Review
This book changes the very basis of the way art has been viewed in the human sciences. It presents what is the first fundamental theory for an anthropology of art. Its publication is a major event. Maurice Bloch, FBA, Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics. This is a remarkable work ... witty, elegant, broad in its compass and scintillating in its detail. It is characteristically polemical ... alive with his sense of purpose and his quite original and captivating account of how we are captivated by relations between forms ... The book know what to do with the limits of form--one suddenly sees how anthropology might surpass itself. Marilyn Strathern, FBA, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge An extraordinary achievement. Gell offers a profound new understanding of collective agency which completely reshapes the anthropology of art, redefines its objects of study, and inspires new conclusions. Caroline Humphrey, Reader in Asian Anthropology, University of Cambridge
Review
"[This] is not only a contribution to anthropology but a subtle and original counterweight to the banalities of globalization theory."--Times Literary Supplement
Reading this book modified my self-image and expanded my understanding of the image-making industry. The text is a little disjointed because it's a rough draft (the author did not live to see it edited or published), but Gell's brilliance and humor are nonetheless transmitted by the book. Hang in there. Although some conflicting portions of the text have since been pointed out ...
- "The position I have reached is that an anthropological theory of art is one which "looks like" an anthropological theory, in which certain of the relata, whose relations are described in the theory, are works of art. But what do "anthropological" theories look like?Can one really give an identificat"
- "It is important to understand, though, that "patients" in agent/patient interactions are not entirely passive; they may resist. The concept of agency implies the overcoming of resistance, difficulty, inertia, etc. Art objects are characteristically "difficult". They are difficult to make, difficult "
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The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Syntax (Oxford Handbooks)
The Fasces
The Primacy of Doubt
Landscape and Space
Future Morality
Figurines