THE SHAPE OF TIMEREMARKS ON THE HISTORY OF THINGS

Original cover of The Shape of Time(© Yale Urtiversrty Press, used by permission)

Reva Wolf

The Shape ofTime:Of Stars and Rainbows

George Kubier was fully aware—and seemed to relish—chat artists countedamong the fans of liis faincjus 1962 book, The Shüpt ofTime,' In "The Shape of TimeReconsidered," an essay he wrote some twenty years later, Kubier noted that art-ists often had quoted from liis book, "Tbeir appreciation," he speculated, "maybe related to their being released, as artists, from the rigid lúerarchies enshrinedby the textbook industry or, as it was once expressed, the 'pigeon-holes of art

history'"' Do artists still feel liberated by his provoca-tive discussion of history? What about art historiansand criCics?The purpose of the present set ofessays—two written by artists, and two by art histo-rians—is to consider what Kubler's book means to us now. By way ofintroduction, and to provide a historical context for these essays, whatfollows is an overview of the key concepts of The Shape of Time in rela-

tionship to art-historical debates of the time and since.

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1. For an overview, with discussions of ttie sig-nificance of Kubler's book for the artísts JohnBaldessari and Robert Smithson, see Pamela M.Lee, •"Ultramoderne': Or. How George KubierStole the Time in Sixties Art," Grey Room 2(Winter 2001): 46-77, and chap. 4 of Lee'sChronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s(Cambridge. MA: MIT Press, 2004), 218-56.On Robert Morris's interest in Kubler's book,see Maurice Berger. Labyrinths: Robert Morris,Minimalism, and the 19óOs (New York: Harperand Row, 1989), 58-60.2. George Kublen "The Shope of Time Reconsid-ered" (paper delivered at the University Museumof the University of Pennsylvania on April 30,1981 ), Studies in Ancient American and EuropeanArt: The Collected Essoys of George Kubier, ed,Thomas F, Reese (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1985), 428. A slightly different version ofthis paper appeared in Perspecta: The Yale Archi-tectural Journal 19(1982): 112-21, Kubler's use ofthe term "pigeonhole" makes an interesting linkto his mentor, Henri Focilfon: Kubier discussesFocillon's disdain for pigeonholes in "The Teachingof Henri Focillon," a paper delivered at YaleUniversity, March 17, 1981, and later published inStudies in Andent American and European Art, 382,In addition. Kubier wrote a lengthy obituary onFocillon: "Henri Focillon, 1881 -1943," An journal4, no, 2 (1945): 71-74, rep. Studies in ÄnderetAmerican and European Art. 37B-80. Kubier coi*laborated (with Charles Beecher Hogan) on theEnglish translation of Focillon's 1934 book. TheLife of Forms in Art (London: H, Milford, OxfordUniversity Press; New Haven: Yale UnJversrtyPress, 1942). It is a commonplace in studies ofKubier to mention Focillon's influence on his dis-tinguished student. See Thomas F, Reese, editor'sintroduction. Studies in Ancient Americon andEuropean Art. xvii-xix and xxiv-xxv.

3. This group of essays is based on the panel Tïtenand NowT Whot George Kubler's The Shape ofTime Means Today, presented in ARTspace at theCollege Art Association's annual conference,Dallas, Texas, February 22, 2008. The idea behindthe panel was to examine a publication that has

Against Style

"Style" was where the pigeonholes resided to which Kubier objected. Hebelieved the concept of style was at once too narrow and too broad to boldmeaning, and his rejection of this concept is the pivotal point of his book.Looking at the art of a particular time in terms of a specific style—Baroque isthe example Kubier uses—-results in too narrow an understanding of this art.Kubier explained: "In effect, to speak of Baroque art keeps us from noting eitlierthe divergent examples or the rival systems of formai order in the seventeenth,century. We have become reluctant to consider the alternatives to Baroque artin most regions, or to treat the many gradations between metropolitan andprovincial expressions of tlie same forms. Nor do we like to think of severalcoeval styles at the same place."* Thinking in terms of style limits bow we viewhistory, and constrains what we are ahle to see in history. For tbis reason, suchthinking is narrow.

Understanding the history of art in terms of style is also too broad. Kubierargued, because the word "style" Itself had by now been "abused by too com-mon use," so that its "inmunerable shades of meaning seem to span all exper-ience."^ As is often noted. Kubier compared style to a rainbow: there onemoment bnt gone the next; a concept lacking in substance.*' In questioningthe significance of the term. Kubier situated himself firmly within art-historicaldebates of his time. M James S.Ackerman long ago pointed out, and AlanWallach more recently has amplified. Kubier was responding to a famous essayby the art historian Meyer Schapiro of 1953, entitled "Style."^ He noted in par-ticular that Schapiro acknowledged he was unable to provide a satisfactory the-ory of style,* Kubier used this acknowledgment to bolster his own view thatthe term would best be eliminated altogether from art history,

Kubler's questioning of the concept of style was bold in its time. Just con-sider the fact tbat The Shape of Time was published the very year as the first editionof H. W Jan.son'b famous textbook. The History of An. which was based largely ontlie terminology and classification systems of stylistic analysis. Still, some of thereviews of The Shopc of Time claimed that Kubler's proposed replacement of stylehy "sequences" was not so dramatic a shift in thinking as Kubier argued. In her

43 ar^ounjal

been equally significant lo artists and to art his-torians. I thank the members of tbe Services toArtists Committee for their support of this panel.I also thank the anonymous reviewers of theessays for providing valuable and much-ap[w«ci-ated advice for revisions, as well as three individu-áis—Peter Halley. Ann Lovett. and Robert FarrisThompson—who gave me excellent suggestionsfor locating authors whose interests and experi-ence match well the topic at hand. As always. î ammost grateful to Eugene Heath for his fine edito-rial advice.4. George Kubier. The Shope of Time: Remarks onthe History af Things (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress. 1962), 128.5. Kubier. Shape of Time, 3, Kubier later reiteratedhis view that the term "style" is overused, rtowattempting to offer a namDw, precise definitionof the term, in his essay, "Towards a ReductiveTheory cf Visual Style." in Tlie Concept of Style.ed. Berel Lang (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press. 1979). 118-27; rep. Studies inAncient American and European Art. 418-23.6. Kubier. Shope of Time, i 29-30.7. Meyer Schapiro. "Style," in Anthropology Today:An Bncyclopedic inventory, ed. A. L Kroeber(Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1953),287—312: rep. in /^esthetics Today, ed. Morris H.Philipsor (Oeveland: Meridian Books, 1961).31-113. and in Schapiro. Theory and Philosophy afArt: Style, Artist, and Society. Seleaed Popers, vol. 4(New York: George Braziller, 1994). 51-102. Forthe earlier discussions of Kubler's criticism of styleas a response to Schapiro, see James S. Ackerman."On Rereading 'Style,'" Sodol Research 45, no. I(Spring 1978): 153, and Alan Wallach, "MeyerSchapiro's Essay on Style: Falling into the Void."Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism S5. no. I(Winter 1977): 14.8. Kubier. Shope of Time. 4 n. 2.9. Priscilla Colt, review of The Shope of Time:Remarks on the History of Things, by GeorgeKubier. Artjournai 23. no. I (Autumn 1963): 79.10. Jan BialosEocki. review of The Shope of Time:Remarks on the History of Things, by GeorgeKubier, in An Bulletin 47. no. I (March 1965): 137.11. Jack Bumham, assisted by ChaHes Harper and

Judith Benjamin Bumham. The Structure of An(New Yor1<: George Braziller. 1971), 43.12. W. Eugene Kleinbauer, introduction. ModemPerspectives in Western Art History: An Anthologyof 20^-Century Wriungs on the Visual Arts, ed.Kleinbauer {New York: Rinehart and Winston,1971 ). 30-31. The Shape of Time remains vital inuniversities, notably through the inclusion of apassage from it in a recent popular textbook. Artin Theory. 1900-2000: An Anthology of ChangingIdeas, ed. ChaHes Harrison and Paul Wood(Maiden. MA: Bîackwell Publishing. 2003). 751-53.13. For these criticisms, see Kleinbauer, 32.14. Joyce Brodsky. "Continuity and Discontinuityin Style: A Problem in Art Historical Method-ology." Journal of Aesthet/cs and Ar: Criticism 39,no. I (Autumn 1980): 28.

review, the museum consuliani and curator Priscilla Colt asked whether, withthe study of such sequences, "are we not arriving again at an historical conceptvery dose to that of style in some of its more refined interpreutions? And isthe study of style necessarily precluded hy the study of formal sequences?"'* Inanother review of the book, the art historian Jan Bialostocki noted, similarly, that"when we read about 'periods requiring classic meastn-e' (p. ço) we hegin tosuspect that some residuum of the concept of style still remains in the mind ofthe author."" From an early point, despite their criticisms and reservations, art-ists and art historians alike, including the authors of these two reviews (bothpublished in high-profile pubhcations), were intrigued by Kubler's attempt toradically rethink art histor)'. Jack Bumham, who was trained as a sculptor buteventually turned to criticism and theory, found an imponant source of inspira-tion in Kubier "s rejection of style. In The Structure of Ari, a fascinating book of 1971,in which he questioned the conventions of art history, Bumham maintained,citing Kubler's rainbow metaphor, that Kubier quite rightly criticized the conceptof style as, in Bumham's paraphrase, an "arbitrary convenience."" Even moreindicative of how influential Kubler's book had already become is the ample dis-cussion of it by W Eugene Kleinbauer in the introduction to Modem Perspectives inWestemArt History, a widely used textbook anthology of art-historical methodol-ogy, also published in 1971. Kleinbauer considered Kubler's book to be of "tre-mendous importance" and the "major theoretical treatise" in recent art-historicalwriting on "the problem of historical change," as it focused on "continuouschange" rather than on "static categories of style." " Together with his strongpraise. Kleinbauer also saw pitfalls in Kubler's arguments that echo the criticismspreviotisly set forth by Colt and by Bialostocki.'* Some ten years later, in 1980,the critic Joyce Brodsky attempted to explain such criticisms by observing thatwhen Kubler's book was published, art history was not yet ready for it: "ThatKubler's novel thesis is only now beginning to be explored stems, in part, fromits imtimely entrance in the 1960s into the rich, complex, but conservative,discipline of art history." '*

Style. Biography, and Biology

All the other many dimensions of Kubler's nuanced theory of art history revolvearound his bold rejection of the concept of style. For example, understandingan through the study of the artist's biography is wedded to the idea of style assomething that evolves and grows over time, like a biological organ. Therefore,the biographical or. more broadly, biological models for interpreting art. Kubierargued, are of limited value.'' As Kubier put it: "However useful it is for peda-gogical purposes, the biological metaphor of style as a sequence of life-stageswas historically misleading, for it bestowed upon the fltix of events the shapesand the behavior of organisms." '*

Although Kubier rejects the biological model of interpretation, he doesnot oppose the use of models drawn from the scientific realm. A key aspect ofKubler's book that has been of great interest in recent years (highhghted, nota-bly, by the art historian Pamela Lee) '' is its applications of concepts taken fromsdence and technology, even while rejecting the "biological" model of art his-tory whereby art evolves progressively over time. In her e^ay in the present

WINTER 2 0 0 9

Abbye Gorin, George Kubier: Portrait Tokenat Yale University ca. 1983, gelatin silver print,9 X 7 in. (22.9 x 17.8 cm). The Latin AmencanLibrary image Archive, Tulane University (photo-graph © The Latin American Library. TularteUniversity)

issue, "Classifying Kubier," Ellen K. Levy considers Kubler's applications of scien-tific concepts witliin the broader intellectual frame of the 1960s. Especially fasci-nating are Levy's discussions of the relevance for artists today of Kubler's notionsof "complex systems" and "feedback." Levy questions whether Kubler's conceptof "prime works and replications" is still meaningful or whether developmentsin science, technology, and art have rendered it obsolete.

15. KubJer. Shape af Time. 5-13. This argumenthas some affinities with and foreshadows RolandBarthes's "Death of Üie Author," trans, RichardHoward. Aspen 5-6 (1967). n.p, Barthes's essaywas published there along with Kubier, "Styleand the Representation of Historical Time," rep.Studies in Andern American and European Art. 386-90, also rep. Armais of the New York Academy ofSciences 138 (1967): 849-55. Kubler's essayexpands on the concerns he had raised in TheShape of Time about the concept of styte.16, Kubier. Shape of Time. 8.! 7. Lee. "'Ultramodeme.'"18. Kubter, Shopeof THTie, 39-53.and 130.

Prime Objects and Replications

In place of style, biography, and biology. Kubier proposed that we study art interms of temporal sequences, which take the form of "prime objects" and "rep-lications." '" Just as his discussion of style is on one level a response to Schapiro,here too Kubier enters a dialogue with a major art historian of his time—ErwinPanofsky. Kubier likely regarded the terms "prime objects" and "replicadons" ashis linguistic and theoretical substitutes for Panofsky's "Renaissance" and "rena-scences." In each of these pairings of terms and concepts, various objects areclassified and distinguished from one another through formal or thematic rela-tionships. However, Kubier replaces Panofsky's reference to a particular style orperiod (the Renaissance) with a historically indeterminate term (prime object).In creating this alternative to Panofsky's system of analysis. Kubier makes noattempt at creating an exact parallel. Indeed, he seems to almost create a deliber-ate cbronological inversion of Panofsky's scheme: the Renaissance comes aharenascences (his term for classical revivals occurring In the medieval period).

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19. Ervsrin Panofeky. "Renaissance and Renas-cences."/(enyon Review 6 (1944): 201-36, and chap.2 of Renaissance and Renascences in Wesiem Art(StocWiolm: Wrnqvist and Wiksdls, 1960). 42-113.20. George Kubier. "Beriod. Style, and Meaning ¡nAncient American Art." Studies in Andeni Americanand European Art. 404. orig, pub. New UteraryHistory: A ¡oumal af Theory and Interpretation, I.no. 2(1970): 127-44.21. George Kubier. "History—or Anthropology—of Art'" Studies in Ancient American andEuropean An, 407-9, orig, pub. Critical Inquiry I.no. 4 (June 1975): 757-67, See also 'The Shapeof Time Reconsidered." 429,22- Kubier, "History—or Anthropology—of An?"409, and "The Shape of Time Reconsidered." 429.As Reese noted, fienoissonce and RenascerKes "had adeasive and immediate impaa on Kubier, remindinghim of key themes that Foctlon had raised but thaihad fallen on deaf ears. Panofeky's 'principle of dis-junction' was the key" (editor's introduaion. Studiesin Ancient American and European Art, xxxiii). OnFocillon's role as a teacher of and model for Kubier.see also n. 2 above. The similarity of Panofsky's studyof the transformation of art over time to Kubler'sfocus on this problem also is noted by Michael AnnHolly in Pano^ky and lhe FoundaHars of An History(Itíiaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 141.23. Kubier put it this way: "These renascent anddisjunctive forms of historical time were longunder study by Erwin Panofsky, with whom I stud-ied at the Institute of Fine Arts in New Yori< from1936 to 1938. During this time Herbert Spinden,also at the Institute, was my mentor in Precolum-bian archaeology. Panofsky's conclusions did notbecome completely available until his lectures inStockholm, published in I960." "History—orAnthropology—of An?" 407. The particularclasses taught by Panofsky that Kubier took arenoted in Reese, editor's introduction. Studies inAndent American and European An. xviii.24. Kubier, "The S^ope of Time Reconsidered," 426.25. An interesting, much earlier lener from Panofskyto Kubier is quoted in Mary Miller's essay here.26. Ad Reinhardt. "Art vs. History," review ofKubler's The Sfiope of Time. Art News 64 (JanuaryI966):2l.rep. inArtH3s-Art; 7he Se/ected Writings ofAd Reinhardt, ed. Barbara Rose (1975; Berkeley:University of California Press. 1991). 224-27.27. Kubier. "The Shy je of Time Reconsidered." 429.28. Ibid.. 429 and 430 n. 12-15.29. Robert Morris. "Form-Classes in the Work ofConstantin Brancusi" (master's thesis. HunterCollege, New Yoric. 1966), On this thesis. Kubierand Morris's own sculptural wori, see Berger.Labyrinths. 58-60. and James Meyer, Minimalism:Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: YaieUniversity Pnsss. 2001). 154-55.30. Ann Reynolds. Robert Smithson: Leorninf JiomNew Jersey and Eisewhere (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 2003). 145^7 . and 274 n. 37. A later,shorta- variation of Smithson's essay, "The Artistas Site-Seer; o r A Dintorphic Essay," also unpub-lished in his lifetime, appears in Eugenie Tsai. RobenSmithson Unearthed: Drawing. Collages, Writings(New York: Columbia University Press. 1991 ).74-80, and in Robert Smjthson: T>ie CoUectedWritings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press. 1996). 34O--Í5,

while prime objects come before replications. It is as if through this temporalinversion. Kubier wants to offer indirectly—perhaps to imply—a reversal ofPanofsky's methodology, which, as a niatter of faa, Kubier knew weW. Panofsky'sessay "Renaissance and Renascences" was first published in Í944 and appearedin an expanded form in Rmaissonce ami Reoascmees inWeslemAn, his i960 book ofessays based on a series of lectures he gave in 195^2,''This book came out just asKubier was writing The Shape of Time.

Knbler later drew on and acknowledged tliat he took a great interest in theconcept of a "disjunction" of form and meaning that Panofsky elaborated inRenaissance and Renascences. In 1970 he applied this concept to a consideration ofmethodology in the study of ancient American art. ° In 1975" and again in 1981he cited Panofsky's "disjunction" as a useful methodological alternative to the"ethnological analogy" of anthropology or the "narrowness" of archaeology."(Sdli, Kühler insisted that his principal mentor, Henri FociUon, had developedthis idea prior to Panofsky, in his 1934 book The Life of Forms in Art.)'' Indeed,Kubier had taken two classes ("Michelangelo" and "Special Prohlems") withPanofsky as a gradiaate student at the Institute of Fine Arts ai New York Universityfrom 1936 to 1938.-' Kubier even reported that Panofsky sent him a congratul-atory letter on the success of Kubler's approach in The Shape of Time: "Panofskywrote me in 1962 that he thought the book 'acliieves tlie apparently impossible,to prove that strictly historical methods can he applied to material which, onthe face of it, wotild not seem to have any history.' He referred of course to itsPrecolujnbian components .. J'^

Kubier seems to record his receipt of Panofsky's missive with a combinationof great pride and a dose of sarcasm aimed at Panofsky's implicit bias toward thetradition of European art.' Yet Kubler's debt 10 Panofsky is interesting becauseil is so unexpected, given that we tend to think of Panofsky's main focus to besymbol and meaning, and Kubler's the existence of objects in time and space.

The degree to which Kubier entered into dialogues with other art historians—whether Panofsky, Schapiro, or other prominent scholars of the mid-twentiethcentury—was something the artist Ad Reinhardt detected, ln the conclusion ofReinhardt's review of The Shape of Time, published in 1966, he cleverly and subtlyunderscored Kubler's position relative to other art historians: "The first word ofan artist is against artists. The first word of an art historian is against art histori-ans."" It is a curious point that when Kubier later commented on Reinhardt'sreview, he maintained that this particular statement confounded him. "His renvoiis enigmatic," Kubier wTOte. He then interpreted the statement in such a wayas to allow for an alternative meaning: "I suppose he means that artists and arthistorians should join instead of opposing their forces."" Is Kubier saying artistsshould join forces with art historians? Or that artists should join forces withother artists, and art liistorians with other art historians? However shorthandReinliardt's words, they are dear: artists and art historians alike work againstiheir prectirsors and contemporaries. Whether it should be othenvise, Reinhardtdoes not say. It is po.ssihle Kubier did not fully comprehend Reinhardt's assertionhecause he preferred noi to acknowledge the perhaps uncomfortable revelationit contained.

Kubier also was aware that two other artists prominent in the 1960s, RobertMorris and Robert Smithson, were enthusiastic readers of The Shape of Time. '

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31. The discussions anti employment by art histo-rians o) Kubler's notion of prime objects andreplications, as well as other notions set forth inThe Shape of Time, have been remarkably rich andvaried. Nonetheless. James Elktns has made thecase that his book has had little impact, in "RealSpaces: World Art History and the Rise of WesEernModerr\ism by David Summers," book review, An&ullet¡n 86. no, 2 (June 2004): 376 and 380 n, 29.Some art historians have |udged the concept ofprime objects and replications lo be conventional—not really representing the break fnjm traditionclaimed by Kubier See for example David Rosand."Aa History and Criticism: The Past as Present."New Uterory History 5. no. 3 (Spring 1974): 437 n, 7;flrodsky, "Continuity and Discontinuity in Styte,"30: and, Margaretta M. Lovell. A Vis/table ftistViews of Venice by Americon Artists, / S60- / 9 / 5(Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989). 5.32. George L Hersey, "Replication Replicated, orNotes on American Bastardy" (pub. with John T.Hill, "Photographs of the State Capitol, Hanford").Perspecto; The Yale Architeauraljoumal'? (\965):216.33. Philip Fisher, Making and Effacing Art ModemAmerican An in a Culture of Museums (New York:Oxford University Press, 1991). 102.34. David R. Marshall. "The Roman Baths Themefrom Viviano Codazzi to G. P. Panini: Transmissionand Transformation," Artibus et Historiae ! 2, no.23 ( 1991 ): 152-53. Uke nearly all the scholarscited in the present essay, Marshall sees bothstrengths and weaknesses in Kubler's concept ofprime objects and replications.35. Robert L. Brown. The Dvaravati Wheels of(he Low and the Indianization of South East Asia(Leiden: Brill. 1996). 123-24.36. Ann L Kuttner, "Culture and History alPompey's Museum," rransoctions of the AmericanPhiiological Association 129 (1999): 373.37. Christopher 5, Wood. Forgery, Replica. Fiction:Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicho:University of Chicago Press, 2008), 37,38. (bid., 38. Another writer who, like Wood, viewsKubler's approach as above all formalist, yet none-tfieiess useful, is César Paternosto, who applies itto a study of the influence of Amerindian art on aEuropean-based culture (as proposed in The Shapeaf Time), in The Stone and the Thread: Andean Rootsof Abstract Art, trans. Esther Allen (Austin: Univer-sity of Texas Press, 1996), 192. For examples ofless favorable responses to the perceived formal-ism in Kubler's methodology, see Brodsky, 31. andMieke Bal. Quoting Caravagffo: Contemporary An,Preposterous History (Chicago: University ofChicago Press. 1999), 174. On Kubler's work as a(Ink connecting formalism to the French intellectualtradibon of structuralism, see Brodsky, 36 n. 8. AsBien K. Levy notes in her essay in the present issue,formalist art criticism was at a high point when TïieShape of Time appeared. An influential collection

of essays by the key proponent of formalst criti-cism in the United States, Clement Greenberg'sArt and Culture: Critical Essays, had been publishedtíie pM^vJous year, 1961. by Beacon Press. Thesimilarities and differences between Greenberg'sformalism and Kubler's theory would provide aninteresting avenue for further analysis.

Morris and Smirhson each found Kubler's concept of prime object.s and replica-tions especially compelling. Morris used it as the theoretical framework for amaster's thesis he wrote on the earlier twentieth-century sculptor ConstantinBrancusi."^ Smithson discussed the concept in an unpublished essay of 1966-67,"The Artist as Site-Seer, or Coded Environments," in which he focused on whathe believed is the enigmatic quality of prime objects. Ann Reynolds observed inher rich analysis of this essay that Smithson was especially interested in the sec-tion of Kubler's book on prime objects and replications, and that he "copied outtwo complete paragraphs from it," now among the Smithson papers.'"

From the mid-1960s to the present, Kubler's prime-object and rephcationschema has been as compelling to art historians as it has to artists." Already in196c, George L. Hersey. a colleague of Kubier at Yale, described a group of lateeighteenth- and nineteenth-century American statehouses in terms of Kubler'sprime objects and replications.

The kind of architectural thinking in wliich the relationship between sitingand shell, shell and interior, and scale and building type are so fluid mightbe called "free replication." 1 use the term "replication" in Kubler's sense ofthe copy or adaptation of some principal work of art, or prime object. Kubiersees the history of art as consisting of "clouds" of replications around primeobjects. We might think of these clouds as radiating series. Thus the Parthenonis a kind of transmitter, sending out an artistic signal that is picked up bylesser transmitters, which extend and modify the original signal.^'

Recent studies that draw on Kubler's notion of prime objeas and replicationsrange widely in time, place, and subject matter. The literary critic Philip Fisherunderstands the concept as signifying influence and applies it to a discussion ofmid- 1900s American art: "The late paintings of Monet are frequently cited as thePrime Objects for the Abstract Expressionist painting of New York in the [9Ç0S.""The art historian David R, Marshall draws on the concept in discussing seventeeth-and eighteenth-century depictions of Roman baths,'^ Another art historian.Robert L. Brown, applies it to his analysis of Southeast Asian Dvaravati-periodwheels of the seventh through tenth centuries. Brown asserts that while there areproblems with Kubler's approach-— for example, there "is no sure way to identifythe prime objects"—nonetheless, in an analysis of these wheels, or chakras,Kubler's approach is more useful than attempting to define a fixed style." Ann L.Kuttner, a historian of Roman art, applies Kubler's approach to the study ofPompey's garden museum of the first century BCE.ä* More recently, the art his-torian Christopher S. Wood criticizes Kubler's approach as "radically formalist"(and Wood is one of many writers to claim Kubler's theory is at heart formal-ist)." Yet rather than reject his approach on that accotmt. Wood instead uses itas a starting point for a theory of prime objects and replications that viewsobjects^—in Wood's instance, German medieval and Renaissance religious art—as "referential."'*

In her essay for the present issue, "Prime Objects and Body Doubles," theartist and critic Suzanne Anker describes Kubler's notion of the prime object asakin to an idea embedded in a material form. like Levy, she is keenly interestedin the alternatives Kubier provides to the biological approach to art history. Sheoffers as a case study the distinct reception of the work of two contemporary

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painters. Dana Schutz and Judith Iinhares. Their work has notable similarities,and the success of one is surprisingly intertwined with the success of the other,yet this success is out of chronological order. The comparison of these two art-ists' creations raises intriguing questions about reception and influence, and, asAnker suggests, even about the notion of the prime object, Kühler himself hadnoted that bis "concept of the prime object bas puzzled many readers, and ques-tions about it are more frequent than about any other aspea.""The Êict that sowide a range of artists and art historians alike nonetheless have drawn on thisconcept indicates it has provided a welcome alternative to analyses based onstyle. Indeed, Anker's explanation of Kubler's prime object suggests that we havearrived at a time stiificiently removed from an emphasis on style that this termseems less puzzling than it did when Kubler conceived it. In tbis regard, perbapsKubler's book speaks to us better today than it did to its earlier audiences. YetAnker joins Levy in wondering whether Kubler's prime objea is still relevant.For Anker, this questioning has to do not so much with the transformationswithin the fields of science and technology that Levy ponders as with the way inwhich reception inevitably relies upon "media spin." The mass media, then, playa larger role than any acttial prinae object in positioning art within history.

39. Kubler, "The Shape of Time Reconsidered."425.40, Kubler, Shape of Time, 7; on "entrance." seealso 6, 41. 86. 88-90, and 104.41, Kubler, "The Shope of Time Reconsidered,"427.42. Irving Sandier, Art of the Posmodern Era: Fromthe Late 1960s to the Early 1990s (New York:Harper Collins Icon Editions, 1996), xxv-xxvi; seealso 384, for Sandier's discussion of the "entry" of"deconsmjction" into the worid of an. Sandler'spoint that he "sacrificed a certain sense of chro-nology" corresponds with Bumham's observation(36) ^ t "entrance" is distina from chronology.This matter of chronology is taken up m MaryMiller's essay in öie present issue of Artjournal.

Entrance, Drift, and Problems and Solutions

The media spin that concerns Anker can be associated, however, with the sub-concept of "entrance" (or "entry") within Knbler's theory of prime objects andreplications. According to Kubler, entrance is the moment when an artist's talentcoincides with historical circtmistances to give that artist a position within adevelopmental sequence, Kubler uses tbe word "entrance" as a replacement fortbe less neutral "universal genius." "By this view." he explains, "the great differ-ences between artists are not so mucb those of talent as of entrance and positionin sequence."^ Entrance, then, is a matter of being at the right place at theright time, and with the right skills. Critical recognition in either the art pressor the popular press might just as well be a form of entrance as is being offeredthe commission to paint the Sistine Chapel (but Kubler later insisted that by"entrance" he did not mean "success"),'*' Just such a meaning of entrance wasdeveloped by the art historian Irving Sandier as an organizing principle of hisbook Art of the Postmodeni Era, He used the idea of entrance to link the varied, attimes seemingly disconnected strands of artistic development of the 1970s and1980s: "My solution was to treat each tendency—one at a time—as a unit,beginning with what George Kubler called its "entry" into art history, formulatingits aesthetics, tracing its course and the development of its leading artists, indi-cating what its reception in the art world was. when it reached its point of high-est visibility, and how it related to other tendencies. Thus, for the sake of clarityand coherence, I sacrificed a certain sense of chronology."*' One compellingaspect of Kubler's notion of entrance is that it does indeed allow for a place in asequence—or a place in history—that is not chronological (for example, as inposthumous discoveries or revisionist histories).

Two other influential subconcepts within the theory of prbiie objeas andreplications are those of drift and of art as a solution to a problem. Kubler bor-rowed the term "drift" from Ungtiistics and communication theory, and used it

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43. Kubler. Shí^e of Time. 60. 71, and 75-77.44. Fisher. 100.45. Ajay J. Sinha. Imagining Architects: Creativity inthe Religious Monuments of India (Newark. DE:University of Delaware Press. 2000), 52 and 75.Sinha uses drift as the central idea of his chapter"Drifts in Southern Architecture."46. Kubier, Shope af Time. 33.47. Henry Geldzahler. "New York Painting andSculpture: 1940-1970." in New York Painting andSculpture: 1940-1970, exh-ca.i. (NewYorit:Dutton and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969),24, For more on Kubler's description of art as asolution to a problem, see the poet and literarycritic Barrett Watten's discussion in Tatal Syntax(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.1985), 77-78, and Brown, 123.48. Arnold Häuser. The Philosophy of Art History{New Yori<; Knopf, 1959), 163, The relationshipof Kubler's arguments to Hauser's is worth fur-ther examination, as is the consideration of thesearguments in relation to another influential volumeof the time that treats replication and change andproblems and solutions in terms of perception.£. H. Gombrich's An and /Huston.- A Study in thePsychology of Pictorial Representation (New York:Pantheon, I960).49. Kubier. The Shape of Time Reconsidered."428.50. Kubier. Shope of Time. I,51. Robert Smithson. "A Sedimentsdon of theMind: Earth Projects." Artfamm 7 (September1968): 50; rep. The Writings af Robert Smithson:Essays with Illusirotions, ed. Nancy Holt (NewYork: New York University Press. 1979). 90. andin Roben Smitfison; The CoOeaed Writings. 112.

IO explain historical change. As forms are replicated, unintended variationsocuar, leading to distortions or "cumulative changes."'' FLsher considers thisaccount of change a "powerful explanatory tool."*^ Fisher is so captivated byKubler's notion of drift that he titles one of the chapters in Making and Effacing Art"Sequence, Drift. Copy. Invention." The art historian Ajay J. Sinlia likewise hasfound this notion to be valuable, applying it to a study of a group of tench-century temples in India.*^

Also important to the existence of art in time is its character as a solution toa problem. "As the solutions accumulate," Kubier explains (echoing the idea ofdrift), "the problem alters."*''This way of envisioning change, like drift, soonfound followers in various fields, one of the earliest and most interesting beingthe curator Henry Geldzaliler, In the catalogue of his landmark exhibition NewYork Painting md Sculpture; 1940-1970. held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in1969, Geldzalüer describes Kubler's conception and then uses it as a frameworkfor his entire exhibition: "The innovative artist in his grasp of a new possibilityinevitably alters the prohiem and therefore deflects tlie tradition through hissolution. The current exhibition was conceived as an accumulation of thirty yearsof solutions to a constantly changing set of problems—^problems and solutionsthat make up a vital tradition."*' Kubler's vision of art as a solution to a problemmay well be a response to the Marxist art liistorian Arnold Hauser's assertion,in a theoretical treatise published three years prior to The Shape of Time, that thereare no problems until there are solutions. As we have seen with Schapiro andPanofsky. Kubier was weU aware of and freely entered into the dominant art-historical debates of his time.*** But Kubler's points of reference were diverse,and he was engaged as much with the fields of anthropology and archaeology,relevant to Iiis scholarsliip on ancient American art, as he was with art history.

In evaluating the reception of his book. Kubier lamented that "no art histo-rian has commented on the relation of The Shape of Time to my studies of Americanantiquity."*' Mary Miller travels diis intriguing, hitherto uncharted path in heressay. "Shaped Time." A student of Kubier. Miller shows us how his book was onone level a response to earlier attempts to classify clironologically the ancientart of Mesoamerica and Peru. Notable among these attempts is the artist MiguelCovarrubias s history. Indian Art of Mexico ond Central America, published in 1957.Miller underscores the importance of chance for Kubier as a liistorical condition,reminding us that one of the subde messages of The Shape of Time is that linear,genealogical interpretations of history have pitfalls because they leave no spacefor chance.

Varieties of Objects and Places

The first sentence of The Shape of Time is also one of its most famous passages:"Let us suppose that the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole rangeof man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless,beautiful, and poetic things of the world."'^ Kubier then states that such a con-cept requires us to take into account all human-made things. Although perhapsnot intended by Kubier, it's not too far a leap from this statement to Smithson s[968 proposal for an art consisting of "casting a glance,"'' and to che develop-ment of recent monikers to replace "art history." such as "visual culture," "visual

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52. See Wen C. Fong. "Toward a Structura!Analysis of Chinese Landscape Painttng." Anjournal 28. no. 4 (Summer 1969): 390: AmmielAtcalay, After jev^ and Arabs: Remaking LevantineCulture (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, I993).7I, 113, and 296 n. 85; ThomasDaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of An(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004),219-38 (chap. 7. devoted lo Kubier, whomKaufmann considers a "pioneer" as a geographerof art); Beauvais Lyons. ""The Excavation of theApashc Artifacts from an Imaginary f ^ t , "Leonardo 18. no. 2 ( 1985): 87: and Corin Hewin.digiai recortJing of The Shape of Time, availableonline at htcp://public.me.com/cohnhewht.53. See for example Marshall, 159 n. 88 and n. 91.54. On this aspea of Kubler's writing, see Reese,editor's introduction. Studies in Andern Americanand European An, xiv-xv,55. Kubier. Shape of Ttme. 19. Quotations fromthi5 passage of Kubler's book appear in, for exam-ple. Kunner, 343. and m Michael Ann Holly, pref-ace. Whot Is Research in the Visual Arts.' Obsession.Archive, Encounter (Williamstown, MA: Sterlingand Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008). 10.56. Reese, editor's introduction. Studies in AncientAmerican and Europeon Art. xvii.

Studies," or "material culture." In assessing the legacy of The Shape of Time, thephoto historian and critic Shelley Rice provides a fascinating personal account,in her essay "Back to the Future." of how ske discovered Kubler's book throughthe teachings of her mentor, the art critic Lawrence Alloway Alloway's egalitarianvision of fine art, which he developed in London during the 19ÇOS. is one ofseveral instances in which current art and art criticism seem to prefigure theideas that unfold in The Shape of Time. For exanriple, the interest in an that is abouttime or that exists only in time—represented in the 1950s by Harold Rosenberg'sview of Abstract Expressionism as "action painting" and by Allan Kaprow's Hap-penings, and in the early 1960s by the art group Fluxus^—would seem to heraldKubler's obsession with temporaUty. Rice explains what Kubler's book meant, inturn, to Alloway, focusing on the links between Alloway's approach to breakingdown barriers between "high" and "low" and Kubler's inclusive conception ofthe htiman-made world. She views her own decision to focus on photography asgrowing directly out of Alloway's and Kubler's thinking.

Such a trajector>' is indicative of the intellectual breadth Kubier sought—andachieved—in The Shope of Time. It is on account of this breadth that the range ofscholarly and artistic responses to this book has been so expansive. In addition tothe many responses noted in the preceding paragraphs, others are just as variedin subject and focus. Among these are examinations of Chinese landscape paint-ing, contemporary culture in the Middle East, and artistic geography, as well as acreative citation within one artist's imaginary excavations and digital recordingsby another artist of passages from Kubler's book.'^Yet corresponding to thebook's breadtli of scope is an often-noted elusiveness.^This quality is in partrelated to Kubler's tendency to think in terms of analogy and metaphor (as inthe comparison of style to a rainbow).'•< The poetic turn in Kubler's writing ismagnetic, attracting readers and inspiring them to quote from passages such asthis one that compares historians to astronomers: "Knowing the past is as aston-ishing a performance as knowing the stars. Astronomers look only at old light.There is no other light for them to look at. Tliis old light of dead or distant starswas emitted long ago and it reaches us only in the present..,. Astronomers andhistorians have this in common: both are concerned with appearances noted inthe present but occurring in the past,"" Kubler's poetic bent goes hack to hisyears as an undergraduate student at Yale College, where he studied literature andwrote experimental fiction,^" {Biography can be called into beneficial service,notwithstanding Kubler's cogent discussion of its limitations.) Even if the use ofanalogy and metaphor seems evasive, if you have ever questioned what you havebeen taught about art or art history, then you are bound to find value still todayin George Kubier's The Shupe ofTime,

fteva Wolf is professor of art history at tfie State University of New York at New Paltz, She has writtenon Goya, Warhol. 1960s poetry, art and popufar culture, satirical prints and cartoons, and art-historicalmeEhodolofy. Fonhcoming are the essay "Goya's 'Red Boy," on the taste for Goya in the United States,and a suite of catalogue entries on drawings by Goya for an exhibition of Spanish drawings scheduled toopen at the Fnck Collection m fall 2010,

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