The eminent art historian George Kubler (1912–1996), author of numerous works on pre-Columbian American culture, dedicated The Shape of Time (1962), his only theoretical work, to the most fundamental principles of art history—the principles by which it distinguishes its subject from that of other disciplines and limits and systematizes its field of study in time and space. Filled with polemical energy directed against the biographical-iconographic approach to art history, its reduction to the history of artists and subjects, Kubler's book was enthusiastically received by leading artists of the 1960s and exerted a significant influence on both art theory and practice. This is the first translation of The Shape of Time into Russian.