“I like the description 'Physical art'. I think maybe art emerged when man first began to distinguish himself from nature. Art is part of himself, which he returns perhaps as an homage to the nature which he left. Of course, he never left nature. The rise of consciousness, perhaps... The main thing we believe, that separated us from not only animals but from the stones, is the fact that we are not stones, that we are not dogs. Now that is an assumption, perhaps it's a false assumption. But anyway, somehow I think one of the greatest functions of art is that man can feed back to his own consciousness through the knowledge that he is not a stone or not a dog.”

December 1969; quote from a talk with his audience
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 30, 2026. History

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Carl Andre32

American artist 1935

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Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

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William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

Christian Mysticism (1899), Preface
Context: The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps of all philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of the beyond, which is part of our nature as human beings. Men have given different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and outward things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an extension of the frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language, the voice of God speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds.

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C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

[Parameswaran, Uma, C.V. Raman: A Biography, http://books.google.com/books?id=RbgXRdnHkiAC, 2011, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-306689-7] page=xiv

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like in Neo-Plasticism / De Stijl
Quote in Mondrian's letter to Lodewijk van Deyssel (who reacted as Dutch art critic on Mondrians essay: 'Le Néo-plasticisme'] Paris, February 1921; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 136
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“The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15
1940s

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Carl Andre32

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