Other human beings are never pure spirit for me: I only know them through their glances, their gestures, their speech -- in other words, through their bodies. Of course another human being is certainly more than simply a body to me: rather, this other is a body animated by all manner of intentions, the origin of numerous actions and words [...] I cannot detach someone from their silhouette, the tone of their voice and its accent. If I see them for even a moment, I can reconnect with them instantaneously and far more thoroughly than if I were to go through a list of everything I know about them from experience or hearsay. Another person, for us, is a spirit which haunts a body and we seem to see a whole host of possibilities contained within this body when it appears before us; the body is the very presence of these possibilities.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception

Mark Rothko, Panel from the Seagram Murals, illustrating the gloss of the foreground image contrasting with the more matte background, 1958-1959

Duchamp smoking in front of Fountain, Duchamp Retrospective, Pasadena Art Museum, 1963