Art's Agency and Art History

by Osborne, Robin; Tanner, Jeremy

• ISBN13: 9780470776629
• ISBN10: 0470776625
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-02-25
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Art's Agency and Art History re-articulates the relationship of the anthropology of art to key methodological and theoretical approaches in art history, sociology, and linguistics.

• 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

Author Biography

Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge. He writes widely across the range of Greek history, Greek archaeology, and Classical art history. He is the author of Archaic and Classical Greek Art (1998) and of Greek History (2004).

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)

Table of Contents

Series Editor’s Preface.

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