This is the painting in Kakuro Ozu’s hallway in the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
“When we gaze at a still life, when we delight in its beauty, a beauty borne away by magnified and immobile figurations of things, we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire. So this still life, because it embodies a beauty that speaks to our desire but it was given birth by someone else’s desire, because it cossets our pleasure without in any way being apart of our own projects, because it is offered to us without requiring the effort of desiring on our part: this still life incarnates the quintessence of Art, the certainty of timelessness. In the scene before our eyes— without life or motion— a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed —pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.
“For Art is emotion without desire.”
— Muriel Barbery
