Gate Leg Table

Label

When is a table a table? When is it merely a representation of one? Here, David Driskell creates a table using abstract painted shapes and found objects, including a turned wooden leg. Behind the table, a chair back is formed with a similar combination of real pieces and painted lines. In works like this one, Driskell pays homage to the creative traditions of the rural Black communities in which he grew up.

"Long before the concept of assemblage art was commonly seen among American artists such as Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg, Black folk artists defied the usual rules of conventional painting by adding objects and curio items they thought befit the subjects they created. I saw many “assemblages” and “constructions” being made by artists when I was a child growing up in Eatonton, Georgia, and later in Appalachia in western North Carolina."

—David Driskell, 1999

From the 2024 exhibition Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, curated by Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming and Neely McNulty, Hood Foundation Curator of Education

Course History

AAAS 88.19, Contemporary African-American Artists, Michael Chaney, Summer 2021

Studio Art 31.01, Studio Art 72.01, Painting II, III, Andrew Shea, Fall 2023

Studio Art 25.01, Painting I, Lucy Mink Covello, Winter 2024

Exhibition History

Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, David Driskell: A Survey, October 21 – December 5, 1980, no. 15. Traveled to Christian A. Johnson Memorial Gallery, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, January 1981.

Bowie State College Gallery of Art, Bowie, MD, David Driskell: One Decade of Painting, 1965-75, April 12 – May 14, 1978.

David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell, September 15 - December 16, 2011.

David Driskell: Icons of Nature & History, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, February 6-May 9, 2021; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, June 19-September 12, 2021; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, October 16, 2021-January 9, 2022; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, February 25-May 15, 2022.

DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY, David Driskell. Creative Spirit: Five Decades, January 6 - February 4, 2012, no. 6.

Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 13-December 15, 2024.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-April 7, 2019.

Publication History

Keith Morrison, David Driskell: A Survey. Exh. cat. Baltimore, MD: Reese Press, 1980, pp. 15, 18, 20, illus., 23, 24.

Leslie King-Hammond, "David Driskell: Memoir of a Painter cum Scholar." International Review of African American Art. 14.1 (1997): 8, illus.

Julie L. McGee, David C Driskell: Artist and Scholar, California: Pomegranate, 2006, pp. 73, 84, 74, illus.

Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell. Exh. cat. College Park, MD: David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, 2011. pp. 36, 39, 43-44, 25, illus.

Jessica May, ed., David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History, New York: Rizzoli in association with Portland Museum of Art and High Museum of Art, 2021, ill. p. 96, plate 26.

Provenance

D. C. Moore Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2018.

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Subjects