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I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great
Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived
with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in
usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely
magical object.
It is obvious that the new Citroen has fallen from the sky inasmuch
as it appears at first sight as a superlative object ... We must
not forget that an object is the best messenger of a world above
that of nature: one can easily see in an object at once a perfection
and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation
of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life),
and in a word a silence which belongs to the realm of fairy-tales.
The D.S. - the "Goddess" - has all the features (or
at least the public is unanimous in attributing them to it at
first sight) of one of those objects from another universe which
have supplied fuel for the neomania of the eighteenth century
and that of our own science-fiction: the Deesse is first and
foremost a new Nautilus.
This is why it excites interest less by its substance than by the
junction of its components. It is well known that smoothness is
always an attribute of perfection because its opposite reveals
a technical and typically human operation of assembling: Christ's
robe was seamless, just as the airships of science-fiction are
made of unbroken metal. The D.S 19 has no pretensions about being
as smooth as cake-icing, although its general shape is very rounded;
yet it is the dove-tailing of its sections which interest the
public most: one keenly fingers the edges of the windows, one
feels along the wide rubber grooves which link the back window
to its metal surround.
There are in the D.S. the beginnings of
a new phenomenology of assembling, as if one progressed from a
world where elements are welded to a world where they are juxtaposed
and hold together by sole virtue of their wondrous shape, which
of course is meant to prepare one for the idea of a more benign
Nature.
As for the material itself, it is certain that it promotes a taste
for lightness in its magical sense. There is a return to a certain
degree of streamlining, new, however, since it is less bulky,
less incisive, more relaxed than that which one found in the first
periods of this fashion. Speed here is expressed by less aggressive,
less athletic signs, as if it were evolving from a primitive to
a classical form. This spiritualization can be seen in the extent,
the quality and the material of the glass-work.
The Deesse
is obviously the exaltation of glass, and pressed metal is only
a support for it. Here, the glass surfaces are not windows, openings
pierced in a dark shell; they are vast walls of air and space,
with the curvature, the spread and the brilliance of soap-bubbles,
the hard thinness of a substance more entomological than mineral
(the Citroen emblem with its arrows, has in fact become a winged
emblem, as if one was proceeding from the category of propulsion
to that of spontaneous motion, from that of the engine to that
of the organism).
We are therefore dealing here with a humanized art, and it is
possible that the Deesse marks a change in the mythology of cars.
Until now, the ultimate in cars belonged rather to the bestiary
of power; here it becomes At once more spiritual and more object-like,
and despite some concessions to neomania (such as the empty steering
wheel), it is now more homely, more attuned to this sublimation
of the utensil which one also finds in the design of contemporary
household equipment.
The dashboard looks more like the working surface of a modern
kitchen than the control room of a factory; the slim panes of
matt fluted metal, the small levers topped by a white ball, the
very simple dials, the very discreetness of the nickel-work,
all this signifies a kind of control exercised over motion rather
than performance. One is obviously turning form an alchemy of
speed to a relish in driving.
The public, it seems, has admirably divined the novelty of the
themes which are suggested to it. Responding at first to the
neologism (a whole publicity campaign had kept it on the alert
for years), it tries very quickly to fall back on a behaviour
which indicates adjustment and a readiness to use ("You've
got to get used to it ").
In the exhibition
halls, the car on show is explored with an intense, amorous studiousness:
it is the great tactile phase of discovery, the moment when visual
wonder is about to receive the reasoned assault of touch (for
touch is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which
is the most magical). The bodywork, the lines of union are touched,
the upholstery palpated, the seats tried, the doors caressed,
the cushions fondled; before the wheel, one pretends to
drive with one's whole body. The object here is totally prostituted,
appropriated: originating from the heaven of Metropolis,
the Goddess is in a quarter of an hour mediatized, actualizing
through this exorcism the very essence of petit-bourgeois advancement.
©
Roland Barthes
Mythologies
Vintage
ISBN 0 09 997220 4
1957
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