Syllabus
* Tematické okruhy:
1. Introductory Class - Antropology of art
2. Gell’s Art and Agency: genealogy and arguments of a theory
3. The building blocks: Artist, Index, Prototype, and Recipient
4. On agents and patients in art
5. Animation of images, design and representational art, style
6. Animation of images in India: a religious practice
7. Animation of images in India: a practice of politics
8. Raja Ravi Varma: the first Indian modern painter
9. Bengal school of Art: Struggle for an indigenous modernity
10. Visual strategies of picturing the nation
11. Women’s hues: Amrita Sher Gill, Arpita Singh and others
12. Nalini Malani and contemporaries: beyond the indigenous modernity
Annotation
The course presents a rather complex and influential theory of art by Alfred Gell and through a prism of that theory it analyses selected examples of artistic agency in India. The course is open to all Faculty students as well as
ERASMUS students, possibly with some prior experience with either Indian studies and/or cultural/social anthropology. The credits will be awarded for a short 8-10p long essay in which the students will demonstrate their ability to apply Gell’s theoretical and analytical approach to the art object of their choice and to describe the social relations around him.