Readership: Scholars and advanced students of social and cultural anthropology; art theorists (especially those interested in non-Western art); philosophers interested in art and aesthetics.
Alfred Gell, late Reader in Social Anthropology, London School of Economics
"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
Nicholas Thomas: Foreword 1: The Problem Defined: The Need for an Anthropology of Art 2: The Theory of the Art Nexus 3: The Art Nexus and the Index 4: The Involution of the Index in the Art Nexus 5: The Origination of the Index 6: The Critique of the Index 7: The Distributed Person 8: Style and Culture 9: Conclusion: The Extended Mind Bibliography Index
