I’m intrigued by Kauffman’s discussion of the center, the periphery, and their relationship in both the political sense and the artistic sense. The first distinction between these two realms is that capital cities are very rarely the cultural centers of the areas he deals with – something that is true even today (New York, Lahore, St Petersburg to an extent, Florence/Milan). This also plays into Kubler’s idea of the periphery as the place conducive to major creative and cultural development because of the distance from the powerful center. The difference he asserts between the province and the periphery shows how the periphery is both on the same developmental level as the center and on the same spatial level as the province (aka removed from the center).

The idea of influence is worth examining too – Kauffman says that for Kubler’s periphery, in the influence is not limited to one from the center but is open to multiple inspirations from several regions. Relatedly, placing an artistic map on top of a political one, as Kubler says, shows how the trends and development of artistic centers disregard political boundaries. I found this fascinating because it leads to an examination of the kinds of art that develops across regions, of the kinds that stay within political boundaries, and how each can be representational of it origin/development.