Table Talk: Notes on the Schizo-Table

Nevena Ekimova: Schizophrenic Table (A Model) (2020)

Photo by Rosina Pencheva (ed.) [1]

'The schizo-table desires nothing but to continue its own production forever ...' 

 

 

I. 

 

Some readers might recall that I discussed Not Vital's Self-Portrait as a Table (2025) in a post published last month: click here. 

 

Well, six weeks after first encountering this work, it continues to invite further reflection on the role played by tables in art; both as visual symbol and material object.

 

I love the way that a piece of everyday furniture designed for human use can be deterritorialised from its functionality and everyday context; can seduce the viewer and enter into a becoming with them.    

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, I'm not the first or only one to be fascinated by tables in art. 

 

Agnese Skabe, for instance, has written a short essay exploring how various artists have depicted tables on canvas and what their meanings are (be they political, spiritual, or psychological in nature).

 

It's an informative piece, although some of her sentences contain ideas and phrases that I find troublesome. For example: "The table serves as a significant element that reveals the relationships and values that shape the essence of human life" [2].

 

Relying as it does on foundational assumptions about fixed significance and human essence is philosophically problematic in and of itself, but the sentence also denies the autonomy of the table as object; it exists only in servitude and is defined by what it reveals about us rather than its own being [3]. 

 

Thus, whilst Skabe's work on the role of mundane and sacred objects in traditional and modern painting is fairly comprehensive, for me, the table only really becomes interesting when it is conceived as more than merely a site of shared human experience and human interaction; when it has something a little schizo about it ... 

 

 

III. 

Despite being born in Belgium, Henri Michaux was a quintessentially French avant-garde poet, writer and painter. 

 

A pioneer of psychedelic art produced under the influence of mescaline and LSD, his radical approach to language and the mind earned him praise from some of the leading literary figures of his era; from Gide to Ginsberg, and Borges to Burroughs. 

 

Michaux also maintained close friendships with several philosophers, particularly Emil Cioran, and inspired numerous visual artists, including our very own Francis Bacon.    

 

In 1965, a jury of his peers awarded him the prestigious Grand prix national des Lettres. True to his uncompromising principles, however, Michaux refused to accept the award, preferring to remain a pure outsider - a gesture that only amplified his legendary status among fellow artists. 

 

But what has this got to do with tables? 

 

Well, in 1966 he published Les Grandes Épreuves de l'esprit et les innombrables petites - a book translated into English by Richard Howard as The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones (1974) - in which the following astonishing description of what he called a schizophrenic table appears:

 

"Once noticed, it continued to occupy one's mind. It even persisted, as it were, in going about its own business. . . . The striking thing was that it was neither simple nor really complex ... or constructed according to a complicated plan. Instead, it had been desimplified in the course of its carpentering. . .. As it stood, it was a table of additions, much like certain schizophrenic's drawings, described as 'overstuffed,' and if finished it was only in so far as there was no way of adding anything more to it, the table having become more and more of an accumulation, less and less a table. . . . It was not intended for any specific purpose, for anything one expects of a table. Heavy, cumbersome, it was virtually immovable. One didn't know how to handle it (mentally or physically). Its top surface, the useful part of the table, having been gradually reduced, was disappearing, with so little relation to the clumsy framework that the thing did not strike one as a table, but as some freak piece of furniture, an unfamiliar instrument . . . for which there was no purpose. A dehumanized table, nothing cozy about it, nothing 'middle-class,' nothing rustic, nothing countrified, not a kitchen table or a work table. A table which lent itself to no function, self-protective, denying itself to service and communication alike. There was something stunned about it, something petrified. Perhaps it suggested a stalled engine." [4]  

 

 

IV. 

 

What on earth are we to make of this? 

 

Fortunately, Deleuze and Guattari are on hand to help us out ... 

 

Quoting the above passage early in L'anti-Œdipe (1972), they point out that the table is schizophrenic because it keeps adding elements to itself until it ceases to function as a table altogether, thereby rejecting its usefulness (and servitude) to the human being and producing its own non-commodifiable reality. 

 

These extra elements - at least if Not Vital is to be believed - include ears and, who knows, perhaps other dis-organ-ised (or indeterminate) organs will one day sprout; if a table has legs, why shouldn't it have arms; if a table has ears, why shouldn't it also have eyes all over, just like the cherubim of whom Ezekiel speaks [5]?  

 

The schizo-table isn't an object of furniture that one might find flat-packed in IKEA; it's what Deleuze and Guattari call a desiring-machine - full of the restless, active, connective energy of desire and happily going about its business, even if continually breaking down; for desiring-machines "work only when they break down" [6].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nevena Ekimova is a Bulgarian artist, currently based in her hometown of Gabrovo. Rosina Pencheva is a photographer and producer of cultural projects, based in Sofia, though originally also from Gabrovo.

 

[2] Agnese Skabe, 'The Table in Art: Symbolism and Interpretations', published - somewhat suspiciously - in the Journal of Environmental Science and Agricultural Research, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (OASK Publishers, 2026), pp. 1-4. 

      I am not providing a link as I suspect this is not a peer-reviewed academic journal, but is, in fact, a predatory publication (i.e., one which, whilst granting readers open access, prints just about anything providing the author pays a fee) and I don't want to have Blogger remove the entire post on the grounds that I have (inadvertently) violated their community guidelines.    

 

[3] For Skabe, when an artist paints a table - or, presumably, any other object - they are essentially telling us something about themselves or offering an interpretation of human life in general. In a paragraph I find particularly objectionable, full as it is of anthropocentric conceit, she writes: 

      "Philosophically speaking, the table becomes a symbolic space where the person encounters their own existence [...] and derives meaning from being. The Table's presence in art reveals our inner world [...] It is a metaphor for the order of our lives, our efforts to create structure and meaning in the world. Just as philosophy seeks to understand the essence of humanity and the structure of the world, so too does art, through the symbol of the table, offer a deeper perspective on human existence." 

 

[4] Henri Michaux, The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones, trans. Richard Howard (1974), pp. 125-127. 

      Quoted by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (The Athlone Press, 1984), pp. 6-7.

 

[5] See Ezekiel 10:12 where we are told that the cherubim - God's celestial guardians - are covered in eyes, including their backs, their hands, and their wings.  

 

[6] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus ... p. 8.  

 

 

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

The Lovers of Valdaro 

Image: Dagmar Hollmann / Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

 

 

I. 

 

New York based German artist Heide Hatry has recently been posting a series of images on her Icons in Ash Instagram account showing the exhumed skeletal remains of lovers who had been buried together for what they probably imagined would be all eternity, including the pair shown above discovered by archaeologists at a Neolithic tomb in San Giorgio, near Mantua, Italy, in 2007.

 

The Lovers of Valdaro, as they are known, are believed to have been no older than 20 years of age when buried, approximately 6,000 years ago, with arms wrapped tenderly around one another. Osteological examination revealed no evidence of a particularly violent death (no fractures or signs of traumatic injury, for example), so perhaps they died of broken hearts, or having swallowed poison in an amorous suicide pact - who knows?  

 

Anyway, morbid voyeurs who might wish to, can see the skeleton lovers for themselves on permanent display at the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua. 

   

 

II. 

 

Touching as the story of the Valdaro Lovers may be, regular readers of Torpedo the Ark will recall that - for philosophical reasons - I have a real problem with bones. But allow me to summarise these reasons for those readers who are not quite so familiar with the contents of this blog ... 

 

Due to the fact that bones are relatively long lasting, many cultures accord the skeleton - conceived as a noble infrastructure - far greater respect than the soft pathology of the flesh. As Nick Land notes in The Thirst for Annihilation (1992):  

 

"A corpse has one pre-eminent and historically fateful heterogeneous distribution: that between its skeletal structure and its soft tissues. This is apprehended as a difference between what is perdurant, dry, clean, formal, and what is volatile, wet, dirty, and formless."

 

Thus it is that osseological idealists of all varieties - including Christians, Hegelians, and fascists - love bones and skulls, associating these things not only with phallic rigidity, but spirit and intellect, whilst, on the other hand, associating the flesh (and filth) with the feminine. 

 

Unable to face up to the fact that we will all one day decompose and melt into slow putrescence, they posit the skeleton as that which provides figural permanence to human being and marks an acceptable transfiguration of the organic body. 

 

The skeleton is thus the affable mascot of humanist narcissism - reassuring in a way that a rotting, stinking corpse crawling with maggots can never be.       

 

Musical bonus: Dem Bones - aka Dry Bones - is an African-American spiritual song first recorded in 1928. The lyrics, whilst often changing, were inspired by Ezekiel 37:1-14, wherein the prophet visits the Valley of Dry Bones and foretells of the resurrection of the dead: Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again! Now hear the Word of the Lord! 

      Click here to watch The Delta Rhythm Boys giving us their version, a recording of which can be found on their album Swingin' Spirituals (Coral Records, 1960).     

 

Seeing with the Eyes of Angels (In Praise of Cubism)

Pablo Picasso: Girl with a Mandolin (1910)

Museum of Modern Art, New York

For Lawrence, one of the most admirable things about Cézanne was that he insisted upon the appleyness not only of the fruit itself, but of the bodies of men and women and, indeed, of all objects including inanimate ones, such as jugs or bottles of wine. That is to say, he acknowledged the thingliness of the thing and attempted to paint this (as far as possible), thereby introducing into our field of vision an ontological reality which exists independently of mind.   

This, says Lawrence, was a revolutionary move; an attempt to tear painting from its own history of idealised representation and radically differentiate it from photography which sees the world mechanically with Kodak accuracy. 

Deleuze goes further and argues that what truly great painters like Cézanne do is not simply liberate lines and colours on the canvas, but free the eye from its adherence to the organism. The eye, says Deleuze, becomes a polyvalent indeterminate organ that is capable of seeing the object-as-figure in terms of pure presence.

Having become intuitively aware of an object, an artist is able to see it all around at one and the same time and not just from a single perspective fixated on fronts and faces. Further, they allow us to effectively have eyes all over too - just like the cherubim of whom Ezekiel speaks.  

And this can't be a bad thing, surely. For as Nietzsche says, the more eyes and more various organs we have for seeing the same thing the better; for a multiple perspective enables us to form a more complete (and more objective) concept of the thing.

Clearly, Picasso and Georges Braque (inspired by Cézanne's late work) understood this and Cubism is without doubt the most significant and influential art movement of the 20th century. As John Berger says, it is almost impossible to exaggerate its importance.    

Surprisingly, Lawrence of all people failed to appreciate what was unfolding in the art world of his day and he dismissed Cubism along with other forms of avant-garde art that were moving towards abstraction as puerile and overly-intellectual. He simply couldn't grasp why it was that Cézanne would come to insist on the need to interpret the world geometrically, placing everything into perspective.

And for me, this is not only surprising, it's disappointing too ...