Alfred Antony Francis Gell, FBA (/ɡɛl/; June 12, 1945 – January 28, 1997) was a British social anthropologist whose most influential work concerned art, language, symbolism and ritual.
He was trained by Edmund Leach (MPhil, Cambridge University) and Raymond Firth (PhD, London School of Economics)[1] and did his fieldwork in Melanesia and tribal India.
Gell argues that art in general (although his attention focuses on visual artifacts, like the prows of the boats of the Trobriand islands) acts on its users, i.e. achieves agency, through a sort of technical virtuosity.
In this way for Gell works of art, in all cultures, are able to create shared common sense, especially through reasoning with abduction, which already in Aristotle is a less strong inference than induction and deduction, more intuitive and concise.
In his seminal works, "The Enchantment of Technology and the Technology of Enchantment" (1992), and Art and Agency (1998) he draws together the ways of acting in idolatry, fetishism, and witchcraft with contemporary Western art to illustrate the commonalities in how objects mediate and act on social relations.