On Art

...Though he disapproves of such calendrical units, millenia and centuries are the usual durations encountered in his pages...

...The discovery of ancient Peruvian textiles dates back only to 1925 when Dr...

...In the 19th century, for example, landscape-painting as a genre moves through Corot, the Barbizon painters, the Impressionists and Cezanne —each of these phases representing differences in style and technique...

...The conquest of the environment by irrigation and terracing, by metallurgy and material techniques of all kinds, and by social discipline at the expense of individual man, gave Andean society a harsh tone, closer both to the present and to the rigours of tribal life than the more poetic view of existence maintained by the societies of Mesoamerica...

...The eschatology of Pre-Columbian Indian cultures is a relevant case...

...From what internal logic do these art-objects and artifacts spin out their formal existence, regardless of stylistic changes...

...in a few delightful examples, the pottery imitates architecture and shows the local building styles, sometimes with effigies of warriors and householders sitting out on sun-decks and covered terraces...

...Since it is unlikely that so extensive an exhibition will be mounted for another decade, the opportunity to see so many beautiful objects should not be missed...

...How do certain classes of forms develop—and out of what response to cultural needs...

...The climate there (similar, it appears, to the climate of Egypt) preserved most of the highly perishable items in the show...

...The study of Peruvian archeology started comparatively recently...

...The early tribal societies of Mexico, Central America and the Andean regions of South America are Kubler's special province...

...The aim of the historian, regardless of his specialty in erudition, is to portray time...

...Tragically, the Inca Empire that Pizarro destroyed with only a handful of men in a matter of four years, may have been the culmination of the administrative techniques which had evolved over centuries...

...Not until air travel to less accessible Peru began did the scientific study of the Andean region get under way, and it is still far from complete...

...Textiles served as an ideally portable means for the communication of decorative styles, but it is surprising how consistently pottery design followed with patterns that could readily be adapted to or from the loom...

...The Indians of 16th-century America, who had evolved a sophisticated architecture of their own, were suddenly set to building cathedrals in the ornate Plateresque style imported from Spain—a style, ironically, that was slightly retarded in contrast to more progressive architectural developments in Europe at the time...

...They provide him with prime examples of the radical breaking off of traditional developments by some new force (which he terms "cultural interference"): in this instance the superior technological force of an invading army...

...That many of these priceless objects have survived in such perfect condition can be attributed to the hostile climate and difficult terrain of Peru...

...Published six years ago by the Yale University Press, Kubler's book did not occasion a great deal of comment, so far as I know, and I seldom see his name cropping up in more generalized discussions of the history of art...

...The stunning exhibition currently installed at the Guggenheim Museum, Mastercraftsmen of Peru, provides a view of the achievements of the various cultures of the coastal and highland regions of Peru dating from around 1500 bc to 1532 ad, the year Pizarro landed at Tumbes on the northwest coast of the flourishing Inca Empire...

...Nevertheless, his work remains provocative...

...Although there were pioneers in the field in the 19th century, it has not been as thoroughly investigated as Mexican or Central American culture...

...In the Andes," Kubler notes, "utility was the superior consideration...

...The significant exceptions are the sculptured bottles and vases representing animals and men...

...It begins at the top of the ramp with the art of the Inca Empire and spirals downward in time—as well as archeologically?through the Chimu, Nazca and Mochica cultures, to the Chavin horizon and the artifacts of pre-ceramic times...

...In some instances, as in the Wari tapestries (600-1000 ad), the subject matter became so abstracted that the tightly composed planes of rose, beige and olive look like the work of some early Cubist...

...A discussion that concentrates on any one of these is sure to cut the history of the class out of the context of time...

...Kubler takes a lofty view of the history of art...

...And it is principally the shape of time, as his title indicates, that Kubler is bent upon capturing...

...Sawyer informs us in his rewarding catalogue, developed in the central highlands and along the valleys of 40 or more rivers that descend from the mountains to the arid coastal plains...

...in theory it comes to an end with irreproachable and irrefutable lists and tables...

...The decorative styles ranged from geometric patterns to extremely complicated figurative designs of mythological subjects...

...That provocative statement by George Kubler, the Yale art historian and authority on Pre-Columbian cultures, is only one of several ventured in the text or deposited in the footnotes of his little book, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things...

...Julio Tello, the Peruvian archeologist, uncovered the Paracas Necropolis on the southwestern coast, where he found several hundred mummies swathed in elaborately embroidered, painted and woven mantles and shrouds...

...Twills and plain-weaves, delicate and lacy networks, tapestries, were all part of their repertoire...

...That thesis, in so far as I understand it, is that neither a discussion of style (the Cubist style, the Baroque style) nor the biographical approach to individual artists is adequate to explain developments in art...

...These are the questions that Kubler's analysis raises...

...I keep returning to it as if it were a nagging, unsettled problem...

...One can imagine that similar confrontations are now taking place, in Vietnam and all the emerging nations of Africa...

...Given the swift demise of its culture and art, one can see why the convenient logic of style is not enough to explain all the contingencies of art...

...It was a dramatic confrontation, but not unique in the history of art or culture...

...The sleek ducks and seagulls, monkeys and ocelots, together with the innumerable, and sometimes comic, portrait heads of Indian notables are marvels of sensitive modeling...

...Despite the apprehension I feel about the cultural determinism lurking behind his observations, his method does tend to heal the breach between the fine arts and the traditional crafts?a breach that was opened with the Renaissance...

...Several of these items are included in the exhibition as part of a spectacular display of textile design...

...In a roughly contemporary development, the southern Nazca culture (200 bc-600 ad) brought the painting of its beautiful polychrome wares to equal perfection with handsomely abstracted designs of animal deities and ferocious hybrid beasts crowding the surfaces of their ingeniously shaped pottery vessels...

...The exhibition, supervised by Dr...

...Working with fairly primitive equipment, the Indians of the region developed techniques of weaving and dyeing that equaled and often surpassed the products of the Old World for intricacy and richness of color...

...Kubler is more interested in form-classes—landscape-painting or Peruvian stirrup-bottles, say—whose histories outlive specific style designations...

...Sawyer has called it "the most extensive and best organized political unit the Americas had ever seen...

...The jungles east of the Andes have remained virtually untouched...

...In certain quarters, they are considered the early technicians and administrators of the Americas...

...The historian's special contribution," he claims, "is the discovery of the manifold shapes of time...

...The installation has been handled ingeniously...

...The Indian civilizations, Dr...

...This stock-taking, however, cannot go on endlessly...

...Alan Sawyer, director of the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., has taken over three years to assemble and includes more than 700 objects, most of them fragile examples of pottery and textiles drawn from private and public collections in Peru...

...The difficulty is that what he has to say is so generalized, one clutches —like a drowning man at straws?at every bit of concrete evidence Kubler offers to support his thesis...

...One might cite others, including the following argument: "Schools and styles are the products of the long stock-taking of the 19th-century historians of art...

...More than that, his study enlarges our perspectives on the arts and their role in cultural history...

...In the 100 years before the Spanish arrived, the Incas put together an empire that ranged from northern Ecu-dor southward to Chile and Argentina—a region apparently serviced by a great system of roads and administered by a highly trained managerial corps...

...The Mochica culture (200 bc-700 ad) offers the most striking examples of realistic sculpture in the designs of its stirrup-handled bottles...

...Kubler is, if you will, the Proust of art history...

...Kubler, in The Art and Architecture of Ancient America (Penguin Books) indicates that the Andean cultures were recognizably different from those of the Mexican and Mayan peoples...