1918

The Table

French, 1882 - 1963

Painted shortly after his recovery from a head wound suffered in World War I, The Table suggests a return to Braque's early training with his father, a painter-decorator who taught him how to simulate the appearance of wood grain and marble. The sensuous textures and decorative surfaces-the wood patterns, the polka dots, and the letters situating us in a "[ca]fé-bar"-enliven the picture with the distinct air of pleasure and poetry characteristic of Braque's Synthetic Cubist paintings. The Table initiated a decade-long series of paintings in which still-life elements are arranged on the tipped-up surface of a wooden pedestal table.