Exhibition 21 October 2015 - 29 February 2016 Sabatini Building. Floor 1 Constant New Babylon
Space Circus 1958. Wire and copper, 105 x 90 x 100 cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Photo: Tom Haartsen. © Constant, VEGAP, Madrid, 2015
GOBIERNO MINISTERIO DE ESPAÑA DE EDUCACIÓN, CULTURA Y DEPORTE Constant . New Babylon
In 1956, Constant Nieuwenhuys (Amsterdam, 1920 - Utrecht, 2005) —co-founder of the group Cobra , and a key figure in the Situationist movement— embarked on New Babylon , an ambitious project conceived as an ‘alternative society model’. For more than two decades, Constant worked tirelessly, embodying his ideas in models, topographic maps, drawings, photo-collages, prints, and paintings, as well as in films, manifestos, texts, lectures, and ‘environments’. The fruit of a close collaboration between the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Fondation Constant and the Museo Reina Sofía, the exhibition Constant. New Babylon follows the evolution of the project and shows that the ideas it contains were already present in Constant’s earlier work, and did not completely disappear after New Babylon officially came to an end in 1974 .
In 1948, together with Dutch artists Karel From 1950-1951, his work repeatedly Appel and Corneille, Constant founded invoked the destruction caused by World the Dutch Experimental Group which War II and the Korean War, which was at soon became part of the international its height. Explicitly titled paintings such movement Cobra, an amalgamation of as La Guerre (The War) depict ravaged experimental groups from Belgium, landscapes on which a new world could Denmark, and the Netherlands whose be built. Like other Cobra artists, members included Asger Jorn and Constant was a great admirer of Picasso’s Christian Dotremont. Around this time, work, particularly Guernica (1937), so Constant wrote a manifesto advocating a much so that one of his war paintings, new kind of art and urging artists to adopt L’Incendie (The Fire, 1950), literally the playful creativity of children and the invokes the scene of the burning house spontaneity of primitive peoples. While and the mother mourning her son’s he was part of Cobra, Constant positioned death. himself against the artists of the De Stijl movement, including Piet Mondrian An Arts Council grant enabled Constant (1872-1944), but after Cobra disbanded in to study in London for several months, 1951 he appears to have followed in their where he was struck by the dreary new footsteps, creating works in which buildings being erected in the city that surfaces of abstract colour prevail. presented no challenge to creativity. 21 October 2015 - 29 February 2016
View of New Babylonian Sectors 1971. Watercolor and pencil on photomontage, 134.9 x 222.8 x 1.1 cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Photo: Tom Haartsen. © Constant, VEGAP, Madrid, 2015
Constant’s friendship with the architect In 1956, Constant’s old friend Asger Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) furthered his Jorn invited him to speak at the third interest in the possibilities of architecture. international conference of the MIBI Together with the painter and poet (Mouvement pour un Bauhaus Lucebert, the two collaborated on a Imaginiste), held in Alba, Italy. ‘spatial colorism’ experiment as part of Afterwards, the painters Giuseppe Pinot the 1952 exhibition Man and house at the Gallizio and Piero Simondo invited Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam: van Constant to join an experimental Eyck designed a room that was painted laboratory that they had organised in half purple, half blue, and Constant this city in the Piedmont region, and created a brightly coloured mural on one while he was there he designed the plans wall. Following a detailed study to for a camp that was to house a group of determine the colour and dimensions of gypsy families who had settled on the this work based on correspondence, outskirts of the city. As Constant himself photographs, and reviews from the time, said on numerous occasions, this was the the room has been reconstructed for this germ of New Babylon , a project in which exhibition. In his individual work, too, nomadism and the creative way of life Constant sought for ways of fully of the gypsies were a paradoxical integrating architecture, painting and anchor and a constant source of sculpture (a synthesis of the arts). inspiration. Constant . New Babylon
During his stay in Alba, Constant met Guy The life of Homo Ludens would not play Debord (1931-1994), who would become out in cities as we know them today, but de-facto leader of the Situationist in a global network of ‘sectors’ –the International group –which Constant basic unit of the new urbanism– raised would also be part of– when it was on pilotis, which various means of founded in 1957. Together, Constant and transport would move over and under. Debord developed the theory of ‘unitary The sectors were to be open, communal urbanism’, which rejected the utilitarian spaces, allowing ‘New Babylonians’ to logic of consumer society and sought to build ever-changing environments and bring about a dynamic city revolving paths using mobile architectural around freedom and play. Constant elements such as walls, floors, bridges, gradually honed his ideas about this city of and stairs. Colour, light, texture, the future and its inhabitants. After temperature, and air quality would also reading a new edition of Homo Ludens. A be adjustable to changing Study of the Play Element in Culture , which circumstances. These spaces were to had originally been published in 1938 by interconnect, generating a vast, Dutch sociologist and historian Johan constantly mutating urban system at a Huizinga, Constant abandoned painting planetary scale. The notion of the and began producing scale models of the labyrinth was also fundamental in dynamic city of the futur e. shaping this vision.
New Babylon is inextricably linked to its The painting Ode à l’Odeon (Tribute to historical and artistic context, a period the Odeon , 1969) was an important in which, following the horror of World turning point in the New Babylon project. War II, Europe felt an urgent need to Although Constant had produced some build a new and better world on the ruins paintings between 1957 and 1968, it had of the old one. In this sense, we can see not been an important medium for him New Babylon as a series of suggestions, or during that period. But from Tribute to perhaps a kind of basic instruction the Odeon onwards, it became his main manual to help us to imagine and start activity once again. Tribute to the Odeon building a completely new society has its origins in the student occupation through the invention of a completely of the Odeon Theatre in May 1968. new kind of urbanism and architecture. Constant decided to place this event Often considered the last great utopia of within the architecture of New Babylon , European art, the project takes the form sparking a series of paintings in which he of a totally automated city in which work represented all kinds of situations set in has become superfluous. It is inhabited the city of the future. by Huizinga’s Homo Ludens , the new, adventurous, playing human who In the exhibition held at the discovers his creative qualities through Gemeentemuseum in 1974, Constant social interaction and who never stops wanted to present a final vision of New travelling and creating. Babylon before ending the project, not 21 October 2015 - 29 February 2016
Yellow Sector 1958. Iron, aluminum, copper, plexiglass, ink and oil paint on wood, 21 x 82.5 x 77.5 cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Photo: Tom Haartsen. © Constant, VEGAP, Madrid, 2015 because he had lost faith in it, but because refers to the Vietnam War in works he had said all he had to say on it. Others dating from the early seventies, such as would pick up where he had left off. The the painting The Massacre of My Lai labyrinth of doors that closed the 1974 (1972) . By this time, the ‘real world’ had exhibition –a section of which has been decisively penetrated the imaginary world reconstructed for this show– is highly of New Babylon , not just in terms of symbolic in this sense. As Constant subject matter, but also when it came to himself said: ‘This was as far as I could go. the choice of materials. So much so, that The project exists. It is safely stored away Constant began to include newspaper in a museum, waiting for more favourable headlines and clippings in his paintings, times when it will once again arouse collages, and drawings. interest among future urban designers.’ After entrusting his New Babylon In interviews regarding the 1974 project to the Gemeentemuseum, exhibition, Constant said that he still Constant reorganised his studio and believed in New Babylon , but he no once again dedicated himself to painting. longer thought that its realisation was Even so, the architectural structures of imminent. On the contrary, the advent of New Babylon remained present in his this new world was to be preceded by a canvases for some time, and although long period of destruction, which he all traces of them had disappeared by depicted in every possible way during the the eighties, he did not lose interest last years of the project. Constant often in the subjects of war and revolution. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Sabatini Building Opening hours Related activity Santa Isabel, 52 Monday to Saturday About Nouvel Building and public holidays Constant. Nueva Babilonia / Ronda de Atocha from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Constant. New Babylon (on the corner with Guided visit led by the plaza del Emperador Carlos V) Sundays Mediation team 28012 Madrid from 10:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. Every Fridays at 7.15 p.m. opens the whole Museum, and Sundays at 12.30 p.m. Tel: (34) 91 774 10 00 from 2:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. No advance booking required visit to Collection 1 Starting from the Museum and one temporary exhibition Meeting Point (check Website) Workshop-visit Closed on Tuesdays Ciudad nueva, vida nueva / New City, New Life Exhibition rooms in all venues Aimed at of secondary will be cleared 15 minutes before school students closing time. Every Mondays, Wednesdays and visita a Colección 1 Thursdays from 10.30 a.m. y una exposición temporal to 1.30 p.m. www.museoreinasofia.es (consultar web) Advance booking on the 5
Museum's website 1 0 2 - 2 0 2
Education program developed 3 3 -
with the sponsorship of M
. D
Fundación Banco Santander . L
8 - 9 0 0 - 5 1 - 6 3 0
: O P I N
Media Partners:
Exhibition organized by Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, with the collaboration of the Fondation Constant and RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History). With the support of the Mondriaan Fund and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Madrid.
Coorganized: With the collaboration: With the support: