ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some theories concerning the agency and reception of artworks themselves. A different kind of exchange takes place between her and the painting, something that involves reflection, affinity, and even 'inspiration' as she invents more and more stories behind the painting's objects. In the pedagogical structure of the Painting Words class, it is the tour and the artworks encountered on it that are identified as the source of the group's creative agency. Importantly for Alfred Gell, attributions of agency are always context-dependent and relational; together these sets of relations compose the art nexus which can become an extremely complex set of agent-patient relations with 'abductions of agency' taking place at different hierarchical levels. Katharine's comments indicate multiple flows of agency at work. Even though she appears to identify a 'trigger', her language makes this ambivalent. The agency of the Index then is a situated one and dependent on a variety of contextual and personal factors.
