ceased to exhibit or sell any canvases. The works of these years also take up the
themes and motifs of New Babylon—labyrinths, ladders, homo ludens—but they
should perhaps not be seen as direct illustrations of life in New Babylon. Rather, they
provide a reflection at a distance accompanying and possibly commenting on the
work on New Babylon.
Typical of some of these paintings are their vivid, brilliant colors, suggesting
scenes of joyous festivities. The element of play here comes to the fore in the form
of carnival-like figures in scenes that teem with activity. In Fiesta Gitana, from 1958,
fiery and colorful splashes of paint dominate like explosions of joy (figure 81). There
is, however, an unmistakably somber undertone, as though Constant was acknowl-
edging in his paintings that festival and violence, joy and chaos, creation and de-
struction, are ineluctably linked. Homo Ludens, for instance, a painting from 1964, is
4
Architecture as Critique of Modernity82
Constant, Ode à l’Odéon, 1969.
(Private collection, on loan to
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.)