The mystical meaning of the table in contemporary art. Reinterpretation of the language of giving and receiving

Abstract

The author interprets two forms of figurativeness of the mystical experience – the touch of man with the spiritual world, God, and the experience of amazement at being – by analysing the symbol of the table in contemporary art. The author first identifies the figurativeness of the fragmentary experience contrary to the mystical experience. Subsequently, she examines the mystical table in the icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev as a symbol of sacred hospitality and the eucharistic sacrifice. She also examines the icon’s philosophy as a meeting of the human and the transcendent world (Florensky, Trubeckoi, Evdokimov etc.). Finally, she explains the signs of the figurativeness of the mystical semantics of the table in three contemporary paintings (Jakabčic, Podhorský). These include, for example, Christian allusions, visual minimalism, white colour, contemplative immobility, mysterious to paradoxical imaginations, or the expressive-symbolic use of red and blue.