An illuminating intellectual biography of a pioneering and singular figure in American art history. Art historian George A. Kubler (1912–1996) was a foundational scholar of ancient American art and archaeology as well as Spanish and Portuguese architecture. During over five decades at Yale University, he published seventeen books that included innovative monographs, major works of synthesis, and an influential theoretical treatise. In this biography, Thomas F. Reese analyzes the early formation, broad career, and writings of Kubler, casting nuanced light on the origins and development of his thinking. Notable in Reese’s discussion and contextualization of Kubler’s writings is a revealing history and analysis of his Shape of Time—a book so influential to students, scholars, artists, and curious readers in multiple disciplines that it has been continuously in print since 1962. Reese reveals how pivotal its ideas were in Kubler’s own thinking: rather than focusing on problems of form as an ordering principle, he increasingly came to sequence works by how they communicate meaning. The author demonstrates how Kubler, who professed to have little interest in theory, devoted himself to the craft of art history, discovering and charting the rules that guided the propagation of structure and significance through time

Today when we hear the word “craft,” a whole host of things come immediately to mind: microbreweries, artisanal cheeses, and an array of handmade objects. Craft has become so overused, that it can grate on our ears as pretentious and strain our credulity. But its overuse also reveals just how compelling craft has become in modern life. In The Shape of Craft, Ezra Shales explores some of the key questions of craft: who makes it, what do we mean when we think about a crafted object, where and when crafted objects are made, and what this all means to our understanding of craft. He argues that, beyond the clichés, craft still adds texture to sterile modern homes and it provides many people with a livelihood, not just a hobby. Along the way, Shales upends our definition of what is handcrafted or authentic, revealing the contradictions in our expectations of craft. Craft is—and isn’t—what we think.

Considers the problem of stylistic change in art, arguing that art is not reducible to external political, social, or economic determinants

Reviews the work of nineteenth-century German art critics and connects their writings with the basic philosophical problems of aesthetics considered by Kant, Schiller, and Hegel

"This book offers an intellectual biography of George Kubler (1912-96), the foundational scholar and historian of ancient American art and archaeology and Spanish and Portuguese architecture"--