« The wonder of it all is that what looked for all the world like a diminishing horizon - the art-object’s becoming so ephemeral as to threaten to disappear altogether - has, like some marvelous philosophical riddle, turned itself inside out to reveal its opposite. What appeared to be a question of object/non-object has turned out to be a question of seeing and not seeing, of how it is we actually perceive or fail to perceive "things" in their real contexts. Now we are presented and challenged with the infinite, everyday richness of "phenomenal" perception (and the potential for a corresponding "phenomenal art", with none of the customary abstract limitations as to form, place, materials, and so forth - one which seeks to discover and value the potential for experiencing beauty in everything. »

Robert IRWIN, « Being and Circumstance : Notes Toward a Confidential Art » (1985), in Theories and documents of Contemporary Art, a sourcebook of artists’ writings, Edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, University of California Press, Ltd, 1996, p. 574