In his Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 1993; published by University of California Press, 4 October, 1993
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Most humans, it seems, still put up fences around their acts and thoughts – even when these are piles of shit – for they have no other way of delimiting them. Contrast Paleolithic cave paintings, in which animals and magical markings are overlayed with no differentiation or sense of framing. But when some of us have worked in natural settings, say in a meadow, woods, or mountain range, our cultural training has been so deeply ingrained that we have simply carried a mental rectangle with us to drop around whatever we were doing. This made us feel at home. (Even aerial navigation is plotted geometrically, thus giving the air a 'shape').

— Allan Kaprow

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Most humans, it seems, still put up fences around their acts and thoughts – even when these are piles of shit – for they have no other way of delimiting them. Contrast Paleolithic cave paintings, in which animals and magical markings are overlayed with no differentiation or sense of framing. But when some of us have worked in natural settings, say in a meadow, woods, or mountain range, our cultural training has been so deeply ingrained that we have simply carried a mental rectangle with us to drop around whatever we were doing. This made us feel at home. (Even aerial navigation is plotted geometrically, thus giving the air a 'shape')." in the context of "In his Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 1993; published by University of California Press, 4 October, 1993" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Allan Kaprow" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Allan Kaprow

About Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow (23 August 1927 – 5 April 2006) was an American Fluxus artist, assemblagist a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art, and the originator of Happenings.