1st Edition
A Return to the Object Alfred Gell, Art, and Social Theory
Introduction: Gell and his influences
Part I: Rethinking the frame
Chapter 1: Lessons from the Art Nexus
Chapter 2: The index and indexicality
Chapter 3: The prototype and the model
Chapter 4: Immanent relationality and its consequences
Part II: Following the Prototype
Chapter 5: Virtuosity and style
Chapter 6: Aesthetics and the ethics of relation
Chapter 7: Generativity and transformation
Chapter 8: Agency (social)
Part III: Rediscovering the object
Chapter 9: Material agency
Chapter 10: Colour, Palette and Gestalt
Chapter 11: Patterns and their Transposition
Chapter 12: Motile Animacy
Biography
Susanne Küchler is Professor of Anthropology and Material Culture at University College London.
Timothy Carroll is a UK Research and Innovation Future Leader Fellow in Anthropology at University College London.
'This book is at once penetrating and kaleidoscopic, full of exposition coupled with evocative ethnographic illustration. It extends Gell’s ideas into new domains… The synthesis is extraordinary. Ranging across time and space and diversity of perspectives compared and contrasted, this volume will take its place alongside others—one thinks of The Savage Mind, Purity and Danger.'
— Frederick H. Damon, University of Virginia, USA
"Küchler and Carroll have brought their different anthropological experiences and deep knowledge together in a book to engage the anthropology of art with a deep reading and extension of Alfred Gell’s framework. Calling for a "return to the object," a theoretical project that follows Gell’s movement away from the emphasis on signification and to the study of "relations immanent within objects", the book is ethnographically detailed and philosophically articule. Readers may find it a challenging formulation, spanning over numerous case studies, but it rewards us in profoundly enriching the possibilities of the anthropology of art."
— Fred Myers, New York University, USA
"Vivid, generous, and theoretically exciting, Küchler and Carroll bring the Anthropology of Art back to the world of big ideas. But never at the expense of the objects themselves. Featuring an extraordinary array of ethnographic detail and insight, this landmark publication is a must-read for anyone seeking to become more alive to the generative, relational, and conceptual capacities of images and objects. The work of apprehension it argues for—and offers up—is astonishing."
— Jennifer Deger, James Cook University, Australia
