[Untitled Dining Table]
Rob Womack
enamel paint on wood
30" x 40" x 78" with leaf;
30" x 40" x 60" without leaf
Most of my work references art and design history. I work on many styles and eras of furniture and have a particular interest in finding the convergences where “fine” art and furniture design meet.
The form of this elegantly simple 1960s table is an example of where I see the possibility of that sort of art/design overlap. The gentle curves and straight edges of this table top put me in mind of the minimalist, shaped-canvas paintings of 1960s abstractionist Ellsworth Kelly.
Was the designer of the table perhaps influenced by this master of exquisite edges? Or could it be that Kelly took notice and some degree of inspiration from the sublime subtlety of post-war Scandinavian table tops? Perhaps not, but nuanced minimalist forms were certainly being explored by both the abstract painting and furniture design worlds.
These chicken-or-the-egg ponderings led me to the subject of the table: an exploration of 1960s hard-edged minimalist shapes and colors.
When paying homage to a specific artist in my work, I don’t wish to quote too directly from their style, which led me to to render imagined three-dimensional versions of Kelly’s two-dimensional shaped canvasses. The resulting shapes resembled torqued “cubes” that referenced Kelly, yet were forms original to myself. These floating “cubes” painted in bold 1960s hues were carefully positioned to relate to the table’s edges, suggesting that they drift on and off the surface.
I saw the background color of the table as white, suggesting both esoteric minimalist painting and the applied design world of the sixties (white shag carpeting, white vinyl go-go boots). It occurred to me that white was always the wall color of the art galleries where the paintings of Ellsworth Kelly had such contrasting impact.
Which made me wonder; did the design of white gallery walls affect the paintings of Ellsworth Kelly or did minimalist paintings influence the design of white gallery walls…