ABSTRACT
This argument is directed against the chronological system that has for so long dominated art history’s professional activities. Its orderly progression of periods from ancient, medieval, renaissance to modern and contemporary betrays a Eurocentric parochialism and fails to recognize that the world’s cultures do not organize time according to a teleological chronology. Subscribing to a heterochonic view of time, the author argues that not only objects, works of art, but also subjects, the humans who create and treasure them, are constituted by many different forms of time according to their own experiences. Works of art do not just belong to the historical horizon to which chronology would assign them, but have the capacity to provoke aesthetic responses in a variety of different historical moments. This power to break, or escape, time is anachronic—it cannot be measured chronologically. The anachronic event that takes place when human subjects encounter these privileged objects is an aesthetic moment, one that cannot be predicted or defined. The argument is illustrated with objects from several different cultures that subscribe to distinct systems of time. These forms of temporality cannot be reduced to the peculiar chronological framework adopted by Europe during its period of global expansion and colonization, one that is now reinforced and guaranteed by global capitalism. While chronology, if not teleology, is clearly recognized as the world’s dominant time system, is it not possible to attempt to capture the nature of the multitudinous forms of temporality that exceed its framework?
