The secret lives of artworks

Over the centuries viewers have attributed life, personhood and agency works of art; they kiss them, beat them, or claim that portraits look at viewers, and that statues move, breathe and speak. In the past decades such attributions of life to images have become a central topic in art history, anthropology and psychology. The Secret Lives of Art Works is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology. It thus not only offers a state of the art overview of approaches to this wide spread phenomenon, but also identifies new avenues of inquiry.

Caroline van Eck is professor of the History and Theory of Art and Architecture to 1800 at Leiden University. 
Joris van Gastel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick, and a visiting fellow at Hamburg University. 
Elsje van Kessel is lecturer in Art History at the University of St. Andrew's, Scotland.