Art and Agency

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