Robbe-Grilletís and Johnsís Targets: Metafiction, Autopoiesis, and Chaos Theory

Abstract

Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote La Cible (The Target) as an introduction catalogue for 1978 Jasper Johns exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The introduction was unconventional because it was fiction and bore no resemblance interpretive comments or critical analyses that normally accompany such texts. It was not, except perhaps indirectly, an introduction art of Johns, although it did use his Pop-art objects, paintings, and titles as generative sources for fictional narrative. In same year, text was incorporated into Robbe-Grillet's novel, Souvenirs du triangle d'or (130-150). In 1950s, in France, nouveaux romanciers were rejecting mimesis, and in United States, around 1960s, Pop artists were rejecting Abstract Expressionism of de Kooning and Pollock. Pop artists and new novelists were fascinated with objects, they were foregrounding language of art, and they were highlighting creative process. Johns's and Robbe-Grillet's use of things, such as a lightbulb or a coffee pot, led some critics accuse them, and Robbe-Grillet in particular, of killing novel and dehumanizing art. Robbe-Grillet's detailed description of a centipede led commentators describe nouveau roman as l'ecole du regard (the school of gaze) and label its practices chosisme (thingishness). In due course cool objectivity of Robbe-Grillet's style, known for its absence of psychological analysis, was labeled le stylo camera. The termis Alexandre Astruc's, and concept of camera-pen refers a cinema capable of expressing abstract thought. In this sense, Robbe-Grillet's style is sometimes described as cinematographic. The term thingishness also applies Johns's art, particularly his ale cans, flashlights, flags, targets, and plaster casts. At every point in nature, says Johns, there is something see. My work contains similar possibilities for changing focus of eye (quoted in Francis, 109). It is not surprising that Robbe-Grillet would incorporate Johns's objects into his writing, notably La Cible. Johns's and Robbe-Grillet's work poses question, What is a painting? or What is a novel? Michael Crichton points out that Johns may attach an object canvas in such a way as to throw doubt onto meaning of object--even when it is commonplace, such as a cup or a broom or a fork (25). Objects are defamiliarized because expectations of cause and effect are not fulfilled. The viewer is perplexed because Johns's apparently useful objects, like Marcel Duchamp's urinal, have lost their utility. As Barbara Rose puts it, the newspapers and books can't be read: piano can't be played; misshapen cutlery and bent hangers can't be used; drawers don't open (66). Pop art, says Lucy Lippard, also chose depict everything previously considered unworthy of notice. It used advertising, newspaper illustrations, gaudy furnishings, film stars, pin-ups, and cartoons. Nothing was (82). Robbe-Grillet, however, does view such objects as sacred, precisely because they have been elevated iconic status. For us, he says, they have same value that so-called sacred objects of antiquity had for their cultures--objects that archaeologists have been uncovering for decades, if not centuries (UCLA Lectures, 4 May 1978). The subject matter of Topologie d'une cite fantome is archaeology of successive ancient civilizations, whereas subject matter of La Cible highlights objects excavated during mid-twentieth century. The purpose of this archaeology is incorporate objects--be they chairs, coat-hangers, hooks, ale cans, flashlights, lightbulbs, or shoes--into a narrative discourse that speaks language of mass consumption--a consumption engendered by advertising and ideology that accompanies it; while at same time highlighting presence of manufactured objects in everybody's life. …