George Kubler: Use

George Kubler was American art historian. Explore interesting quotes on use.
George Kubler: 30   quotes 0   likes

“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. By this view the universe of man-made things simply coincides with the history of art. It then becomes urgent to devise better ways to devise better ways of considering everything men have made. This we may achieve sooner by proceeding from art rather than from use, for if we depart from use alone, all useless things are overlooked, but if we take the desirableness of things as our point of departure, then useful objects are properly seen as things we value more or less dearly.”

George Kubler

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 1

Men , World , Beauty , Art

“The seventeenth-century academic separation between fine and useful arts first fell out of fashion nearly a century ago.”

George Kubler

George Kubler (1961), cited in: Guido Guerzoni (2011). Apollo and Vulcan: The Art Markets in Italy, 1400-1700. p. 27

Art , Fashion

“Although inanimate things remain our most tangible evidence that the old human past really existed, the conventional metaphors used to describe this visible past are mainly biological.”

George Kubler

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 33; as cited in Lee (2001, p. 58)

Past

“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 flux of events the shapes and behavior of organisms.”

George Kubler

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 8 as cited in: Pamela M. Lee, " " Ultramoderne": Or, How George Kubler Stole the Time in Sixties Art. http://xenopraxis.net/readings/lee_ultramoderne.pdf" Grey Room (2001): 55.

Life , Behavior