Pink

Circa 1985

Circa 1981

Circa 1980
Comte de Lautréamont is pseudonym for Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, Urugay), 04 April 1846 to 24 November 1870. He was a French author and poet and an important forerunner of Surrealism. In 1868 he wrote Les Chants de Maldoror (a poetic novel).

Prometheus stole fire from the Gods on the Olympus and gave it to the humans. He was punished for his hubris. Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle (emblem of Zeus) came and picked out his liver. Every day the liver grew back and the torture would repeat.

Although the theme of this painting is similar to paintings by Manet (L'exécution de l'Empéreur) and Goya (The third of May 1808), Constant has changed the composition so that the audience faces the executioners.

Inspired by the events in Kosovo. On April 12, 1999 Time Magazine printed a powerful cover photo by photographer Damir Sagolj of refugees from Kosovo with a woman with a white head scarf and a baby at her breast in front. It may have been this image that inspired Constant to paint Les éxpulsés. When you look at the original photo the white head scarf, the coloroud clothes in the middle of the line of people and the curved bend of the line of refugees are mirrored in Constants painting.

Inspired by the Paris Commune in 1871