George Kubler
George Kubler (1912–1996) was Sterling Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. He was among the foremost scholars on the art of Pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art.
Kubler, George
Kubler, George
United States of America
Subscribed to the newsletter
Send me site notifications emails
Description: Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00095
This handbook serves as the first comprehensive publication of the Yale University Art Gallery's distinguished collection of Precolumbian art, which features notable pieces from throughout Mesoamerica and from every period. The nearly 300 object entries are arranged by region and include historical, iconographical, and structural information. A mineralogical study of the collection includes an explanation of the methods used to make the attributions, as well as a description of the minerals themselves. Clearly organized and thoroughly researched, this publication is an essential reference for scholars, students, and collectors of Precolumbian art.
Print publication date January 1986 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780894670398
EISBN 9780300232660
Illustrations 270 Images
Print Status out of print
Description: The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: The Mexican, Maya and Andean Peoples
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00123
Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art

This important book examines the development of the principal styles of ancient American architecture, sculpture, and painting until the end of the Aztec and Inca empires in the sixteenth century. Written by esteemed scholar George Kubler, the volume aims to explain works of art as such, rather than dwelling upon those ideas about civilization that art is often made to illustrate in books of a more archaeological character. The Art and Architecture of Ancient America is arranged by geographical regions in three main divisions: Mexico, Central America and western South America. Architecture, sculpture, and painting occupy most of the volume, but town planning, pottery, textiles, and jewelry are also discussed. Many of the illustrations portray little known sites, buildings, and objects.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal*
Print publication date November 1992 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300053258
EISBN 9780300225594
Illustrations 448
Print Status in print
Description: Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00046
In this book one of the pioneering thinkers in the history of Pre-Columbian art considers the varying esthetic responses of Native Americans, Europeans, and Americanists to indigenous art of the Americas. George Kubler chronicles the lives and writings of seventy historians, explorers, missionaries, archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians who lived between 1492 and 1984 and who devoted sustained attention to Amerindian art. His “biographical surroundings” focus on how these individuals differed in their ways of evaluating Amerindian art forms and what this reveals both about the art and about the development of esthetic thought.

Drawing on such sources as writings about Renaissance travels and military actions, the records of church missionaries in converting and resettling native peoples, statements by native and European historians in the seventeenth century, debates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about the worth of America to the world, archaeological and anthropological research since the mid-nineteenth century, and recent esthetic theories about ancient American art, Kubler presents the impressions of individuals form Columbus to Diego de Landa to Charles Darwin to Alfred Kroeber and Alfonso Caso. The book also includes and discusses drawings and photographs by travelers and explorers. Kubler’s historiographic approach allows us to view Amerindian art from a fresh and challenging perspective.
Print publication date January 1991 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300046328
EISBN 9780300222043
Illustrations 54
Print Status in print
Description: The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00157
First published in 1962, The Shape of Time presented a radically new approach to the study of art history. Drawing upon new insights in fields such as anthropology and linguistics, George Kubler pursues such questions as the nature of time, the nature of change, and the meaning of invention.  The result is a view of historical sequence aligned on continuous change more than upon the static notion of style—the usual basis for conventional histories of art. Since its publication, the book has become a classic in the field.
Print publication date September 1962 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300100617
EISBN 9780300232561
Illustrations 0
Print Status in print