The Target: Alain Robbe-grillet, Jasper Johns

The Target is an interarts study of Pop art and metafiction. It highlights the relationship between Alain Robbe-Grillet, an internationally acclaimed French new novelist and cinematographer, and Jasper Johns, an internationally renowned artist. Robbe-Grillet wrote "The Target," an introduction to the catalog for the Johns 1978 exhibition in Paris--an introduction in the guise of fiction--that was generated by the works in the show. Fifty-six of the works illustrate the translation of Robbe-Grillet's narrative. Eight additional illustrations in color accompany the essay that analyzes Johns's targets and numbers and Robbe-Grillet's "target." The accompanying essay addresses topics such as self-reflexivity, topologies, chaos theory, and the social function of art. The book shows how Johns's targets and Robbe-Grillet's writing subvert social codes and the observer's expectations in order to produce new and unexpected perceptions of reality.