“The two motor driven "mobiles" which I am exhibiting [August, 1933] are from among the more successful of my earliest attempts at plastic objects in motion. The orbits are all circular arcs or circles. The supports have been painted to disappear against a white background to leave nothing but the moving elements..”

— Alexander Calder

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

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Alexander Calder 41

American artist 1898–1976

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“When, in the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to free art from the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a white field. The critics and, along with them, the public sighed, 'Everything which we loved was lost. We are in a desert... Before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

But the desert is filled with the spirit of non-objective feeling.. ..which penetrates everything.
In 'The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism', 1926; trans. Howard Dearstyne [Dover, 2003, ISBN 0-486-42974-1], 'part II: Suprematism', p. 68
1921 - 1930

“I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and i have been circling for a thousand years. And I still dont know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“If… the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since … nothing violent is eternal …. It follows, therefore, that the earth is not moved with a circular motion.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Commentaria in libros Aristotelis de caelo et mundo

“Sylvester: When was it that you first did a painting with one or two simple lines, horizontal or vertical, across the surface?
Newman: I would say that it began in '46— '47. In those years, whenever I did a painting with one or two elements in it, it did always have a sense of an atmospheric background, I suppose — with the exception of a painting which I called Euclidian Abyss, where the background is black and has some of the white coming through, but there's no true atmosphere.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1960 - 1970, Interview with David Sylvester 2. Spring 1965, p. 255

“I tell you that if natural bodies have it from Nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that Nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that Nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from Nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said "it appears to us," because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does Nature make use of straight line motion.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

A note on this statement is included by Stillman Drake in his Galileo at Work, His Scientific Biography (1981): Galileo adhered to this position in his Dialogue at least as to the "integral bodies of the universe." by which he meant stars and planets, here called "parts of the universe." But he did not attempt to explain the planetary motions on any mechanical basis, nor does this argument from "best arrangement" have any bearing on inertial motion, which to Galileo was indifference to motion and rest and not a tendency to move, either circularly or straight.
Letter to Francesco Ingoli (1624)

“As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearances, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s, It Shall Move - On Mobile Sculptures (1932)

“What about the orbiting of the so-called electrons around their central nucleus? What has really been observed unequivocally? Nothing of the moving particle; what has rather been observed are phenomena which at first glance have nothing to do at all with the motion of bodies. Everything else that leads to the atomic model, is a long chain of inferences.”

Felix Ehrenhaft (1879–1952) Austrian physicist

Wie steht es bei dem Kreisen der sogenannten Elektronen um ihren zentralen Kern? Was ist hier wirklich unmittelbar wahrgenommen worden? Nichts von den bewegten Teilchen; was vielmehr beobachtet wurde, sind Erscheinungen, welche auf den ersten Blick mit der Bewegung von Körpern gar nichts zu tun haben. Alles übrige, was zum Atommodell geführt, ist eine lange Kette von Schlüssen.
In an address to the Viennese Chemisch-Physikalische Gesellschaft http://www.cpg.univie.ac.at/, April 26, 1932, as quoted by [Joseph Braunbeck, Der andere Physiker: das Leben von Felix Ehrenhaft, Leykam Buchverlagsgesellschaft, 2003, 3701174709, 51]

“There are mobile objects and stationary objects, but there is neither motion nor staticness.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Al-Fassl Fil Milal, vol 5, pp. 55.

“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

“Here I have been able to make some good spring studies in oils, and managed to finish my 'Cow-girl' and my 'seared Woman', and my 'London Park', Primrose Hill. I think these pictures have improved a great deal from the point of view of unity. How different from the studies! I am more than ever in favour of taking one's impression from memory; it is less the actual thing - vulgarity disappears, leaving only an aura of truth glimpsed, sensed. To think that this is not understood, so that my anxiety for the future continues as before, despite the success of the exhibition.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

I have no news from Paris about my collectors.
Quote in a letter to his son Lucien, 26 April 1892, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock - , Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 144
1890's

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