under development” functioned as a sub-section of “New Babylon in progress.” For the section the setting

Constant created for the Amsterdam Historical Museum was recreated, presenting both the original work New Babylon- Amsterdam, 1968, and a reconstruction of the

‘playful staircase.’ Just like the original staircase, during the exhibition the construction was accessible for visitors to climb and experience (fig. 36).

Throughout the exhibition, several models were presented in a similar way as they were in 1974. In this exhibition, Constant presented his models on tables with slender legs, and placed several of them in completely darkened rooms. There the models were only lit by a small light bulb from above, making it seem as if they were floating in space. In the section “Presentation of the New Babylon Models” the museum recreated this setting quite successfully presenting four models in small cabinets: Construction in orange (1958) (fig. 37), Yellow sector, 1958, Red Sector

(1958) and Orient Sector (1959). The intimate setting created beautiful visual presentations of New Babylon, emphasising the importance Constant gave to the

126 “Introduction: Constant – New Babylon. To us, liberty”, wall text.

Hinten 77 mode of presentation of his work. It is here that the aesthetic side of his work is most successfully emphasised. Furthermore, as the museum argues, in presenting the models in this way Constant wanted to emphasise the “immateriality of the New

Babylon Concept.”

Besides the cabinets with the models, the section “After New Babylon” was presented. There, the wall text began with the moment Constant donated New Babylon to the Gemeentemuseum in 1974. Several works Constant made in the 1970s were shown, to exemplify what type of works, mainly collages, he made directly after he left

New Babylon behind. What is rather odd though is that all works presented were made before 1974, almost suggesting as if Constant completely stopped producing art after

1974. Since Constant continued painting until his death in 2005, it was a surprise and definitely a shortcoming not to see any of his later paintings in the section clearly indicated as representing the period after New Babylon.

The final space dedicated to Constant was called “New Babylon as a labyrinth.”

In a separate space across the hall from the main exhibition, the labyrinth Constant designed for his final New Babylon exhibition in 1974 was partially reconstructed. In

2016, the museum decided to end the exhibition with this labyrinth structure, to carry on the ideas with which Constant left New Babylon to the museum over four decades ago. As is explained to the visitors, the labyrinth was an important element throughout

New Babylon from the beginning onwards. They indicate how Constant’s conception of this labyrinth changed throughout the years, from the positive idea that people should use space and time in an entirely different way towards the idea of the labyrinth as a place of confusion and even destruction, as the paintings he produced from the 1970s onwards demonstrate.

Where the exhibition ended with the labyrinth, the exhibition catalogue continues, taking Constant’s description of New Babylon as labyrinth as point of departure. Besides an overview of the works and text presented in the exhibition, the extensive catalogue contains comprehensive essays by scholars from different fields of

Hinten 78 study. After the more general introduction by director Benno Tempel, the following essays present art historical research as well as new perspectives on how New

Babylon can relate to our current society. The curator of the exhibition, Laura Stamps, explores the works of art of several of Constant’s contemporaries, to demonstrate how they influenced Constant but also how they were different from him.127 After this,

Willemijn Stokvis focuses on the relationship between Constant and De Stijl, emphasising the influence Mondrian has had on the work of Constant. These two more traditional art historical essays are followed by an essay by Mark Wigley, who explains how Constants view of New Babylon changed throughout the years from a place of extreme hospitality towards chaos and aggression. Here, Wigley once again approaches the project from an architectural point of view, mainly focusing on the structure of New Babylon. The fourth and final essay by Pascal Gielen takes yet another approach toward the project, analysing it from a sociological viewpont to explore the links between art, politics and public life in an urban environment. In presenting different interpretations of New Babylon, the catalogue reinforces the approach to New Babylon that is taken in the exhibition, namely placing the project within a broader societal and cultural perspective. In doing so, it definitely adds a critical layer to the exhibition and contributes to correcting wrongfully simplified perceptions of New Babylon.

Constant. Space + Colour

As indicated already, concurrently to the exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum, the exhibition Constant. Space + Colour was held at the Cobra museum. This exhibition did not focus on Constant’s New Babylon project, but instead showed the experimental road Constant took after his Cobra period until he began working on New Babylon at the end of the 1950s. In contrast to the rather strict chronological order followed at the

127 Laura Stamps, “Constants New Babylon. Pushing the Zeitgeist to its limits,” in Constant-New Babylon. Aan ons de vrijheid. Exhibition catalogue Gemeentemuseum The Hague. The Hague: Hannibal, 2016, 12-27.

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Gementeemuseum, the exhibition in Amstelveen was divided into different thematic sections. While these sections could be placed in chronological order as well, the museum decided to use a design that evoked a labyrinth-like experience instead.128

The exhibition space was structured in such a way that small, often hall like spaces were created, forming surprising sight lines, while obstructing free sight at the same time. The labyrinth was emphasised by black lines on the floor as well as black rails connecting the different wall panels, creating a network-like structure. (see figs. 38

&39). When comparing the floor plan of the exhibition (fig. 40) to the plan Constant drew for his Door Labyrinth (fig 41), they seem to resemble each other to a certain extend. Interestingly, while the New Babylon project itself was not presented at the exhibition, Constant’s spirit, and ideas developed in relation to the project were very much present, perhaps even more than in the exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum.

By choosing to focus less on a historical, chronological reconstruction, and instead more on a new interpretation the story presented here was perhaps less clear to follow for the visitors. Far less archival material was presented, while work by other artists was included. In the Gemeentemuseum Constant’s labyrinth was reconstructed as historically correct as possible, at the Cobra museum the labyrinth has been transformed and used as a format for the entire exhibition, thus successfully reinterpreting Constant’s ideas.

In conclusion, it can be said that the exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum told a complete but slightly simplified story of the development of New Babylon. Many of the nuances in the rather radical steps that Constant took in his career were left out, and as a result presented rather bluntly. However, for an exhibition aimed at a broad audience it provided the proper level of information, as the key moments were mentioned and explained. The four additional sections of the exhibition that provided

128 The design was made by Ben van Berkel’s architectural design studio UNstudio, who greatly admire Constant’s work and ideas, and give their contemporary interpretation of Constant’s work.

Hinten 80 more in depth information, added a valuable layer to the exhibition, but did not manage to truly explore alternative or contemporary approaches of New Babylon. However, in the extensive catalogue new perspectives are successfully presented. This demonstrating that a clear choice has been made to produce an exhibition that was accessible for a broad audience, while also focusing on the scholarly value of the exhibition within the catalogue for those interested. On a final note, perhaps the best representation of New Babylon has been obtained by organizing two exhibitions simultaneously. Dividing the story into one chronological, historical explanation of what the project entailed on the one hand, and a freer, more contemporary conception of the road Constant took before he began working on New Babylon, worked out successfully. While earlier exhibitions such as the exhibition in 1965 showed too much work at the same time and in effect confusing the visitors, now these periods have been justly divided between two separate museums.

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Chapter 3: The Aftermath of New Babylon

“All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.”129

In the final part of this text I will begin by briefly exploring the relation between art and social change. This will lead to a consideration of the question whether a utopian project like Constant’s New Babylon should indeed still be considered relevant, or whether such an all-encompassing, utopian project is uncalled for within contemporary art and society

I will provide several examples of works of art and artistic practices that explore concepts that are central in Constant’s New Babylon. I will do so to evaluate the relevance as well as influence New Babylon has on the contemporary art world.

Figure 42: Congress of Utopia (Congress van de utopie). Available at: http://www.metropolism.com/nl/reviews/29665_congres_van_de_utopie Image: Ernie Buts.

129 Dan Graham as cited in Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”, 179 Hinten 82

Figure 43: Constant, Ambiance de départ, 1959, metal, perspex, wood, 11.5 x 99.9 x 75.6 cm. Image: Ernie Buts

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3.1 Art and/as Social Change

“Utopia’s have always functioned as a moral mirror. They make people realize: it could

be different; a just society is possible. Though they are unattainable on their own, they

form a critique on injustice.”130

This is what philosopher Hans Achterhuis (1942) indicated in an interview in 2016, as exactly 500 years after Thomas More’s famous text Utopia was published, Achterhuis believes it is time to revisit the work. Achterhuis, who himself has offered quite some critique on multiple forms of utopianism, now declares that utopias could in fact have a positive effect on society; an effect that already began with More’s Utopia. In his reinterpretation of the work, Achterhuis indicates it should not be forgotten that Utopia is in essence a satirical text, and must not be interpreted as prescribing a serious ideal that should be literally implemented in society.131 His revised, and far more positive interpretation of utopias represents a more widespread change among scholars and artists in the understanding of the function of utopias within society. On 5 November

2016 artist Jonas Staal, together with Lara Staal, Menno Grootveld and Merijn

Oudenampsen, organized a congress dedicated to the concept of Utopia. Similarly to

Achterhuis, Staal and other participants of the congress felt it was time to reconsider current views of what a utopia entails. The past decades the general consensus was that a utopia should be considered as something negative, as they indicate: “a utopian ideology can only lead to totalitarianism.”132 During the congress, however, the idea is put forward that the representation of radical alternatives to society is a necessary part of a democratic culture. Art- as a space of imagination and experiment- is exactly the place to put a utopian way of thinking into practice.133 Furthermore, according to the organisers, the utopian ideal of a better world is, in light of the current dystopian global crisis, the only realistic alternative to pursue.

130 Hans Achterhuis, as cited in Anton de Wit, “Interview”, in Nieuwsbrief: Vijfhonderd jaar Utopia, Stichting Thomas More, (March 2016). 131 Ibid. 132 Rosa te Velde, “Congres van de Utopie,” Metropolis M, 13 (November 2016). 133 Ibid. Hinten 84

The congress took place in an installation designed by Studio Jonas Staal (fig.

42), inspired by Constant’s New Babylon, transferring the model Ambiance de depart,

1959 (fig. 43) into real life size. In doing so, Staal created a utopian space in which the congress could take place. It is this discussion of utopia within a historical utopia that represents the main paradox of todays thinking about utopias according to Staal. By taking Constant’s ideas as a starting point from which society can be rethought, the idea is enforced that “only by using history we can rethink the future.”134 How do such ideas fit within current society, in particular the art world, and how does it reflect the way in which understandings of the relationship between art and social change have evolved since Constant stopped working on New Babylon?

In her essay “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” Claire Bishop cites Dan Graham as follows: “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.”135 This desire seems to have inspired the practice of a continuously growing number of artists since the early

1990s. In 1997 Nicholas Bourriaud described this social, participatory phenomenon within the visual arts as “relational aesthetics.” He identified a tendency in the practice of multiple contemporary artists to go beyond the idea that the only role of the viewer is to complete the artwork. Instead, the viewer, who is now more accurately referred to as participant, becomes (part of) the artwork. Bourriaud focuses on the political significance of this new type of interaction between artists, artworks, and participants.

He argues the social activities that are produced through such participatory artworks, such as conversations between strangers, cooking and sharing a meal together, and working with local communities, strengthen the social connections between people that have become marginalized as a result of the individualist capitalist consumer culture.136

Interestingly, the core aspects of Bourriaud’s theory resemble many of the visions

134 Roos van Hennekeler, “Rehabilitatie van de utopie”, De Groene Amsterdammer, 27 October 2016. 135 Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”, 179. 136 Eleanor Heartney, “Art & Audience”, in Art & Today (New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2008), 392. Hinten 85

Constant had for New Babylon. Constant too strove for a collective community and at the same time created an artwork in the form of New Babylon that could only be completed by its participants, making it a prime and early example of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics.

In her book Artificial Hells (2012) Bishop elaborates on the social turn, discussing and challenging ideas of Bourriaud and other major theorists.137 She builds upon the argument that “the social turn in contemporary art has prompted an ethical turn in art criticism.”138 According to Bishop, there seems to be a general failure to critique social, or participatory art for its artistic and aesthetic value, in favor of assessing its direct results on the people or community involved, its ethical efficacy.139

Bishop draws from Jacques Rancière’s (1940) notion of aesthetics, which she describes as “an autonomous regime of experience that is not reducible to logic, reason or morality.”140 By not taking into account the aesthetics of participatory art projects, the status quo that such projects aim to challenge is not ruptured but instead maintained. Following the line of thought of Rancière who defines ‘aesthetics’ as a particular way in which art is identified as art in a particular social or historical context,

Bishop argues that this allows for a freedom of response and interpretation on the part of the viewer. This interaction between artwork and viewer, or participant, is in itself, according to Bishop and Rancière, always open-ended and political. As this understanding of aesthetics is in itself already political, there is no need for artists to remove their practice from such aesthetics. While this ethical turn in art criticism might not directly apply to New Babylon, it does reflect a certain tendency of misinterpretation of works of art that are (directly) involved with society. As critics fail to understand the aesthetic value, or fictional aspect, of a socially engaged work of art, they fail to

137 Besides Bourriaud, these theorists include Grant Kester, Nato Thompson, Shannon Jackson and Maria Lind, among others. 138 Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”,180. 139 Madeleine Eschenburg “Artificial Hells. A Conversation with Claire Bishop”, Contemporaneity 3:1 (2014), 175. 140 Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” p. 180 Hinten 86 understand the essence of the work. This is precisely what has led to misinterpretations of New Babylon, the numerous times it has been perceived as a project that was to be actually realized.

Bishop argues the social turn in art demands a new methodological way of reading that should at least partially be based on sociology and political philosophy.

Analysing participatory art must therefore engage with theories and concepts that are traditionally linked to the social sciences rather than the humanities. This includes concepts such as “community, society, empowerment, and agency.”141 However, she emphasises that participatory art should not be solely interpreted as a social activity but also an artistic and symbolic one. It is thus an activity embedded in the real world that is at the same time removed from this world. This tension between myth and reality, aesthetics and politics, is addressed by Pamela M. Lee in her work Forgetting the Art World (2012). Lee argues, that in order to be able to analyse social art in an effective and convincing way, our understanding of terms like politics and aesthetics needs to be “constantly rearticulated with an eye towards the changing forms of mediation they presuppose.”142 A constant reconsideration of our understanding of art, the artist, the viewer and participant is necessary in order to understand contemporary art and its place in the world around us.

As Bishop indicated in a lecture on tendencies in the current art world, the social turn was followed by another shift in thinking near the end of the twentieth century. Artists no longer tend to look back at modernism with post-modern tendencies, criticizing or mocking the past, but instead look back at modernism with an almost nostalgic approach. Longing for a future that never happened they use “past future visions to discover present day problems and future visions.”143 This way of thinking can be clearly identified in biennales and art manifestations that took place the past

141 Claire Bishop. Artificial Hells (London/New York: Verso Books, 2012), 7. 142 Lee. Forgetting the Art World, 36. 143 Claire Bishop, “Déjà Vu: Contemporary Art and the Ghosts of Modernity. A critique of contemporary artists recycling utopian modernism.” lecture at the RKD The Hague, 12 January 2016. Hinten 87 decade. At the 2015 Biennale in Venice titled All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui

Enwezor, Iran’s national pavilion was structured exactly as Bishop indicated: they framed their future by looking back at their past. 144 China’s pavilion had a similar approach in their exhibition “Other Future,” in which they aimed to explore “the coexistence of an interaction between the old and new worlds.”145

It seems like ideas similar to Constant’s have made reappearance within the arts as well as in art theory and critique. However, in opposition to New Babylon, which started out as a purely utopian project that by the end transformed into a dystopian mirror of reality, the consensus in the art world seems to have evolved the other way around. Discarding utopias as unrealistic, naive or even dangerous ideals, artist turned towards becoming directly involved with society, only to realize that utopian visions might be useful after all. It is because of this renewed believe in the power of utopias that Constant’s ideas today are more relevant than ever. As Wigley indicated, to architects and artists alike “Constant is a comrade. Not a historical comrade, but a contemporary figure.”146

144Natasha Morris, “Iran goes back to the future at Venice Biennale”, The Guardian, 18 May 2015, Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/may/18/venice-biennale- iran-2015 145 See: “Other Future,” la bienale di venezia. Avalaible at: http://other.future.bcaf.org.cn/en/about. Many more examples can be mentioned, among which is the exhibition that was organized in the Venice Pavilion, or Giardini, which also focused on the past and contemporary developments in Venice to explore possible futures. See http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/archive/56th-exhibition/venice-pavilion/introduction.html for more information. 146 Mark Wigley in Salon/Architect Talk/ Constant’s New Babylon.

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Figure 44: Los Carpinteros, Ciudad Transportable, 2000. Installation view, 7th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba. Available at: http://artarchives.net/artarchives/liliantone/placelessplace.html

Figure 45: Installation view: Atopia. Migration, Heritage and Placelessness Works from the TBA21 Collection, Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), México. May, 2014.

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Figure 46: Neil Bromwich, Zoë Walker, Michael Pinsky, Panacea Model, 2005. Image: John Hansard Gallery

Figure 47: Neil Bromwich, Zoë Walker, Friendly Frontier, 2005-ongoing. Image: John Hansard Gallery.

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Figure 48: Zoë Walker, Dream Cloud, 1997.

Figure 49: Carsten Höller, Untitled (Slide), Installation view at the New Museum 2011.

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Figure 50: Carsten Höller, Isomeric Slides, 2015. Image: David Levene

Figure 51: Liam Gillick, Installation view, Palais de Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Paris 26 January - 27 March 2005.

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Figure 52: Atelier Van Lieshout, AVL-Ville, 2001. Available at: www.ateliervanlieshout.com

Figure 53: Installation view Slave City, Museum Folkwang, 25 April – 6 July 2008, Essen.

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Figure 54: Atelier Van Lieshout, BarRectum, 2008. Image of installation at exhibition Slave City, Museum Folkwang, 25 April – 6 July 2008, Essen.

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3.2 Utopian Art After New Babylon

“Now, it is as a creator, and only as a creator, that the human being can fulfil and attain

his highest existential level”147

Having established how New Babylon fits within tendencies in the contemporary art world, especially looking at the link between art, society, and conceptions of utopias, in this final section of my exploration of New Babylon I will turn to discussing how

Constant’s ideas are reflected in the work of several contemporary artists. I will also emphasise how the projects discussed are different from New Babylon, to gain a deeper understanding of the unique approach Constant had to society and art, as well as emphasise the totality and scope of his project. There are several aspects of New

Babylon that seem to appeal to contemporary artists, of which mobility, play, and control, will be explored further. While some artists merely observe what happens in society and respond to this by implementing aspects of mobility, play our control in their work, others take a more critical approach, either offering alternatives to society in the form of utopian visions or predicting much more grim images of possible dystopian futures.

Mobility

The first aspect that relates to Constant’s practice takes us back to the beginning of

New Babylon, when Constant was confronted with the local gypsy community in Alba.

It was there and then, in 1956, that Constant created his Design for a gypsy camp trying to come up with a structure that could improve the dire living circumstances of the community. As we know he came up with a structure that could be easily transported, built up, and broken down, to accommodate the nomadic lifestyle of the community. Almost 50 years later, the artist collective Los Carpinteros 148 has responded similarly to the increasing mobility of contemporary society with their work

Ciudad Transportable (Transportable City), 2000 (fig. 44). Created for the 7th Havana

147 Constant, “New Babylon,” in exhibition catalogue New Babylon (1974). 148 The collective Los Carpinteros (The Capenters) was founded in 1992 in Havana. See for more information www.loscarpinteros.net Hinten 95

Biennial the installation reflected on the local community while at the same time it represented a global phenomenon. As it is emphasised continuously within social studies, ‘postmodern’ or ‘contemporary’ life has become increasingly mobile as a result of globalisation. People move around the globe more easily and more frequently, both voluntarily and involuntarily. As a result our sense of ‘home,’ of being in the world, has become more temporal; we no longer necessarily think of our dwelling as a fixed structure. 149

It is exactly this migratory sense of home that inspired Ciudad Transportable.

The work consists of ten aluminium and nylon tents that represent and recreate different types of buildings. Included are a church, a factory, a prison, a school, a lighthouse, a domed capital and military barracks; all are essential components of any city according to the artists. As they explain: “Ciudad Transportable is about the basic minimum that a person or a society needs to function. We wanted to create the basic cell of what a city should be.”150Especially the material used is of interest here as the lightweight structure of the tents makes them easy to set up, break down, and repack for transport to their next temporary destination. After its first presentation in Havana, the work travelled to diverse urban centres including Shanghai, Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York.151The freedom of the art to travel not only represents a global sense of mobility, but also refers to the fact that international travel was often difficult, if not impossible for Cuban artists. In a way the art refers to the restriction some have, while others are free to move around the globe as they please.152

While the temporary structures on the one hand represent freedom, they also allude to the presence of a refugee camp. As Lilian Tone argues, “mobile in scope and temporary by nature, tents inexorably carry with them notions of refuge and

149 Ian Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 4. 150 Los Carpinteros as cited in Carol S. Eliel, Los Carpinteros’s Transportable City, exhibition brochure (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001) 151 Lilian Tone, “Placeless Place”, Los Carpinteros (Tampa: Institute for Research in Art, University of South Florida, 2003), 2. 152 Heartney, Art & Today, 341. Hinten 96 survival.”153These tensions between careless freedom and the struggle to survival is present not only in Ciudad Transportable, but throughout the entire oeuvre of Los

Carpinteros. Similar to Constant, the collective dedicated a longer period of time to representing their utopian visions for a nomadic city without fixed geographical markers. Parallel to Ciudad Transportable, they created an on-going series of projects including Transportable Columns (2001), Filled Pool (2001) Glass Towers (2002), and

Prison (2003). Clashing themes can be identified within their work such as tourism and militarism, laxity and discipline, destitution and security, displacement and dwelling.154

While Constant was inspired by a local community and translated their way of living into a vision for society that could be applied on a global scale, Los Carpinteros instead began their project by looking at a global phenomenon and offering a rather pragmatic response to it. Not necessarily utopian or dystopian, Ciudad Transportable nevertheless embodies one of the central concepts of New Babylon: that of mobility.

However, the practice of Los Carpinteros does direct to other possible interpretations of New Babylon, as being something other than either a utopia or dystopia. In a more recent exhibition by Los Carpinteros in 2014, the focus was not longer just on mobility and the structures that come along with that, but has instead become more symbolical focusing on the concept of ‘atopia.’ This term, coined by the German sociologist

Helmut Wilke, refers to a society that, as a result of globalisation, exists without national identities as there are no longer any borders.155 It is almost needless to state how well this concept fits within New Babylon, as its essence is based on borderlessness.

Similar tendencies can be identified among other contemporary artists.

Comparable projects for example include Andrea Zittel’s Mobile Units, and Absalon’s

Personal Units. What is interesting about these projects, is that they share one essential element that makes them completely different from New Babylon, which is

153 Tone, “Placeless Place”, 4. 154 Ibid. 155 Helmut Willke, Atopia: Studien zur atopischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001) Hinten 97 their focus on individual property. Constant did not focus on the way in which personal houses or even personal space would be constructed, as this was of no concern in his collective society. Even more so, when placing project like those of Absalon and Zittel with a more individual and psychological dimension, next to Constant, the lack of this dimension in New Babylon suddenly becomes very present.

Play

Besides mobility and the built environment that would facilitate this mobility, in New

Babylon there is also a focus on the type of inhabitant that would move around in this new, different society: the Homo Ludens. No longer needing to work, their core business is indulging in play and creativity. When looking at notions of play within contemporary art, it seems there are roughly three different ways in which it tends to appear. First of all, in the form of the artwork, second, in the process of making the artwork, and third, in the way in which the work interacts with the audience. It is especially this third way that relates to the function of play within New Babylon. Not only did Constant envision a society revolving around play, he also created structures that allowed visitors of his exhibitions to experience some of this play. This participatory element has become, as I already discussed, an increasingly important aspect of art over the past decades. An increasing number of artists choose to create artworks and installations that can be entered or used by the audience. Even more so, most of these works are to be ‘completed’ by this audience, leading to a form of art that, as I indicated has been identified by Bourriaud as relational aesthetics. Similarly,

New Babylon was also to be completed by its inhabitants, Constant merely provided the basic elements, leaving the details to be filled out by the participants.

The oeuvre of the British/Scottish artistic duo Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich has revolved around such notions of play since the 1990s already . As they indicate in their artistic ‘statement,’ their work “explores the space between what exists and what is possible.” They go on to state that “within this space we create objects and situations that lead our audience on transformative experiences inviting them to consider an

Hinten 98

‘other’ way of being.”156Similar to Constant, they are interested in the potential of art to act as a catalyst for political and social transformation. They explore different ways in which their art can provide poetic and aesthetic solutions for real life problems.

Furthermore, they argue that the best way to stimulate such change is to make people experience something.

In 2005 they worked on the project Panacea, together with Michael Pinsky.

Panacea, which means “a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases,” was an artistic research into the role art can play in society. The artists asked themselves questions such as “Can artists provoke change in society,?” and “Can art objects become tools to improve our lives?”157Their experiment revolved around the “Panacea

Model,”(fig. 46) which represented an “idealised health paradise,” constructed by the three artists together using medical packaging and waste. From this first model, numerous artworks evolved that were presented alongside in the John Hansard

Gallery. Among these works was the installation Friendly Frontier by Walker and

Bromwich, which consisted of a hand-sewn inflatable mountain range of 11 meters long with ‘emergency slides’ extending from the sides. The artists propose these emergency slides can be used to bridge international borders in a playful way. They explain the work “acts as a buoyancy aid for countries in conflict, an open border for all peoples of the world to slide with ease between nation states.”158 As Bernadette

Buckley wittily noted when interviewing Walker and Bromwich, their work is “literally lightweight, it’s a lightweight solution.” 159 It is exactly this literal and figurative lightweight, childlike aspect of their work that makes it approachable for the audience according to Walker. Disarmed by the playfulness of the work, she argues, the

156 Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich, “Statement”, Avaialble at: http://www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk/projects.html 157 “Panacea: Neil Bromwich, Zoe Walker, Michael Pinsky”, John Hansard Gallery, 2005. Available at: http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/event-detail/98-panacea-neil-bromwich-zo- walker-michael-pinsky/ 158 Walker and Bromwich, “Friendly Frontier”, Available at: http://www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk/ 159 Bernadette Buckley, “Artist Interview”. Hinten 99 audience is able to engage with it on an emotional level allowing them to think about the more critical meaning of it.160 Their work is thus not only playful in its interaction with the public, but is inherently playful in its form as well. Using elements that represent playground equipment such as slides, and presenting them as elements that can solve real life problems, they integrate play into daily life, just like Constant was looking to do. What is inherently different here however is that Walker and Bromwich use play as a tool. They view being in a temporary state of playfulness as a means to change society as it is, play as a means to an end so to say, and not as an end in itself.

In addition to the playful aspect of their work, Walker and Bromwich also often implement utopian visions in their work. Portable Paradise (fig. 48), 1996, for example represents an artificial island inhabited by Walker that is contained inside a transparent inflatable bubble. The paradise-containing bubble can be inflated and entered any time needed to escape the hardships and stress of daily life. Once relieved, the bubble can be deflated and packed to be stored for later use. The work is brilliant in its simplicity and arguably the epitome of modern society’s need for wish fulfilment met by consumer culture: an individual, private solution easily available when needed. It is here that we find overlap with the Personal Unit’s of Absalon as well, suggesting that

Constant’s longing for a collective society would be viewed as be too extreme within contemporary society.

The practice of Walker and Bromwich is often interpreted as offering an ironic critique on society, but doing so with naïve, childlike optimism. However, this naivety is only there at the surface, to make the work more approachable. When talking about their practice, they admit their believe in the transformative function of art can only stretch so far. As Pinsky indicates, they take utopian ideas such as those of Joseph

Beuys’ idea that “art really can change the world,” but they are also aware that “it is

160 Walker as cited in Buckley, “Artist Interview”.

Hinten 100 doomed to failure to a large extent.”161 It is this tension between naivety and (subtle) critique that links the work of Walker and Bromwich to Adorno’s ideas about one of the major antinomies within contemporary art in a similar way as Constant’s New Babylon.

Their pursuit of a utopian ideal is one that can never be realized, and will therefore inevitably fail. In opposition to Constant, who started off his project perhaps rather naively, believing his free society would lead to a playful, creative, and peaceful existence, only admitting to himself it could lead to the opposite as well after working on his project for over ten years already, this self-reflexive aspect is present within the works of Walker and Bromwich early on already. Less optimistic, and thus more realistic, their work merely offers a temporary relief from reality to the audience.

When discussing play and contemporary art, there is one artist that cannot be avoided, namely Carsten Höller (1961). Höller creates installations that as he explains,

“invite visitors to experience the voluptuous panic of a loss of control.” 162 His work consists of slides that are installed in and around the buildings where he exhibits (fig.

49 & 50). According to Höller, “it is impossible to travel down a slide without smiling,” 163 and as a result his work offers the participating audience “the possibility of unique inner experiences that can be used for the exploration of the self.”164While Höller arguably speaks too promising of his slides, presenting them as tools for self-realisation, I believe the core of his work is based on a genuine believe in the role that art can positively contribute to society. Having a background in agricultural science, Höller refers to his work as behavioural experiments that are freed from the constraints of scientific research as they are instead executed within the freer realm or art.

Furthermore, he is not necessarily looking for a specific interpretation or response to his work but instead likes to leave this up to the participants. This approach echoes

Constant’s vision for his New Babylon structure. They both are simply there to provide

161 Pinsky as cited in Buckley, “Artist Interview”. 162 Höller as cited in Aidan Dnunne, “Carsten Höller: ‘Nobody I’ve met is aware of what sort of person they are’”, The Irish Times, 7 May 2017. 163 Höller as cited in Tim Adams, “Interview with Carsten Höller”, The Observer, 17 May 2015. 164 Ibid. Hinten 101 the structure, or, as Höller calls his slides, “tools,”165 leaving people to interact with it any way they like. Interesting here is once again that like Walker and Bromwhich Höller uses play as a tool to change peoples perception of society, and not as Constant aspired, to structurally change society itself.

Control

From free play we move on to the final concept that I will discuss in relation to New

Babylon and contemporary art, which is that of control. Play and control are two concepts that tend to not easily combine, and form one of the main binary oppositions within Constant’s New Babylon. Constant longed for a perfect, free society, but could not let go of control in order to achieve this. Instead he set clear boundaries within which free play would take place. This tension between freedom and control is something that several contemporary artists take on in their practice as well, and in some cases this even leads to projects that coincide with New Babylon on multiple levels.

The design collective Atelier Van Lieshout, founded by Joep van Lieshout, has worked on several projects that explore similar visions as Constant’s New Babylon, but approach them in a rather different way. In 2001 they designed but also actually built a

Free State in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The community was called AVL-Ville (Fig.

52) and consisted of several autonomous artworks and installations assembled together forming a self-sufficient society, where art could be created to serve society.

The Free State had its own AVL-Ville Money (2001), AVL Transport Trailer to get to the

Free State, and legitimate AVL Constitution that was drawn up together with an actual lawyer.166 Even though the project started out successfully, it was terminated after one year because of legal issues with the Dutch government. Van Lieshout was disappointed, but also admitted that the short existence of the Free State might have been a good way of retaining its utopian aspects, as its increasing popularity and

165 Höller as cited in Adams, “Interview with Carsten Höller”. 166 Jenifer Allen, “AVL for Dummies” Atelier Van Lieshout (Rotterdam: NAI, 2007), 13. Hinten 102 growth might have caused for over-population which could, according to him, only lead to crime and disease turning the whole project into a dystopian failure.

Several years after the experiment of AVL-Ville, Van Lieshout turned a completely different way, initiating a project that was reminiscent of the ultimate antithesis of New Babylon. Perhaps disappointed by the failure of his utopian dream, he began his design of a dystopian society called Slave City (2005-2008). This transition from hope for a better society, and believe in revolution leading to social change, towards very much opposing visions clearly resembles the change of perspective Constant experienced. Van Lieshout’s project furthermore shares the controlling tendency of the structure of New Babylon, but instead uses it to refer back to historical forms of extreme slavery that remind of the situation in the concentration camps during the Second World War. In opposition to New Babylon’s free society based on play, Slave City revolves around one purpose only: that of work. After the failed attempt at a society inhabited by a kind of homo ludens, Van Lieshout responded in a far more controlled and calm way than Constant did. It is almost as if Van Lieshout is correcting the mistake Constant made when he lost control off his utopian visions and resorted to chaos, by instead replacing controlled freedom with something far more easy to control: an extremely efficient chain of production. Fully mechanised, or automatized production can not only lead to the emancipation of workers but instead also fully and literally swallow up its former workers, who no longer just operate the machines but also serve as their source of energy; the human body provides the raw material for the production of usable resources.

The scope and visual aspects of the project as well as the media and materials used, remind of the variety of works that Constant made as part of New Babylon. Slave

City consists of sketches, models, and sculptural objects, as well as manifesto-like texts that explain the workings of the possible future society that is presented. Van

Lieshout speaks of his project as a “saga,” seeing it as “life’s work, a life’s entire

Hinten 103 scheme, perhaps my life’s purpose.”167 The way in which Van Lieshout presents the project to the public in exhibitions shows resemblances to New Babylon as well. When looking at the exhibition of the project in 2008 in Museum Folkwang in Essen (fig. 54), a similar mixed way of presenting models, sketches and objects alongside each other becomes apparent. Van Lieshout has also created participatory structures that can be used and entered by visitors allowing them to experience part of the project. For example, during the exhibition in 2008 the installation BarRectum was placed outside of the museum hosting a bar that could be entered by visitors (fig. 55). The project makes us, the audience, wonder what we are supposed to take from it. Should we take it seriously? Is the project supposed to be feasible? While the work shows a very dystopian and perhaps far fetched vision of what could happen when society’s urge to control everything in order to become as efficient as possible, it does so in a very well thought out way. The whole project has been worked out into the smallest details, making it look awfully real.

It is this tension between reality and imagination that forms a binding factor between Constant’s New Babylon and the contemporary art world. The works of several artists and collectives that have been discussed have made it clear that

Constant’s ideas about art and society, as well as his utopian visions do still reside within the art world today. However, the positive outlook Constant had for his future society, and the scale and scope of his project tend to be considered too naïve or totalitarian. While Constant worked on his project for almost 20 years, the pace of today’s art world tends to be lot faster, and perhaps too impatient to wait for its audience to adjust to their ideas.

167 Joep van Lieshout, “Slave City. A Comment by Joep van Lieshout” in Atelier Van Lieshout. Slave City (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2008), 74. Hinten 104

Figure 55: Interior of multipurpose building New Babylon in The Hague. Available at : www.newbabylon.nl

Figure 56: Jan Fabre- Searching for Utopia, 2003. Available at: www.janfabre.be

Hinten 105

Conclusion

“Incipit vita nova.”168

I will begin my conclusion by returning to the beginning of this text and thus look back at the writings of Ernst Bloch once more. In his exploration of the ‘spirit of utopia’ Bloch takes his readers on a journey, beginning with an exploration of broader concepts such as art, poetry, and music, and then dives in deeper and deeper until reaching the inner self, an encounter with our ‘core. While I have not intended to follow Bloch’s footsteps, my aim in this text has been of a similar nature. Beginning my exploration looking at more the broader phenomenon of utopia, I then turned to look more specifically at one exploration of utopia in the form of Constant’s New Babylon.

In the first chapter my main aim was to (re)position New Babylon within the art historical realm, to correct several simplified interpretations of the project that are often made when it is approached from an architectural viewpoint. In the second chapter I then moved on to look at the different ways in which Constant presented New Babylon in several exhibitions, as well as looking more specifically at the most recent exhibitions of the project in 2016 at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague and the

Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen. In the third chapter I positioned New

Babylon within our contemporary society to argue that the project has remained relevant and continues to inspire artists and the contemporary art world decades after

Constant stopped working on it. Having briefly returned to the main points discussed in this text, in relation to which I have already discussed several conclusions at the end of each chapters, I will not return to them in too much depth. Instead we have now reached a point where it is time to take a step back, and look at New Babylon from an outside perspective, to go on to draw several more overarching conclusions.

As I indicated in the introduction there seem to be two stances among the interpretations of New Babylon: New Babylon should be considered as reality, and,

168 Translation in english: “now begins a new life.” As translated in Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia, Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2000 (1918), p. 3 Hinten 106

New Babylon should be considered as a fiction. It is distressing, to say the least, that

Constant’s utopian dream for a collective free society has in fact been taken over by the greed of our contemporary capitalist society leading to the construction of a building named after New Babylon. Erected in the city centre of the Hague, the city where Constant left his project to be safely stored for the future, a multi purpose building has been built, that is presented to function as “a new city in the city” (fig. 56).

Luckily the horrors of such developments have remained limited to the construction of one building only, and more positive interpretations of New Babylon are slowly taking the upper hand once again.

Further exploring these two stances, I have identified that the past decades

New Babylon has been approached from, not two, but roughly three different fields of study: art history/criticism, architecture, and social/cultural studies. As indicated, scholars such as Heynen, and to a certain extend Wigley as well, take an art historical approach towards New Babylon, looking at the visual aspects of the project itself and the different media used to offer a form of self-reflection in order to explain the ambivalence that is present within New Babylon. Besides this, there is one other dominant reading of the project, which Wigley also leans towards, namely the reading of New Babylon as a form of architecture or mainly architectural project. I believe that such a reading of New Babylon is flawed, as in an architectural reading of the project the aesthetic and imaginative aspects of it become overshadowed by the structural aspects. In doing so, a far too simplistic understanding of the project is promoted, turning New Babylon into horrible buildings such as the recent development in The

Hague I just mentioned. Besides art history and architecture, yet another field of studies can be identified that focuses on Constant’s project, namely that of social and/or cultural studies. These studies tent to focus on both the society in which

Hinten 107

Constant created New Babylon, as well as how we can use the ideas presented in New

Babylon to reflect on the social structure of our contemporary or even future society.169

In a recent analysis by Mark Denaci, “Amsterdam and/as New Babylon: Urban

Modernity’s Contested Trajectories,” takes up both approaches, on the one hand looking at the state of ambivalence that society was in while Constant worked on his project, as well as projecting New Babylon onto the current social and physical structure of Amsterdam. Of course, it is not a new insight that the 1970s were a time of ambivalence at the least, or crisis at worst. However, it is the way in which he presents the mutual way in which real life society and New Babylon have influenced each other and how contemporary society mimics aspects of New Babylon that makes his argument a welcome addition to the scholarship on the project. Similarly to my interpretation of the multipurpose building in The Hague, Denaci compares the Zuidas district in Amsterdam as another dystopian realization of several aspects of New

Babylon. He describes the area as “geographically separated from the city, with few exceptions the development’s high-rise buildings look as if they could have been built just about anywhere in the world, providing a somewhat New Babylonian sense of geographic and spatial disorientation.” 170

Having looked at these three different approaches towards the project, it becomes clear that perhaps there is not one approach toward New Babylon that should be favoured over the others. While I am convinced it has been useful to reposition New

Babylon within an art historical realm, removing it from a purely architectural perspective, this exploration has also led me to a more open-ended conclusion. Since the project itself is based on antinomies that make up the essence of the project, I would like to promote the idea that New Babylon should therefore also be approached

169 Or, in some dated studies, the contemporary society of the critics conducting these studies of course. 170 Mark E. Denaci, “Amsterdam and/as New Babylon: Urban Modernity’s Contested Trajectories,” in Marco de Waard (ed), Imagining Global Amsterdam: History, Culture, and Geography in a World City, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. 211. Hinten 108 from a multiplicity of views. I think we can even argue that when the project is not analysed from different fields of studies that such an analysis will always be lacking.

A more positive conclusion I would like to draw attention to here on a final note is that a renewed interest in projects such as New Babylon that explore the potential positive influence utopian visions can have on society is slowly beginning to take the upper hand again. Even scholars such as Hans Achterhuis that used to evoke more cautious feelings towards, naïve or totalitarian visions that utopias apparently represent to them, are now focusing on the function these utopian visions can fulfil. In line with what Jonas Staal recently argued in his congress exploring utopias, artists also seem to slowly return towards exploring alternative futures in their work. However, when looking at what makes New Babylon more interesting and relevant than any other utopian future vision presented within a work of art, I believe the answer lies closely with Constant himself. As I have demonstrated, contemporary artists have also explored utopian ideals but always keep a cautious approach towards these ideals, never fully submitting to them. Even though Constant eventually lost faith in the direct use his project could have in society, he did always hold on to the idea that the project could be stored for better times. It has thus become clear that the perseverance

Constant had when working on New Babylon, and even after he stopped working on

New Babylon, is of a unique nature.

To end with a response to the question whether Constant’s New Babylon is indeed ‘a place that can never be,’ I believe we can conclude that it is indeed not a society that we should want to realize. However, it is definitely something that we should always keep looking for as Jan Fabre’s Searching for Utopia, 2003 (fig. 56) points out to us so tellingly.

Hinten 109

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