The Tableism Manifesto — Updated Edition

 

1. What Tableism Is (Still)

Tableism remains an art movement devoted to the ordinary surface: the table, desk, counter, tray, workbench, café slab, folding card table. It is art that begins where things are put down. The table is not a metaphor—it is the condition. If an image could not plausibly exist on a table, it is suspect.

2. What Has Changed

Tableism has matured. It no longer needs to argue for its existence. The update is not louder theory, but clearer boundaries:

• Tableism is not nostalgia, but it tolerates it.

• Tableism is not realism, but it tolerates depiction.

• Tableism is not irony, but it tolerates humor.

• Tableism is not anti-skill; it is anti-performance.

The table is not a stage. Nothing is presented. Everything is left there.

3. The Surface Principle (Reaffirmed)

All Tableist works acknowledge the surface as active. Scratches, stains, compression, cropping, awkward edges, and accidental framing are not defects. They are evidence.

A Tableist image should feel slightly uncomfortable being looked at vertically. If it looks better hung than laid flat, something went wrong.

4. Objects Are Not Symbols

Objects in Tableism refuse allegory. A cup is a cup. A record sleeve is a record sleeve. A face is allowed, but only if it behaves like an object.

Meaning emerges from proximity, not intention.

5. Tools: Expanded, Not Upgraded

Tableism continues to favor limited, unglamorous tools:

• MS Paint

• cheap brushes

• old oil sets reopened after decades

• scanned scraps

• default fonts

• uncorrected color

High-end tools are allowed only if used badly. Skill must arrive accidentally.

6. The Anti-Masterpiece Clause

No Tableist work is definitive. Revisions are permitted but discouraged. Leaving things unresolved is not laziness—it is fidelity to the table, where nothing is ever finished, only abandoned.

7. Titles Matter (More Than Before)

Titles should narrow, not elevate. They should mislead gently or specify awkwardly. Naming something after a person does not require likeness. Naming something after an album does not require accuracy.

The title is another object placed beside the image.

8. Distribution Is Part of the Work

Posting, archiving, spacing things out over weeks, losing context, reposting slightly wrong versions—this is not promotion. This is process.

The archive is not a retrospective. It is a drawer.

9. The Viewer’s Role (Downgraded)

The viewer is not invited to interpret. The viewer may linger, glance, misread, or scroll past. None of these outcomes invalidate the work.

If the viewer feels like they interrupted something, Tableism has succeeded.

10. What Tableism Refuses (Clarified)

Tableism refuses:

• spectacle

• polish

• heroic struggle

• explanatory wall text

• the idea that selling something completes it

Tableism also refuses despair. There is quiet pleasure in things being good enough to exist.

11. Final Note

Tableism is not growing. It is spreading thin.

Like crumbs. Like notes. Like unfinished thoughts left where someone else might find them later.

That is the update. Nothing else needs to be added. Anything else would clutter the table.