Richard Artschwager
Description of Table
1964
Not on view
Date
1964
Classification
Sculpture
Medium
Melamine laminate on plywood
Dimensions
Overall: 26 1/8 × 31 7/8 × 31 7/8in. (66.4 × 81 × 81 cm)
Accession number
66.48
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc.
Rights and reproductions
© Estate of Richard Artschwager/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Richard Artschwager’s Description of Table consists of a simple plywood cube inlaid with pieces of black, white, and faux wood-grain Formica. Cold in appearance and industrially produced, Formica is a material disdained by craftsmen for its tacky cheapness—“the great horror of the Age,” Artschwager called it. Yet he used it precisely because it reflected the contemporary moment. Moreover, it could achieve certain illusionistic effects: used in place of wood or cloth, the Formica functions as an image of these materials, seamlessly integrating the artist’s representation of a table with the thing itself. In the words of one critic, Artschwager creates "mental furniture," witty, wry, and full of contradiction. Description of Table recalls the reductive geometries of Minimalist sculptures, but uncharacteristic of Minimalism is the suggestion of something beyond geometry—a cloth-draped table, with the black rectangles below evoking the table’s empty, negative space.