Living Statues: Alfred Gell's Art and Agency, Living Presence Response and the Sublime

Abstract

At issue in the reception of Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency is the relation between this ahistorical account of art works as agents operating in social networks and the historical study of art. In this article the merits are considered of applying a Gellian analysis to one, very widespread, case of art acting on the viewer: living presence response, in which viewers react to art works as if they are living beings. The fi rst section of the article argues that such responses make sense only if their experiental aspect is taken into account, and Gell’s art nexus is adapted accordingly. Concentrating on the experience of art seeming alive also allows for an historical account of such responses. In the second part the argument is that theories of the sublime, as developed fi rst by Longinus and subsequently by eighteenth-century authors such as Burke, Lawson and Usher, can be read as a theory of art’s agency, while the experience of living presence can be read as a sublime experience.