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exuberant in its range of colors and its festive atmosphere. The figures are painted

in garish, definite colors that spill over into the surrounding areas. But here too the

somber, dark undertone is noticeable, both in the black background that rejects the

expansive joy of the merrymakers and in the attitude of the human figures to each

other—as though no real contact exists between them.

In the “labyrinthine” paintings this conflict is even more pronounced. Ode à

l’Odéon(1969) depicts an unending space in the manner of Piranesi, an interior with-

out any world outside consisting of a large number of walls, palings, and ladders

(figure 82). Transparent screens, gridlike surfaces, and sections of floors are

crisscrossed—supported?—by horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. There is no

longer any definite perspective here, no central point from which the spatial organi-

zation can be grasped as a whole. One experiences this space as ambiguous and

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83

Constant, Ladderlabyrinth, 1971.

(Collection Mrs. P. Nieuwenhuys-

Kerkhoven, Amsterdam.)