Art'S Agency And Art History

• Explores important concepts and perspectives in the anthropology of art
  
• Includes nine groundbreaking case studies by an internationally renowned group of art historians and art theorists
  
• Covers a wide range of periods, including Bronze-Age China, Classical Greece, Rome, and Mayan, as well as the modern Western world
  
• Features an introductory essay by leading experts, which helps clarify issues in the field
  
• Includes numerous illustrations

Jeremy Tanner is a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he teaches Classical archaeology and comparative art. He is the editor of The Sociology of Art: a Reader (2003), and the author of The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation (2006)

Preface.

List of Illustrations.

Notes on Contributors.

1. Introduction: Art and Agency and Art History: Jeremy Tanner (University College London ) and Robin Osborne (University of Cambridge).

2. Enchantment and Sacrifice in Early Egypt: David Wengrow (University College London).

3. Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia: Irene J. Winter (Harvard University).

4. Portraits and Agency: A Comparative View: Jeremy Tanner (University College London).

5. The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor: Jessica Rawson (University of Oxford).

6. The Material Efficacy of the Elizabethan Jeweled Miniature: a Gellian Experiment: Jessen Kelly (University of California at Berkeley).

7. Representational Art in Ancient Peru and the Work of Alfred Gell: Jeffrey Quilter (Peabody Museum, Harvard).

8. Gell's Idols and Roman Cult: Peter Stewart (Courtauld Institute of Art in London).

9. Sex, Agency, and History: the Case of Athenian Painted Pottery: Robin Osborne (University of Cambridge).

10. Abducting the Agency of Art: Whitney Davis (University of California at Berkeley).

Index