The above image is a still life by Henri Fantin-Latour, titled Still Life, dated 1866. I do not know that any artist before or after has ever come so close to capturing what it is to look upon the world, to really look upon the world, to look as men and women look. A photograph does not capture what it is to look upon the world, nor yet does photographic realism. The world does not greet the eye of man as it greets the lens of a camera; the world is not experienced as unamalgamated matter. Nor, on the other hand, do abstract, impressionistic, surrealistic or conceptual works approach what it is to look upon the world. The world is not experienced as unamalgamated mind. Fantin-Latour's great genius is to have looked at the world and, steering clear of the Scylla of materialism and the Charybdis of idealism, to have simply painted what he saw.
If Fantin-Latour had only been a little less successful, I would not so desire to push the tray further back upon the table. It makes me almost anxious to see it thus precariously arranged.
Also, what tea goes with tangerines? And is the cup empty for having just been finished or having not yet been filled? And did someone leave the book out in the rain once-upon-a-time, or on a table in a humid conservatory? Its pages have the stiff-rippled look of paper too long out of doors.
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