The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things

This book is a must for anyone who follows a structuralist view of art. Clear, simple but nonetheless covering the widest possible scope in relation to "things", it is an authentic theoretical jewel, a brilliant work by Mr. Kubler, one of the most serious and broad minded academics of our time. HIGHLY reccomended!

Few people treat the concepts of *fast* and *slow* time in a cultural sense, (not a clock sense), quite so well. In this context Kubler also provides a clear working definition of an artist's entrance into an era, and what comprises real artistic invention as opposed to the replication of stereotypes. Still fresh decades after Kubler wrote this core text; Kubler defines the dynamics of artistic innovation with the same clarity that Thomas Kuhn did for the sciences in that other core text: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The target audience for this text resides in art or anthropology departments. Because it is often seen through those specializations its influence is less than its deserts. It stems from a structuralist orientation but in a dimension that school rarely considers. Since structuralism tends to think of the passage through time as just the instance ("parole") of a simultaneous expressive system ("langue"), it misses Kubler's insight that time too can be thought of as a dimension of a trans-era historical structure. As in evolution in biology, all temporal fields then become suject to formal relational analysis. In addition to its insights, the book is lucid, brief, and articulate. It has the benefits of theory without the ponderous vocabulary and tortured syntax that sometimes mars that field.

This is a book about art history, written by an art historian, though it was given to me by one of my professors of anthropology while I was studying archaeology at Arizona State University. For one reason or another, I have taken this volume off my bookshelve many times, opened it to a random chapter, and read a paragraph, a few pages, or a chapter at a time. Never more than that. I have often tried to connect the theory in this book to archaeological questions, but I have mostly failed in my attempts to visualize an operational method of applying its lessons. It has become increasingly evident to me, as I struggle with the contents of this work, that this is in fact less a theory of art history and more a history of historical and cultural change: a work of anthropology, or at least one of anthropological interest. Kubler is not attempting to explicate the influences of history on stylistic changes in art. He is, in reverse, introducing the analysis of art forms to issues of historical change. This may be (perhaps suitably) a distinction of little merit to some. However, it is enough to curl the toes of at least some members of the anthropological community. Stylistic or symbolic interpretations of art through history--perhaps a more traditional history of art--are replaced by the notion that human actions or ideas, manifested through time, are reflected in art across history and that differing works of art can be recognized as manifestations of the same actions or ideas through time. If you don't understand this, then perhaps you are as confused as I am right now. Kubler begins with the following statement of assumption: "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." He is therefore effectively expanding the definition of art to include all material and ideological culture, thus extending the more limited discipline of art history into the realm of general anthropological theory. Actually, Kubler is expanding the definitions of both art and history. "the moment just past is extinguished forever, save for the things made during it." The accumulation of material and ideological culture alone survives to represent the evolution of humankind. This point may be self-evident to the archaeologist. However, it is a profound statement nevertheless, pointing out, if nothing else, that what may have been perceived as limits of archaeological inquiry, may be, in fact, the actual objective of such inquiry. The present is the intermediary between the future and the distant past. "Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause wh