Much of Hervé Constant’s work has explored the journey of the soul in its search for fusion with the infinite. It was entirely appropriate that he was commissioned to paint a series of works based on the ancient symbols of the tarot. HERVÉ CONSTANT AND THE TAROT Much of Hervé Constant’s work has explored the journey of the soul in its search for fusion with the infinite. It was entirely appropriate that he was commissioned to paint a series of works based on the ancient symbols of the tarot. The cards of the Major Arcana with their rich fusion of colour and symbol are a perfect launch pad for Hervé’s imagination. Constant’s own journey has been an odyssey of creative self – discovery. B

A NEW INITIATIVE BY VIDEOCHANNEL Interview 2006 1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background I was born in Casablanca. My mother was Moroccan and my father French but my parents separated when I was 5 and my brother and I went to live with my father in the South of France, near Toulon. where he was born. My father was unable to look after us because he worked full-time for the Arsenal of Toulon and as a man living on his own and in spite of some help from his mother in law, the French state assisted by the social services decided that it would be better if both children were put into an orphanage. We were directed to one in Hyeres, a few miles from Toulon, in the

What is your background? Interview recorded 27.02.90 Hervé Constant HC I was born in Casablanca. My father is French and my mother was from Morocco. In 1955 Morocco became independent and our family was forced to leave the country. We then lived in Toulon where I was educated. NJ Your creative beginnings, was your training in the theatre? HC Yes, I studied in Toulon, in the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique for four years, then at the École National du Théatre in Paris. There we were taught all kinds of things-theatre design, acting etc. NJ You then worked in the theatre? HC Yes, my last involvement was acting in ‘The French Revolution’ staged in the 1970s in Paris. It was directed

Interview between the visual artist, Herve Constant and the psychotherapist Madelyn Freeman, November 98, London MF: We have been discussing the process of artistic creation and I made the point regarding the rational and non-rational functions. Herve, would you reiterate your views on how the creation actually comes into being? HC: It is a mixture of rational and non-rational, which sometimes comes through directed intention and sometimes - after a while - through the process of creation, that is to say, through something I don't actually possess or direct. This aspect feels strange and timeless and can result from having thought a great deal about a particular work, over a long period o

For the past three years, Herve Constant has looked to Arthur Rimbaud not merely as an inpiration but as an artistic muse, governing his entire œuvre and enlivening his creative thought process. Born in North Africa, trained in France and now living in London, Constant became familiar with the works of Rimbaud as a child. It is only recently, though, that the poet has been adopted as a talisman for a profound spiritual and emotional quest. The paintings are littered with references to Rimbaud's poetic imagery and to aspects of his personal biography. For Constant, the act of painting is a highly theatrical process. As he has stated recently : " Colours, words - everything together creates th

Herve Constant paints in darkness in order to see clearly. As dusk falls outside the windows of his studio, which overlooks brick walls choked with drooping vegetation, he lights a candle in his basement studio near London Fields and works on a dimly lit canvas. Paintings emerge in twilight colours; soft blue, purple, brown edged with crimson. Often they have a transient quality; a sense of passing from daylight into darkness. Constant prefers to work in this way because his vision emerges from within. Like the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, one of his greatest influences, he feels that the artist must 'make himself a seer'. To do so, he 'searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, an

"The first study for the man who wishes to be a poet is his own self knowledge, entire; he seeks his soul, he inspects it, he tempts it, apprehends it…The poet makes himself a 'voyant' through a long, immense and reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessence. Unutterable torture in which he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, in which he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed one - and the supreme Savant| - For he arrives at the 'unknown'". For all art, according to the psychoanalyst Hanna Segal, stem

Herve Constant's paintings repeatedly reveal his absorbtion with the representation of the journey of the soul .This compelling search reflects Constant ' s own odyssey which has transported his origins and culture. Born in Casablanca of a Moroccan mother and a French father, Herve suffered a dislocated childhood which stranded him and his brother in an orphanage in France for some part of their young lives. In his teens he decided that to study drama and become an actor would provide a safe outlet for buried emotion, and a means of expressing the losses of the past. An opportunity to lose self in a succession of assumed selves. Then.after success at drama school and the theatre, it became a

It may well be a fair assumption that every genuine artist has the soul of an explorer. His map is the complexity of emotion, his grappling irons and shovels, that box of irridescent paints. What drives an explorer on is the same spirit within an artist - the desire for knowledge and through knowledge, understanding. It may well be a fair assumption that every genuine artist has the soul of an explorer. His map is the complexity of emotion, his grappling irons and shovels, that box of irridescent paints. What drives an explorer on is the same spirit within an artist - the desire for knowledge and through knowledge, understanding. Herve Constant is an explorer. His journey is arduous but re

Herve Constant is keenly aware of the gulf between the meaning of a sign and formal qualities such as its shape, colour, or scale, which get lost in the process of communication. Herve Constant is keenly aware of the gulf between the meaning of a sign and formal qualities such as its shape, colour, or scale, which get lost in the process of communication. An early series of paintings of telephones explored the visual qualities of a familiar object we all use but rarely look at. For the last two and a half years he has adopted the nineteenth century symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud as both his subject and his muse. Rimbaud, of course, was hero of the Surrealists, but it is not this aspect which