“One stone is like another and a corkscrew is like another corkscrew. The resemblance between stones is natural and involuntary; between manufactured objects it is artificial and deliberate. The fact that all corkscrews are the same is a consequence of their significance: they are objects that have been manufactured for the purpose of drawing corks; the similarity between stones has no inherent significance. At least this is the modern attitude to nature. It hasn’t always been the case. Roger Callois points out that certain Chinese artists selected stones because they found them fascinating and turned them into works of art by the simple act of engraving or painting their name on them. The Japanese also collected stones and, as they were more ascetic, preferred them not to be too beautiful, strange, or unusual; they chose ordinary round stones. To look for stones for their difference and to look for them for their similarity are not separate acts; they both affirm that nature is the creator. To select one stone among a thousand is equivalent to giving it a name. Guided by the principle of analogy, man gives names to nature; each name is a metaphor: Rocky Mountains, Red Sea, Hells Canyon, Eagles Rest. The name – or the signature of the artist – causes the place – or the stone – to enter the world of names, or, in other words, into the sphere of meanings. The act of Duchamp uproots the object from its meaning and makes an empty skin of the name: a bottlerack without bottles. The Chinese artist affirms his identity with nature; Duchamp, his irreducible separation from it. The act of the former is one of elevation or praise; that of the latter, a criticism. For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature. The Chinese artist follows this idea to its ultimate conclusion: he selects a stone and signs it. He inscribes his name on a piece of creation and his signature is an act of recognition – Duchamp selects a manufactured object; he inscribes his name as an act of negation and his gesture is a challenge.”

(Octavio Paz, Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare, trans. Donald Gardner, pp. 25–26)