American art historian George Kubler worked primarily on the art of pre-Columbian America, as well as 16th-century Spain, Portugal and Mexico. The Shape of Time (1962) is his only theoretical work devoted to the problems of historical chronology in the light of the expansion of the research field of art history to the whole world and the entire observable history of mankind. Reflecting on the applicability of historical categories to colossal volumes of data and huge time periods, Kubler raises and tries to resolve two fundamental questions: firstly, what is the place of works of art in the totality of material culture, how should artistic objects and things as such be classified, in what ways do they coincide? where the history of art and the history of things diverge; and second, what time scales are required to organize these stories. Equally close attention to a thing and its duration determines Kubler’s point of view; the vocation of a historian is the discovery and study of the forms of time. The scientific scope of his book, which incorporated approaches from a wide range of disciplines - from art history to mathematics and information theory, made it influential not only in art history, but also in advanced art, among minimalists, conceptualists and their followers.