La Belle Captivated in a Phantom City: Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Visual Writing
Abstract
"The creation of the phantom city, as the narrator suggests, is an illusionist painting, a make-believe story that necessarily defies mimesis. Rather than imitating the reality of the outside world, Robbe-Grillet uses eidetic arts as the architectonics of his phantom city. The texts that comprise Topology of a Phantom City are drawn from Robert Rauschenberg’s and René Magritte’s paintings, Paul Delvaux’s etching, and David Hamilton’s photographs. The 'First Space' of Topology includes the first seven texts of the Robbe-Grillet–Delvaux collaboration, which was initially published as a book of ten etchings and ten texts, Construction d’un temple en ruines à la déesse Vanadé. Robbe-Grillet has reinserted the last three texts in the 'Third Space.'"