THE SHAPE OF TIME

REMARKS ON THE HISTORY OF THINGS

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

The Shape ofTime: Of Stars and Rainbows

George Kubier was fully awareand seemed to relishchat artists counted among the fans of liis faincjus 1962 book, The Shpt ofTime,' In "The Shape of Time Reconsidered," an essay he wrote some twenty years later, Kubier noted that artists often had quoted from liis book, "Tbeir appreciation," he speculated, "may be related to their being released, as artists, from the rigid lerarchies enshrined by the textbook industry or, as it was once expressed, the 'pigeon-holes of art history'"' Do artists still feel liberated by his provocaReva Wolf tive discussion of history? What about art historians and criCics?The purpose of the present set of essaystwo written by artists, and two by art historiansis to consider what Kubler's book means to us now.^ By way of introduction, and to provide a historical context for these essays, what follows is an overview of the key concepts of The Shape of Time in relationship to art-historical debates of the time and since. Against Style "Style" was where the pigeonholes resided to which Kubier objected. He believed the concept of style was at once too narrow and too broad to bold meaning, 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 styleBaroque is the 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 eitlier the divergent examples or the rival systems of formai order in the seventeenth, century. We have become reluctant to consider the alternatives to Baroque art in most regions, or to treat the many gradations between metropolitan and provincial expressions of tlie same forms. Nor do we like to think of several coeval styles at the same place."* Thinking in terms of style limits bow we view history, and constrains what we are ahle to see in history. For tbis reason, such thinking is narrow. Understanding the history of art in terms of style is also too broad. Kubier argued, because the word "style" Itself had by now been "abused by too common use," so that its "inmunerable shades of meaning seem to span all experience."^ As is often noted. Kubier compared style to a rainbow: there one moment bnt gone the next; a concept lacking in substance.*' In questioning the significance of the term. Kubier situated himself firmly within art-historical debates of his time. M James S.Ackerman long ago pointed out, and Alan Wallach more recently has amplified. Kubier was responding to a famous essay by the art historian Meyer Schapiro of 1953, entitled "Style."^ He noted in particular that Schapiro acknowledged he was unable to provide a satisfactory theory of style,* Kubier used this acknowledgment to bolster his own view that the term would best be eliminated altogether from art history, Kubler's questioning of the concept of style was bold in its time. Just consider the fact tbat The Shape of Time was published the very year as the first edition of H. W Jan.son'b famous textbook. The History of An. which was based largely on tlie terminology and classification systems of stylistic analysis. Still, some of the reviews of The Shopc of Time claimed that Kubler's proposed replacement of style hy "sequences" was not so dramatic a shift in thinking as Kubier argued. In her
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1. For an overview, with discussions of ttie significance of Kubler's book for the artsts John Baldessari and Robert Smithson, see Pamela M. Lee, "Ultramoderne': Or. How George Kubier Stole the Time in Sixties Art," Grey Room 2 (Winter 2001): 46-77, and chap. 4 of Lee's Chronophobia: 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 19Os (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 58-60. 2. George Kublen "The Shope of Time Reconsidered" (paper delivered at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania on April 30, 1981 ), Studies in Ancient American and European Art: The Collected Essoys of George Kubier, ed, Thomas F, Reese (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 428. A slightly different version of this paper appeared in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal 19(1982): 112-21, Kubler's use of the term "pigeonhole" makes an interesting link to his mentor, Henri Focilfon: Kubier discusses Focillon's disdain for pigeonholes in "The Teaching of Henri Focillon," a paper delivered at Yale University, March 17, 1981, and later published in Studies in Andent American and European Art, 382, In addition. Kubier wrote a lengthy obituary on Focillon: "Henri Focillon, 1881 -1943," An journal 4, no, 2 (1945): 71-74, rep. Studies in nderet American and European Art. 37B-80. Kubier coi* laborated (with Charles Beecher Hogan) on the English translation of Focillon's 1934 book. The Life of Forms in Art (London: H, Milford, Oxford University Press; New Haven: Yale UnJversrty Press, 1942). It is a commonplace in studies of Kubier to mention Focillon's influence on his distinguished student. See Thomas F, Reese, editor's introduction. Studies in Ancient Americon and European Art. xvii-xix and xxiv-xxv. 3. This group of essays is based on the panel Tten and NowT Whot George Kubler's The Shape of Time Means Today, presented in ARTspace at the College Art Association's annual conference, Dallas, Texas, February 22, 2008. The idea behind the panel was to examine a publication that has

been equally significant lo artists and to art historians. I thank the members of tbe Services to Artists Committee for their support of this panel. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of the essays for providing valuable and much-ap[wciated advice for revisions, as well as three individuisPeter Halley. Ann Lovett. and Robert Farris Thompson who gave me excellent suggestions for locating authors whose interests and experience match well the topic at hand. As always. am most grateful to Eugene Heath for his fine editorial advice. 4. George Kubier. The Shope of Time: Remarks on the History af Things (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1962), 128. 5. Kubier. Shape of Time, 3, Kubier later reiterated his view that the term "style" is overused, rtow attempting to offer a namDw, precise definition of the term, in his essay, "Towards a Reductive Theory cf Visual Style." in Tlie Concept of Style. ed. Berel Lang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1979). 118-27; rep. Studies in Ancient 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), 287312: rep. in /^esthetics Today, ed. Morris H. Philipsor (Oeveland: Meridian Books, 1961). 31-113. and in Schapiro. Theory and Philosophy af Art: Style, Artist, and Society. Seleaed Popers, vol. 4 (New York: George Braziller, 1994). 51-102. For the earlier discussions of Kubler's criticism of style as a response to Schapiro, see James S. Ackerman. "On Rereading 'Style,'" Sodol Research 45, no. I (Spring 1978): 153, and Alan Wallach, "Meyer Schapiro'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 George Kubier. Artjournai 23. no. I (Autumn 1963): 79. 10. Jan BialosEocki. review of The Shope of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, by George Kubier, 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. Modem Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20^-Century Wriungs on the Visual Arts, ed. Kleinbauer {New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1971 ). 30-31. The Shape of Time remains vital in universities, notably through the inclusion of a passage from it in a recent popular textbook. Art in Theory. 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. ChaHes Harrison and Paul Wood (Maiden. MA: Backwell Publishing. 2003). 751-53. 13. For these criticisms, see Kleinbauer, 32. 14. Joyce Brodsky. "Continuity and Discontinuity in Style: A Problem in Art Historical Methodology." Journal of Aesthet/cs and Ar: Criticism 39, no. I (Autumn 1980): 28.

review, the museum consuliani and curator Priscilla Colt asked whether, with the study of such sequences, "are we not arriving again at an historical concept very dose to that of style in some of its more refined interpreutions? And is the study of style necessarily precluded hy the study of formal sequences?"'* In another review of the book, the art historian Jan Bialostocki noted, similarly, that "when we read about 'periods requiring classic meastn-e' (p. o) we hegin to suspect that some residuum of the concept of style still remains in the mind of the author."" From an early point, despite their criticisms and reservations, artists and art historians alike, including the authors of these two reviews (both published in high-profile pubhcations), were intrigued by Kubler's attempt to radically rethink art histor)'. Jack Bumham, who was trained as a sculptor but eventually turned to criticism and theory, found an imponant source of inspiration 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 concept of style as, in Bumham's paraphrase, an "arbitrary convenience."" Even more indicative of how influential Kubler's book had already become is the ample discussion of it by W Eugene Kleinbauer in the introduction to Modem Perspectives in WestemArt History, a widely used textbook anthology of art-historical methodology, also published in 1971. Kleinbauer considered Kubler's book to be of "tremendous importance" and the "major theoretical treatise" in recent art-historical writing on "the problem of historical change," as it focused on "continuous change" rather than on "static categories of style." " Together with his strong praise. Kleinbauer also saw pitfalls in Kubler's arguments that echo the criticisms previotisly set forth by Colt and by Bialostocki.'* Some ten years later, in 1980, the critic Joyce Brodsky attempted to explain such criticisms by observing that when Kubler's book was published, art history was not yet ready for it: "That Kubler's novel thesis is only now beginning to be explored stems, in part, from its 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 revolve around his bold rejection of the concept of style. For example, understanding an through the study of the artist's biography is wedded to the idea of style as something that evolves and grows over time, like a biological organ. Therefore, the biographical or. more broadly, biological models for interpreting art. Kubier argued, are of limited value.'' As Kubier put it: "However useful it is for pedagogical purposes, the biological metaphor of style as a sequence of life-stages was historically misleading, for it bestowed upon the fltix of events the shapes and the behavior of organisms." '* Although Kubier rejects the biological model of interpretation, he does not oppose the use of models drawn from the scientific realm. A key aspect of Kubler's book that has been of great interest in recent years (highhghted, notably, by the art historian Pamela Lee) '' is its applications of concepts taken from sdence and technology, even while rejecting the "biological" model of art history whereby art evolves progressively over time. In her e^ay in the present
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Abbye Gorin, George Kubier: Portrait Token

at Yale University ca. 1983, gelatin silver print, 9 X 7 in. (22.9 x 17.8 cm). The Latin Amencan Library image Archive, Tulane University (photograph The Latin American Library. Tularte University)

issue, "Classifying Kubier," Ellen K. Levy considers Kubler's applications of scientific concepts witliin the broader intellectual frame of the 1960s. Especially fascinating are Levy's discussions of the relevance for artists today of Kubler's notions of "complex systems" and "feedback." Levy questions whether Kubler's concept of "prime works and replications" is still meaningful or whether developments in science, technology, and art have rendered it obsolete. Prime Objects and Replications In place of style, biography, and biology. Kubier proposed that we study art in terms of temporal sequences, which take the form of "prime objects" and "replications." '" 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 timeErwin Panofsky. Kubier likely regarded the terms "prime objects" and "replicadons" as his linguistic and theoretical substitutes for Panofsky's "Renaissance" and "renascences." In each of these pairings of terms and concepts, various objects are classified and distinguished from one another through formal or thematic relationships. However, Kubier replaces Panofsky's reference to a particular style or period (the Renaissance) with a historically indeterminate term (prime object). In creating this alternative to Panofsky's system of analysis. Kubier makes no attempt at creating an exact parallel. Indeed, he seems to almost create a deliberate cbronological inversion of Panofsky's scheme: the Renaissance comes aha renascences (his term for classical revivals occurring In the medieval period).
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15. KubJer. Shape af Time. 5-13. This argument has some affinities with and foreshadows Roland Barthes's "Death of ie Author," trans, Richard Howard. Aspen 5-6 (1967). n.p, Barthes's essay was published there along with Kubier, "Style and the Representation of Historical Time," rep. Studies in Andern American and European Art. 38690, also rep. Armais of the New York Academy of Sciences 138 (1967): 849-55. Kubler's essay expands on the concerns he had raised in The Shape of Time about the concept of styte. 16, Kubier. Shape of Time. 8. ! 7. Lee. "'Ultramodeme.'" 18. Kubter, Shopeof THTie, 39-53.and 130.

19. Ervsrin Panofeky. "Renaissance and Renascences."/(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 n Ancient American Art." Studies in Andeni American and European Art. 404. orig, pub. New Uterary History: A oumal af Theory and Interpretation, I. no. 2(1970): 127-44. 21. George Kubier. "Historyor Anthropology of Art'" Studies in Ancient American and European An, 407-9, orig, pub. Critical Inquiry I. no. 4 (June 1975): 757-67, See also 'The Shape of Time Reconsidered." 429, 22- Kubier, "Historyor Anthropologyof An?" 409, and "The Shape of Time Reconsidered." 429. As Reese noted,fienoissonceand RenascerKes "had a deasive and immediate impaa on Kubier, reminding him of key themes that Foctlon had raised but thai had fallen on deaf ears. Panofeky's 'principle of disjunction' was the key" (editor's introduaion. Studies in Ancient American and European Art, xxxiii). On Focillon's role as a teacher of and model for Kubier. see also n. 2 above. The similarity of Panofsky's study of the transformation of art over time to Kubler's focus on this problem also is noted by Michael Ann Holly in Pano^ky and lhe FoundaHars of An History (Itiaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 141. 23. Kubier put it this way: "These renascent and disjunctive forms of historical time were long under study by Erwin Panofsky, with whom I studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in New Yori< from 1936 to 1938. During this time Herbert Spinden, also at the Institute, was my mentor in Precolumbian archaeology. Panofsky's conclusions did not become completely available until his lectures in Stockholm, published in I960." "Historyor Anthropologyof An?" 407. The particular classes taught by Panofsky that Kubier took are noted in Reese, editor's introduction. Studies in Andent American and European An. xviii. 24. Kubier, "The S^ope of Time Reconsidered," 426. 25. An interesting, much earlier lener from Panofsky to Kubier is quoted in Mary Miller's essay here. 26. Ad Reinhardt. "Art vs. History," review of Kubler's The Sfiope of Time. Art News 64 (January I966):2l.rep. inArtH3s-Art; 7he Se/ected Writings of Ad 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 of Constantin Brancusi" (master's thesis. Hunter College, New Yoric. 1966), On this thesis. Kubier and Morris's own sculptural wori, see Berger. Labyrinths. 58-60. and James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: Yaie University Pnsss. 2001). 154-55. 30. Ann Reynolds. Robert Smithson: Leorninf Jiom New Jersey and Eisewhere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 1 4 5 ^ 7 . and 274 n. 37. A later, shorta- variation of Smithson's essay, "The Artist as Site-Seer; o r A Dintorphic Essay," also unpublished in his lifetime, appears in Eugenie Tsai. Roben Smithson Unearthed: Drawing. Collages, Writings (New York: Columbia University Press. 1991 ). 74-80, and in Robert Smjthson: T>ie CoUected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press. 1996). 34O--5,

while prime objects come before replications. It is as if through this temporal inversion. Kubier wants to offer indirectlyperhaps to implya reversal of Panofsky's methodology, which, as a niatter of faa, Kubier knew weW. Panofsky's essay "Renaissance and Renascences" was first published in 944 and appeared in an expanded form in Rmaissonce ami Reoascmees inWeslemAn, his i960 book of essays based on a series of lectures he gave in 195^2,''This book came out just as Kubier was writing The Shape of Time. Knbler later drew on and acknowledged tliat he took a great interest in the concept of a "disjunction" of form and meaning that Panofsky elaborated in Renaissance and Renascences. In 1970 he applied this concept to a consideration of methodology in the study of ancient American art.^ In 1975" and again in 1981 he cited Panofsky's "disjunction" as a useful methodological alternative to the "ethnological analogy" of anthropology or the "narrowness" of archaeology." (Sdli, Khler insisted that his principal mentor, Henri FociUon, had developed this idea prior to Panofsky, in his 1934 book The Life of Forms in Art.)'' Indeed, Kubier had taken two classes ("Michelangelo" and "Special Prohlems") with Panofsky as a gradiaate student at the Institute of Fine Arts ai New York University from 1936 to 1938.-' Kubier even reported that Panofsky sent him a congratulatory letter on the success of Kubler's approach in The Shape of Time: "Panofsky wrote me in 1962 that he thought the book 'acliieves tlie apparently impossible, to prove that strictly historical methods can he applied to material which, on the face of it, wotild not seem to have any history.' He referred of course to its Precolujnbian components .. J'^ Kubier seems to record his receipt of Panofsky's missive with a combination of great pride and a dose of sarcasm aimed at Panofsky's implicit bias toward the tradition of European art.'^Yet Kubler's debt 10 Panofsky is interesting because il is so unexpected, given that we tend to think of Panofsky's main focus to be symbol 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-twentieth centurywas something the artist Ad Reinhardt detected, ln the conclusion of Reinhardt's review of The Shape of Time, published in 1966, he cleverly and subtly underscored Kubler's position relative to other art historians: "The first word of an artist is against artists. The first word of an art historian is against art historians."" It is a curious point that when Kubier later commented on Reinhardt's review, he maintained that this particular statement confounded him. "His renvoi is enigmatic," Kubier wTOte. He then interpreted the statement in such a way as to allow for an alternative meaning: "I suppose he means that artists and art historians should join instead of opposing their forces."" Is Kubier saying artists should join forces with art historians? Or that artists should join forces with other artists, and art liistorians with other art historians? However shorthand Reinliardt's words, they are dear: artists and art historians alike work against iheir prectirsors and contemporaries. Whether it should be othenvise, Reinhardt does not say. It is po.ssihle Kubier did not fully comprehend Reinhardt's assertion hecause he preferred noi to acknowledge the perhaps uncomfortable revelation it contained. Kubier also was aware that two other artists prominent in the 1960s, Robert Morris and Robert Smithson, were enthusiastic readers of The Shape of Time. ^'
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31. The discussions anti employment by art historians o) Kubler's notion of prime objects and replications, as well as other notions set forth in The Shape of Time, have been remarkably rich and varied. Nonetheless. James Elktns has made the case that his book has had little impact, in "Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of WesEern Moderr\ism by David Summers," book review, An &ulletn 86. no, 2 (June 2004): 376 and 380 n, 29. Some art historians have |udged the concept of prime objects and replications lo be conventional not really representing the break fnjm tradition claimed 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 ftist Views of Venice by Americon Artists, / S 6 0 - / 9 / 5 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989). 5. 32. George L Hersey, "Replication Replicated, or Notes 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 Modem American An in a Culture of Museums (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 102. 34. David R. Marshall. "The Roman Baths Theme from Viviano Codazzi to G. P. Panini: Transmission and Transformation," Artibus et Historiae ! 2, no. 23 ( 1991 ): 152-53. Uke nearly all the scholars cited in the present essay, Marshall sees both strengths and weaknesses in Kubler's concept of prime 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 al Pompey's Museum," rransoctions of the American Phiiological 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, views Kubler's approach as above all formalist, yet nonetfieiess useful, is Csar Paternosto, who applies it to a study of the influence of Amerindian art on a European-based culture (as proposed in The Shape af Time), in The Stone and the Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art, trans. Esther Allen (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 192. For examples of less favorable responses to the perceived formalism in Kubler's methodology, see Brodsky, 31. and Mieke Bal. Quoting Caravagffo: Contemporary An, Preposterous History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999), 174. On Kubler's work as a (Ink connecting formalism to the French intellectual tradibon of structuralism, see Brodsky, 36 n. 8. As Bien K. Levy notes in her essay in the present issue, formalist art criticism was at a high point when Tie Shape of Time appeared. An influential collection of essays by the key proponent of formalst criticism in the United States, Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture: Critical Essays, had been published tie pM^vJous year, 1961. by Beacon Press. The similarities and differences between Greenberg's formalism and Kubler's theory would provide an interesting avenue for further analysis.

Morris and Smirhson each found Kubler's concept of prime object.s and replications especially compelling. Morris used it as the theoretical framework for a master's thesis he wrote on the earlier twentieth-century sculptor Constantin Brancusi."^ Smithson discussed the concept in an unpublished essay of 1966-67, "The Artist as Site-Seer, or Coded Environments," in which he focused on what he believed is the enigmatic quality of prime objects. Ann Reynolds observed in her rich analysis of this essay that Smithson was especially interested in the section of Kubler's book on prime objects and replications, and that he "copied out two complete paragraphs from it," now among the Smithson papers.'" From the mid-1960s to the present, Kubler's prime-object and rephcation schema has been as compelling to art historians as it has to artists." Already in 196c, George L. Hersey. a colleague of Kubier at Yale, described a group of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American statehouses in terms of Kubler's prime objects and replications. The kind of architectural thinking in wliich the relationship between siting and shell, shell and interior, and scale and building type are so fluid might be called "free replication." 1 use the term "replication" in Kubler's sense of the copy or adaptation of some principal work of art, or prime object. Kubier sees the history of art as consisting of "clouds" of replications around prime objects. We might think of these clouds as radiating series. Thus the Parthenon is a kind of transmitter, sending out an artistic signal that is picked up by lesser transmitters, which extend and modify the original signal.^' Recent studies that draw on Kubler's notion of prime objeas and replications range widely in time, place, and subject matter. The literary critic Philip Fisher understands the concept as signifying influence and applies it to a discussion of mid- 1900s American art: "The late paintings of Monet are frequently cited as the Prime Objects for the Abstract Expressionist painting of New York in the [90S."" The art historian David R, Marshall draws on the concept in discussing seventeethand eighteenth-century depictions of Roman baths,'^ Another art historian. Robert L. Brown, applies it to his analysis of Southeast Asian Dvaravati-period wheels of the seventh through tenth centuries. Brown asserts that while there are problems with Kubler's approach-^for example, there "is no sure way to identify the 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 of Pompey's garden museum of the first century BCE.* More recently, the art historian 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 formalist)." Yet rather than reject his approach on that accotmt. Wood instead uses it as a starting point for a theory of prime objects and replications that views objects^in Wood's instance, German medieval and Renaissance religious art as "referential."'* In her essay for the present issue, "Prime Objects and Body Doubles," the artist and critic Suzanne Anker describes Kubler's notion of the prime object as akin to an idea embedded in a material form. like Levy, she is keenly interested in the alternatives Kubier provides to the biological approach to art history. She offers 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 artists' creations raises intriguing questions about reception and influence, and, as Anker suggests, even about the notion of the prime object, Khler himself had noted that bis "concept of the prime object bas puzzled many readers, and questions about it are more frequent than about any other aspea.""The ict that so wide a range of artists and art historians alike nonetheless have drawn on this concept indicates it has provided a welcome alternative to analyses based on style. Indeed, Anker's explanation of Kubler's prime object suggests that we have arrived at a time stiificiently removed from an emphasis on style that this term seems less puzzling than it did when Kubler conceived it. In tbis regard, perbaps Kubler's book speaks to us better today than it did to its earlier audiences. Yet Anker joins Levy in wondering whether Kubler's prime objea is still relevant. For Anker, this questioning has to do not so much with the transformations within the fields of science and technology that Levy ponders as with the way in which reception inevitably relies upon "media spin." The mass media, then, play a larger role than any acttial prinae object in positioning art within history.

Entrance, Drift, and Problems and Solutions The media spin that concerns Anker can be associated, however, with the subconcept of "entrance" (or "entry") within Knbler's theory of prime objects and replications. According to Kubler, entrance is the moment when an artist's talent coincides with historical circtmistances to give that artist a position within a developmental sequence, Kubler uses tbe word "entrance" as a replacement for tbe less neutral "universal genius." "By this view." he explains, "the great differences between artists are not so mucb those of talent as of entrance and position in sequence."^ Entrance, then, is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and with the right skills. Critical recognition in either the art press or the popular press might just as well be a form of entrance as is being offered the commission to paint the Sistine Chapel (but Kubler later insisted that by "entrance" he did not mean "success"),'*' Just such a meaning of entrance was developed by the art historian Irving Sandier as an organizing principle of his book Art of the Postmodeni Era, He used the idea of entrance to link the varied, at times seemingly disconnected strands of artistic development of the 1970s and 1980s: "My solution was to treat each tendencyone at a timeas a unit, beginning with what George Kubler called its "entry" into art history, formulating its aesthetics, tracing its course and the development of its leading artists, indicating what its reception in the art world was. when it reached its point of highest visibility, and how it related to other tendencies. Thus, for the sake of clarity and coherence, I sacrificed a certain sense of chronology."*' One compelling aspect of Kubler's notion of entrance is that it does indeed allow for a place in a sequenceor a place in historythat is not chronological (for example, as in posthumous discoveries or revisionist histories). Two other influential subconcepts within the theory of prbiie objeas and replications are those of drift and of art as a solution to a problem. Kubler borrowed the term "drift" from Ungtiistics and communication theory, and used it
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39. Kubler, "The Shape of Time Reconsidered." 425. 40, Kubler, Shape of Time, 7; on "entrance." see also 6, 41. 86. 88-90, and 104. 41, Kubler, "The Shope of Time Reconsidered," 427. 42. Irving Sandier, Art of the Posmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s (New York: Harper Collins Icon Editions, 1996), xxv-xxvi; see also 384, for Sandier's discussion of the "entry" of "deconsmjction" into the worid of an. Sandler's point that he "sacrificed a certain sense of chronology" corresponds with Bumham's observation (36) ^ t "entrance" is distina from chronology. This matter of chronology is taken up m Mary Miller's essay in ie present issue of Artjournal.

43. Kubler. Sh^e of Time. 60. 71, and 75-77. 44. Fisher. 100. 45. Ajay J. Sinha. Imagining Architects: Creativity in the 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 and Sculpture: 1940-1970." in New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970, exh-ca.i. (NewYorit: Dutton and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969), 24, For more on Kubler's description of art as a solution to a problem, see the poet and literary critic Barrett Watten's discussion in Tatal Syntax (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1985), 77-78, and Brown, 123. 48. Arnold Huser. The Philosophy of Art History {New Yori<; Knopf, 1959), 163, The relationship of Kubler's arguments to Hauser's is worth further examination, as is the consideration of these arguments in relation to another influential volume of the time that treats replication and change and problems and solutions in terms of perception. . H. Gombrich's An and /Huston.- A Study in the Psychology 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 the Mind: Earth Projects." Artfamm 7 (September 1968): 50; rep. The Writings af Robert Smithson: Essays with Illusirotions, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press. 1979). 90. and in Roben Smitfison; The CoOeaed Writings. 112.

IO explain historical change. As forms are replicated, unintended variations ocuar, leading to distortions or "cumulative changes."''^ FLsher considers this account of change a "powerful explanatory tool."*^ Fisher is so captivated by Kubler'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 has found this notion to be valuable, applying it to a study of a group of tenchcentury temples in India.*^ Also important to the existence of art in time is its character as a solution to a problem. "As the solutions accumulate," Kubier explains (echoing the idea of drift), "the problem alters."*''This way of envisioning change, like drift, soon found followers in various fields, one of the earliest and most interesting being the curator Henry Geldzaliler, In the catalogue of his landmark exhibition New York Painting md Sculpture; 1940-1970. held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969, Geldzaler describes Kubler's conception and then uses it as a framework for his entire exhibition: "The innovative artist in his grasp of a new possibility inevitably alters the prohiem and therefore deflects tlie tradition through his solution. The current exhibition was conceived as an accumulation of thirty years of solutions to a constantly changing set of problems^problems and solutions that make up a vital tradition."*' Kubler's vision of art as a solution to a problem may 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 there are no problems until there are solutions. As we have seen with Schapiro and Panofsky. Kubier was weU aware of and freely entered into the dominant arthistorical 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 historian has commented on the relation of The Shape of Time to my studies of American antiquity."*' Mary Miller travels diis intriguing, hitherto uncharted path in her essay. "Shaped Time." A student of Kubier. Miller shows us how his book was on one level a response to earlier attempts to classify clironologically the ancient art of Mesoamerica and Peru. Notable among these attempts is the artist Miguel Covarrubias 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 space for 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 range of 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 concept requires us to take into account all human-made things. Although perhaps not 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 development 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." An journal 28. no. 4 (Summer 1969): 390: Ammiel Atcalay, After jev^ and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, I993).7I, 113, and 296 n. 85; Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of An (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 219-38 (chap. 7. devoted lo Kubier, whom Kaufmann considers a "pioneer" as a geographer of art); Beauvais Lyons. ""The Excavation of the Apashc Artifacts from an Imaginary f ^ t , " Leonardo 18. no. 2 ( 1985): 87: and Corin Hewin. digiai recortJing of The Shape of Time, available online 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 American and European An, xiv-xv, 55. Kubier. Shape of Ttme. 19. Quotations from thi5 passage of Kubler's book appear in, for example. Kunner, 343. and m Michael Ann Holly, preface. Whot Is Research in the Visual Arts.' Obsession. Archive, Encounter (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008). 10. 56. Reese, editor's introduction. Studies in Ancient American and Europeon Art. xvii.

Studies," or "material culture." In assessing the legacy of The Shape of Time, the photo historian and critic Shelley Rice provides a fascinating personal account, in her essay "Back to the Future." of how ske discovered Kubler's book through the teachings of her mentor, the art critic Lawrence Alloway Alloway's egalitarian vision of fine art, which he developed in London during the 19OS. is one of several instances in which current art and art criticism seem to prefigure the ideas that unfold in The Shape of Time. For exanriple, the interest in an that is about time or that exists only in timerepresented in the 1950s by Harold Rosenberg's view of Abstract Expressionism as "action painting" and by Allan Kaprow's Happenings, and in the early 1960s by the art group Fluxus^would seem to herald Kubler's obsession with temporaUty. Rice explains what Kubler's book meant, in turn, to Alloway, focusing on the links between Alloway's approach to breaking down barriers between "high" and "low" and Kubler's inclusive conception of the htiman-made world. She views her own decision to focus on photography as growing directly out of Alloway's and Kubler's thinking. Such a trajector>' is indicative of the intellectual breadth Kubier soughtand achievedin The Shope of Time. It is on account of this breadth that the range of scholarly and artistic responses to this book has been so expansive. In addition to the many responses noted in the preceding paragraphs, others are just as varied in subject and focus. Among these are examinations of Chinese landscape painting, contemporary culture in the Middle East, and artistic geography, as well as a creative citation within one artist's imaginary excavations and digital recordings by another artist of passages from Kubler's book.'^Yet corresponding to the book's breadtli of scope is an often-noted elusiveness.^This quality is in part related to Kubler's tendency to think in terms of analogy and metaphor (as in the comparison of style to a rainbow).'< The poetic turn in Kubler's writing is magnetic, attracting readers and inspiring them to quote from passages such as this one that compares historians to astronomers: "Knowing the past is as astonishing 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 stars was emitted long ago and it reaches us only in the present..,. Astronomers and historians have this in common: both are concerned with appearances noted in the present but occurring in the past,"" Kubler's poetic bent goes hack to his years as an undergraduate student at Yale College, where he studied literature and wrote experimentalfiction,^"{Biography can be called into beneficial service, notwithstanding Kubler's cogent discussion of its limitations.) Even if the use of analogy and metaphor seems evasive, if you have ever questioned what you have been taught about art or art history, then you are bound to find value still today in 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 written on Goya, Warhol. 1960s poetry, art and popufar culture, satirical prints and cartoons, and art-historical meEhodolofy. 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 to open at the Fnck Collection m fall 2010,

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