The Shape of Time

In this article, I really enjoyed the analogy of art and artists being like a railroad–– we must take into consideration the railroad as a whole and cannot focus in on one specific part of the track or state in which the train travels through. In relation to artists this means that we must think about the entire art movement and the sequence of artists, because who came before and after each is very important. Timing is one of the big aspects of the fame of artists, because it was very crucial that their talent lined up with the era in which they lived. Later in the article Kubler writes, "the history of art abounds in examples of misplaced temperaments like the romantics wrongly born in periods requiring classic measure, or the innovators living in periods governed by rigid rule." This continues the point of the original analogy and shows that timing is a huge factor in the fame of artists and their works.