The Target: Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jasper Johns

The Target is a two-part interarts study of Jasper Johns and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Stoltzfuss’ translation of Robbe-Grillet’s introduction in the catalogue to John’s 1978 Pompidou show in Paris is followed by an essay comparing the works of the American Pop artist and the French new novelist and cinematographer. Fifty-eight illustrations (eight in color) from the show accompany the translation because these art works generated Robbe-Grillet’s text, also entitled ‘The Target.’
Stoltzfuss’ essay discusses Johns’ art and Robbe-Grillet’s metafiction in a postmodern context. Both men subvert cultural stereotypes and realism in art. Their works are self-reflexive and they call attention to themselves and to the language of art. Autopoiesis, that is, the internal recursive loops of the system in the artwork is one of many features that they share. In addressing these features the essay deals with chaos theory, strange attractors, psychoanalysis, play theory, the role of the observer(s), and the social function of art. Books and articles have been published on Johns and on Robbe-Grillet, but none comparing the two. Bringing the two together, while exploring the affinities between the visual and the written, should be of great interest to every aficionado.

The conclusion of the book argues that the foregrounding of the significant, the distortion of sequential narrative, and the disruption of causality and closure affect our perception of history, the work, and our lives; that this process has profound social consequences because Johns and Robbe-Grillets art explores the ontology of representation, not the mirroring of reality. An appendix to the book describes the rings of Johns Target and their relationship to the nine objects and nine numbers that Robbe-Grillet assigns to them.