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ALFRED GELL
Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1998)
(ISBN 978-0-19-828014-9)

Quotes
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“The idea of agency is a culturally prescribed framework for thinking about
causation​, when what happens is (in some vague sense) supposed to be intended
in advance by some person-agent or thing-agent
...
17
“We recognize agency, ​ex post facto​, in the anomalous configuration of the causal
milieu - but we cannot detect it in advance, that is, we cannot tell that someone is an
agent before they ​act as an agent​, before they disturb the causal milieu in such a
way as can only be attributed to their agency
...
20
“In speaking of artefacts as ‘secondary agents’ I am referring to the fact that the
origination and manifestation of agency takes place in a milieu which consists (in
large part) of artefacts, and that agents, thus, ‘are’ and do not merely ‘use’ the
artefacts which connect them to social others
...
21
“The concept of the ‘patient’ is not, therefore a simple one, in that being a ‘patient’
may be a form of (derivative) agency”
...
23
“The same ‘false mirror’ effect is observable in myriad other contexts, and may,
according to Benjamin (​see Taussig 1993; Benjamin 1933​), constitute the very secret
of mimesis; that is, ​to perceive (to internalize) is to imitate​, and thus we become
(and produce) what we perceive
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31
“
...
” p
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The index is articulated in the causal milieu, whereas intentional
agency and patient-hood somehow lie just outside it
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” ​p
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Instead - so compelling is the illusion - we see
these depressions as instances, rather than representations, of causality
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43

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“Because one’s hand is not actually directly controlled by the visualized or anticipated
line that one wants to draw, but by some mysterious muscular alchemy which is
utterly opaque to introspection, the line which appears on the paper is always
something of a surprise
...
” (if artist can be said to have a
visualisation of line at all) ​p
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Dennett quotes Valéry as saying ‘It takes two to
invent anything
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​p
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It is
now a proud man ​jIna​ [spirit] with plenty of women running after him
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His face is shining, he looks this way
and that, and all the people wonder about this beautiful and terrible thing
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I say to myself, this is what my ​neme​ [familiar
spirit] has brought into my mind
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​ How can a man make such
a thing? It is a fearful thing that I can do
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No woman can do it
...
” (Gell 1998:
46; d’Azevedo 1973: 148) (African carver, check source) ​p
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Any object that one encounters in the world invites
the question ‘how did this thing get to be here?’” ​p
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However, the
personhood of the artist, the prototype, or the recipient can fully invest the index in
artefactual form, so that to all intents and purposes it becomes a person, or at least a
partial person
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” ​p
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This defeat is,
however, profitable to me also, to the extent that in mentally retracing Vermeer’s
origination of his picture, the technical and imaginative performance which
culminated in the finished work, I do manage, exercising such powers as I possess,
to attain a certain point, before I break off in bewilderment and can follow Vermeer no
longer through the maze of his artistic agency
...
] I
cannot achieve the necessary congruence between my experience of agency and
the agency (Vermeer’s) which originated the painting
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69
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“The projection, or externalization, of the agency involved in perception (the
perceptual act) into the thing perceived is, cognitively speaking, the source of its
animation
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78
“Anthropologists have long recognized that social relationships, to endure over time,
have to be founded on ‘unfinished business’
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So it is with ​patterns; they slow perception down​, or
even halt it, so that the decorated object is never fully possessed at all, but is always
in the process of becoming possessed
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80-81
“Eye-contact seems to give direct access to other minds because the subject sees
herself as an object, from the point of view of the other as a subject
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” (interesting explanation for eye contact in comparison with
darshan​: In Hinduism, a blessing delivered by the “appearance” of a superior being
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​p
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“The ‘homunculus-effect’, in other words, can be achieved without
anthropomorphizing the index, so long as the crucial feature of ​concentricity and
‘containment’​ is preserved
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133
“But this [‘homunculus within a homunculus’] ‘problem’ is also an advantage, in that it
tends to blur the distinction between the ‘induced’ kind of animacy which is imposed
externally on the idol by enmeshing it in praxis, language, social relations and
routines, and the ‘internal’ agency which the idol is supposed to possess as a ‘mind’
encapsulated in a surrounding body
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” ​p
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And then what
would we find? Who can say - and does it matter? - for by now it is apparent that the
animation of the image is not a matter of finding the ‘sacred centre’ at all
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” (animation as an ​infinite procession of skins​) ​p
...
according to my argument, ​the psychological saliency of artworks is a function of
the stylistic relationship between any given artwork and other artworks in the same
style​
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This is the basis of the intuition we have that in some way stylistic affinity
among works of art echoes the unity of thought which binds members of social
groups together; style is to artworks what group-identification is to social agents
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163
“There is a kind of image known as a ​hologram ​(made by photographing the
interference fringes reflected off objects illuminated by a coherent laser light-source)
which has the curious property that any part of a holographic image contains an
attenuated version of the information contained in the hologram as a totality
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Style in art is like this in the sense that from one item in the
corpus (or a selection of them) it is possible to reconstruct the others to at least some
degree
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166
“In fact, it is an​ error to imagine that ‘culture’ ​in some general sense, ​is
responsible for the visual style of artefacts​
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] Artefacts are shaped in the ‘inter-artefactual
domain’, obeying the immanent injunctions governing formal stylistic relationships
among artefacts, not in response to external injunctions from some imaginary ‘head
office’ [culture]
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216
“On the other hand, it may be possible to construct arguments connecting the ‘axes
of coherence’ within styles as systems, and other systemic properties of culture
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216
“The successful Kula operator controls the world of Kula because his mind has
become coextensive with that world
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‘Internal’ (mental processes)
and ‘outside’ (transactions in objectified personhood) have fused together; mind and
reality are one, and - not to put too fine a point on it - something like a godhead is
achievable
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A Kula operator is a
respected trader within the “Kula ring” exchange system in the Milne Bay Province of
Papua New Guinea
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As the operator’s possession travels on through
exchange, it is still considered his, and rewards are channelled back to him the more
his exchange item travels far and wide, carrying his name with it
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) ​p
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] when we come to consider the expanded, transactable, ‘persons’ and
personhood on which the Kula system is founded, we are brought to recognize that
‘mind’ can exist objectively​ as well as subjectively; that is, as a pattern of
transactable objects - indexes of personhood, in this instance, arm-shells, and
necklaces - as well as a fleeting succession of ‘thoughts’, ‘intentions’, ‘mental states’,
etc
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” ​p
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Without repetition,
art would lose its memory
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233
“In other words, the temporal structure of index-to-index relations in the artist’s
oeuvre ​externalizes or objectifies the same type of relations as exist between the
artist’s internal states of mind as a being endowed with consciousness
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” ​p
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” (You can ​only see the network through a node​
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) ​p
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We can only appreciate it by participating in
its ​unfolding life​
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Therefore, for the viewer, protentions and retentions extend far beyond indexes
encompassed by the artist’s oeuvre and personal influences
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242

Summary and Thoughts
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“​Index​” is the thing that mediates the agency of a primary agent that “intends”
“​Artist​” is the agent immediately responsible for the making of the index
“​Recipient​” is the agent that witnesses/engages the index
“​Prototype​” is the agent that is represented by the index
Any of the four above terms assume either​ “agent” or “patient” positions​ in
relation to one another, and are not used as classificatory terms
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These relations can often be expanded into ​complex nested
hierarchies​
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The combinations can include only some, all or multiples of the terms
above, and there is nothing to prevent any of them taking either patient or agent
positions in the relationships
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29
Gell claims that art objects make possible an ​abduction of agency​
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Not abduction as

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in “stealing”, but an inference of primary agent power beyond the visibility of the index
(secondary agent) which mediates it
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13-16
As an anthropologist, Gell is looking at the social function of art objects as harbingers
of agency and therefore does not concern himself with philosophically defending
certain definitions of agency
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Gell distinguishes between ​primary and secondary agents​; whereby secondary
agents are things that do not “intend” in themselves, agency does not originate with
them (if agency can be said to originate from an entity)
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Yet, he insists,
these secondary agents ​are still ​agents, in that it is they that affect us and in that
humans frequently treat objects as if they were persons
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21 quote above
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There is no acknowledgement of agency, no empirical data evidencing it,
without the artefacts through which agents distribute disturbances in the causal
milieu
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I think I disagree? ​What is resemblance if not a
pairing of visual data with convention?​ (a history of seeing things a certain way)
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This is an issue of reading, and the character of
elements within abstract imagery or abstract elements within imagery (the line)
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It applies to representational art too,
see Persephone quote above
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43
The accelerated thought-motion process of drawing I refer to elsewhere actually
belongs to “​ballistic​” activities
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Thus the customisation of
drawing movements develops over trial and error sequences, as for a line even of
your own making, you must wait and see to have any say over an (eventual)
outcome
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See p
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Reciprocal relations between an artist and her own index pertain not only to single
artworks, but to her ​oeuvre​
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He suggests that iconoclasts prove those most blinded and
awed by the illusion of art by suffering to such extents from the kind of agency
abducted from it, so as to have been motivated to a violent reworking
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The index is beguiling because its history is intricate and maze-like to use Gell’s
examples of enchantment in pattern making described later in the book
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Gell argues that the ​‘tackiness’ of abundant surface decoration hooks a patient, and
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that the viscosity of this absorption may perform the social role of forming
‘attachment’ ​between persons and things
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Gell alludes to
the work of Gombrich (1984), looking at how cultures have oscillated between
predilections for and abhorrence toward abundant surface decoration throughout
history
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81-83
Gell refers to Epicurus and Lucretius and their doctrine of “flying simulacra”, that
images are really thin skins that emanate from things and hit our eyes
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pp
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The homunculus effect​ of iconic idols and the abduction of agency: they do not
prompt the feeling of possessing agency because they resemble what they represent
(though this does link the index to the prototype), but depicting anthropomorphic
orifices is suggestive of an interiority separate from an exteriority, an internal
psychology, a homunculus model upon which we naturally model our own experience
of agency
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See p
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Egyptian idols were in themselves often hollow, with inlaid eyes, but then they were
enclosed in arks, and temples with concentric layers of rooms
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The Rurutan god A’a, sprouting smaller versions of itself, a fractal god
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155-220​: Marquesan art (Polynesian island of
Marquesas) consisted largely of bodily appendages and the aesthetics of covering
and embellishing a person
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The graphic, 2D art and its
significant propensity to (protectively) cover seems to translate even to 2D, plastic
art, where figures resemble 3D shapes with a 2D relief “wrapping”
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By “​axes of coherence​” between style and culture, Gell means that stylistic choices
on the level of the creation of the index is not governed by culture, but by retentions
and protentions directed at other works in the corpus
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g
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In the case of Marquesan art, Gell suggests a “principle of least difference” common
to these types of transformations, which he links to the Marquesan social focus on
differentiation between classes in environment where homogenisation always
seemed imminent
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​The abstracted principles of transformations
characterise cultural style, not the individual transformations themselves​
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216 above
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The
carving is used to provide a distinguished deceased person with a skin for death
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During the ceremony a donor “kills” the carving with money and thus acquires the
right to ​remember​ the image of the Malagan carving
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The artefact itself
becomes a disposable and worthless object after the ceremony, as the Malagan is in
the form of a memory that only the donor owns
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​pp 223 - 228
“​Retention​”: relationship to a past index within an oeuvre (a “weak” retention is
artistic habit/stylistic mannerism resulting from previous art making, while a “strong”
retention is a deliberate copy of a previous work)
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Retention, protention and modification​ ​are Husserlian terms used to describe his
model of time-consciousness, a subjective model of time that is relative to a point of
reference in which past and present undergo relevant modifications through time
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​ Artworks become the “shadows” of personhood​,
and indexical to them
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Everything which moves has to stop now and again, and where
the god stops is where the things of the world, the sun, the moon, the stars and the
winds materialise
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Lévi-Strauss compares
this with Bergson’s metaphysics, quoting him with, “A great current of creative energy
gushes forth through matter, to obtain from it what it can
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e
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” Finally, Duchamp, who entered a very
deliberate temporal engagement with his work by preparing a great corpus of
sketches protending towards ​The Large Glass​ (1915-23), draws his Network of
Standard Stoppages sketch on top of an accretion of earlier works (this canvas has
been used twice before)
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I think Gell is saying that the art object is the 3D shadow of the
4D world, and that when the world stops it is objectified into an index from
which we can abduct agency
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