"A tool is always intrinsically simple, however elaborate its mechanisms may be, but a work of art, which is a complex of many stages and levels of crisscrossed intentions, is always intrinsically complicated, however simple its effect may seem."

George Kubler, The shape of time, 1962, yale university press, p9

"Cassirer's partial definition of art as a symbolic language has dominated art story studies in our century. A new history of culture anchored upon the work of art as a symbolic expression thus came into being. By these means art has been made to connect to the rest of history.
But the price has been high, for while studies of meaning received all our attention, another definition of art, as a system of formal relations, thereby soffer neglect. This other definition matters more than meaning. In the same sense speech matters more than writing, because speech precede writing, and because writing is but a special case of speech."

George Kubler, The shape of time, 1962, yale university press, ix