Michel Butor's Mobile: Modernism, Postmodernism, and American Art

Abstract

The author examines Michel Butor's Mobile (1962) in relation to the visual arts, beginning with a discussion of connections to modernist visual models found in the works of Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, and Marcel Duchamp. In comparing the text with Boomerang and with the poetic essay Comment écrire pour Jasper Johns, written nearly thirty years later, the author demonstrates how Butor encourages a rereading of his early work through the recycling of certain motifs. Furthermore, the author studies the similarities that Butor identifies between his writing and Johns's art, notably through the co-opting of popular imagery and the practice of self-citation. The author argues that Butor's texts are best understood as "postmodern" works grounded in an intellectual heritage based on modernism and Duchampian aesthetics.

Keywords:

• Boomerang
• Michel Butor
• Marcel Duchamp
• Jasper Johns
• Mobile
• modernism
• postmodern
• self-citation