It was in 1955, at the Galerie Rive Droite in Paris, that Fautrier exhibited his latest series of pictures. Known collectively as Les Objets, they were received with a sense of miscomprehension by the French critics. Not only were works like Les Dattes seen as traitorous volte-face away from the political profundity of his previous series, Les Otages, but their small scale and mundane subject-matter were considered a mocking challenge to the massive non-objective canvases produced at that time by many of Fautrier's American contemporaries. Few realised that Les Objets were in fact merely a continuation and elaboration of the artist's most poignant statements concerning the monotony of the human condition.

In this series Fautrier chose to portray objects like paper bags, tin cans, kitchen utensils and fruits, the mattter of everyday existence, utterly devoid of aesthetic or fiscal value. These he treated with the same luxuriance of execution and iconic grandeur as Les Otages. Les Dattes is confined to simply showing fruit floating in a blue background, monumental in its isolation. Although a still-life, it lacks the charm and ornate composition normally associated with this genre. Instead it achieves the banality of American "Pop" art and could perhaps be seen as announcing one of the major themes of 1960s art.