Gustave Courbet, Apples, oil on cardboard, 1871
Matsukata Collection — National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Why do simple domestic objects become such profound works of art—like Cézanne’s apples, Chardin’s strawberries, or Courbet’s Apples, which I recently viewed at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo? And why have such seemingly ordinary subjects transformed painting and drawing so deeply, as evidenced in Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (c. 1596–1601) and other works from the Dutch Golden Age?
There is nothing inherently remarkable about these motifs beyond their place in everyday domestic life, yet these artists approached them as though they contained answers to the universe. How can such small, humble subjects carry so much worldly meaning and illumination?
One explanation—grounded in earlier research—is that the artist’s visual perception begins with a kind of macro-thinking: a broad conceptual or philosophical intention. This “big picture” stance is then translated into micro-thinking: the precise, analytical work of the eye as it studies the motif in search of form, clarity, and insight. Through this translation, the ordinary object becomes a site where thought and perception meet, eventually expressed through paint or drawing on canvas or paper.
I explored this idea in greater depth in a blog essay published on 19 October 2025 titled “The Autonomous Eye: Can It Ever Be Measured?” In the section “Object Painting: A Fourth Sense of Illuminated Space,” I described how this painterly praxis led me to a core realization.
The Core Maxim
This shared artistic pursuit can be distilled into the maxim:
“Scale is inversely proportional to focus.”
In both Chardin’s intimate still-life paintings and in my own small-format pieces, the reduced physical size of the canvas does not diminish the significance of the subject. Instead, it intensifies the visual and intellectual attention demanded of the viewer. The small frame becomes a self-contained “universe of painting,” compelling a deeper, more concentrated engagement.
This ambition—to draw the monumental from the mundane—grants everyday objects a universal moral and aesthetic dignity. In this way, the canvas becomes a space for contemplation, where an ordinary apple or strawberry becomes a vessel for larger truths.
Study of Aging Fruit — Peter Davidson
Oil, wax, and acrylic on wooden board
“My chosen motifs are always quotidian objects, captured as they age within a timeless space, shaped both by the seen and unseen influences of daily life as existence continues.”
In Courbet’s painting of apples, the motif echoes a new realism with this same quiet truth: the fruit sits in silence, gently decaying into its own space. It remains untouched by the artist’s gaze yet subtly shaped by surrounding elements, moving inevitably toward its own dissolution—much like all of us within the larger universe.
Cézanne’s apples, in turn, revealed that when optics are allowed to fully unfold onto the canvas, they offer humanity a new way of seeing the external world—one that ultimately ripples into Cubism and subsequent modern painting.
My own system of painterly praxis has revealed a new way of understanding art theory. As I stated in an earlier blog:
This hypothesis suggests that the subjective quality and style of art are largely determined by how an artist processes, manages, and expresses the inevitable lag of Δt. True simultaneity between perception and creation is biologically impossible.
