While delineating the parameters for anthropology of art, the famous Alfred Gell's book, Art and Agency, left apart most of the anthropology authors, what arises some embarrassing and rarely dealt with questions: is it possible to produce good theory with no references to achieved knowledge in this particular field? The subjects within anthropology are so differently undertaken that doesn't make any sense to refer to common ways of approaching them? What exactly we loose which a narrative so self centered? Is my point of view that theory cannot be treated like a list of sentences that can be added to one another according to its isolated importance. This article proposes an analysis of Alfred Gell's narrative, of how he connects its propositions. I will examine, overall, his readings, the authors he quotes, like Peirce, Sally Price and others, and how he fits them on his argumentation. The objective of this exercise is to put in evidence some conceptions about art contained in his formulations, not only in his own definitions, and to enlarge the range within which we consider references to build anthropology of art.
Alfred Gell; anthropological theory; anthropology of art; symbolic conventions