Description of Table
1964

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.