The Art of Collecting

[Scmick Schmowens]

I'm sure there are reams of academic papers written on this and the psychological, pseudo-psychological, emotional, Oedipal, Freudian, blah, blah, blah, etc. aspects of it all.

these days I believe the research is in the direction of neuroscience, specifically that some people are clearly more novelty seeking than others, and that this is caused by how our individual brains work (due to a combination of hereditary and environmental factors). I suspect the born collector is someone high on that novelty seeking scale.

[a bag of it]

I am a poor college student, so I have no collections of anything to speak of, but I have planned future collections in my head since I was a little kid. If I won the lottery, I would collect glass artwork, paintings, corals and fish, guitars, cars, craft beers, and perhaps marijuana. Though beer and weed do not age very well, so it would be more of a rotating collection.

One aspect of collecting that I struggle with is my desire for a somewhat minimalist lifestyle. I have accepted the fact that I will never be an absolute minimalist, but currently I can fit everything I own into my car and that feels somewhat liberating to some degree. The thought of buying a house and settling down in one area is not appealing and I'm not sure it will be any time in the near future. Once that does happen I think that starting up some of those collections would be a bit easier.

[BSR]

i think my biggest disagreement here comes from the way most of you understand the word 'innate'. How on earth can you imagine that something as deeply cultural as the practice of collecting could be rooted in the individual's brains of the people who collect? Generally what is considered as 'maybe' innate by neuroscientists are extremely general skills, like the ability to speak or to count... and even on these activities there are debates. More generally, it is obvious that most typical human behiaviors are environementally driven: they develop as reactions to a context. Of course we may formulate the hypothesis that people who collect a lot do possess much more general properties (which ones? i don't know) and that given a specific environement which serve as a set of stimuli, they react by adopting the collecting behavior...
I'm surprised by the complete lack of very very basic scientific realism of this conversation. Saying that psychological features are innate and independent from the social and environmental frames that surround the development of one's brain capabilities is complete nonsense given today's science.

And thank you faust for the Benjamin's essay, I didn't know it. There is also a great novel by Balzac, Le cousin Pons, on collecting. Also, the general defiance against psychoanalysis on this topic strikes me as highly symptomatic

[malaesthetique]

these days I believe the research is in the direction of neuroscience, specifically that some people are clearly more novelty seeking than others, and that this is caused by how our individual brains work (due to a combination of hereditary and environmental factors). I suspect the born collector is someone high on that novelty seeking scale.

I think collecting, if it is to be anything remotely respectable or worthwhile, has more to do with affective and cognitive relationships toward material objects imbued with meaning, significance, and thus possessing transformative agency, rather than the simple case of one being an identifiable "novelty seeking" type or obsessive archivist. Perhaps it is misguided for me to be so normative about what collecting ought to be, but I thought we were discussing it "as an art". The reductive thrust of most neuroscience is in my opinion the biggest enemy of aesthetics and humanity, and its demystifying agenda does not enhance the experience of good, valuable, epoche inducing art.

Shogun8- I appreciate you calling me out on my remarks about Pez collectors. I am deeply post-critical in most respects, as most critical perspectives we encounter lack nuance and complexity, and can be viewed as pedagogical instruments of interpellation. Critical thought itself is very "western", though i think the east/west dichotomy operative in your recent curatorial exhibit is itself unstable when you really press on it.

As much as I try to step out of my own ideological processes I still find it difficult to rank all objects on an equal plane: my empirical experience of the world is characterized by inequity, difference, and disparity of value. So I voice my opinion and take a position. Just as I don't care for when innocuous ideas and concepts dominate the production of clothing, I also don't care for when their theoretical counterparts dominate a discussion. I prefer more creative modes of thought, and I think that underrepresented ideas like distributive agency (advanced by Jane Bennet following Deleuze and Latour), which destabilize the prime mover paradigm and canonical thinking, and can enhance our understanding and multiply our appreciation of the material non-subjects we choose to collect and the reasons we admire the designers that we do.

Faust- That Benjamin essay was a great read--I had forgotten how much I enjoy his deeply personal analytic style.

[malaesthetique]

Also, the general defiance against psychoanalysis on this topic strikes me as highly symptomatic

Its widespread far beyond this topic sadly.

Not afraid to contradict myself over the course of this discussion: cosign the vapidity of understanding anything as innate. We are all dividuals afterall.

[malaesthetique]

I've just finished curating an entire exhibition which postulates (amongst other things) that such distinctions are largely a Western construct (and really a European one) because in some countries like Japan which has a very sophisticated visual culture, there really is no distinction made between high and low art and/or art and craft. When it comes to collecting fashion, one might even say that such a pursuit might be on the lower end of the low/high debate being so closely tied to popular culture (though of course, CCP, Aitor Throup, BBS, et. al. would certainly not be considered mainstream).

What is the difference between a sophisticated/non-sophistocated visual culture if not high and low?

I like sophisticated ideas but Japan lacks a sophisticated critical culture. This is one of the many things holding the culture back with respect to civil rights issues and is precisely what I dislike about it the most.

[Scmick Schmowens]

i think my biggest disagreement here comes from the way most of you understand the word 'innate'. How on earth can you imagine that something as deeply cultural as the practice of collecting could be rooted in the individual's brains of the people who collect? Generally what is considered as 'maybe' innate by neuroscientists are extremely general skills, like the ability to speak or to count... and even on these activities there are debates. More generally, it is obvious that most typical human behiaviors are environementally driven: they develop as reactions to a context.

What do I know, I was a history major

But from what I know, research in neuroscience is telling us that our behaviors are not solely environmentally driven. They are some mix of genetics + environment, something on the order of 50/50.

People who, from childhood, collect one thing after another obsessively may share some kind of neurological feature. Is that crazy?

A really great book on some of this is: http://www.amazon.com/The-Compass-Pl...dp/B004H4XI2M/

[Shogun8]

Just got around to reading the Benjamin essay - really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing, Faust!

[Faust]

I think collecting, if it is to be anything remotely respectable or worthwhile, has more to do with affective and cognitive relationships toward material objects imbued with meaning, significance, and thus possessing transformative agency, rather than the simple case of one being an identifiable "novelty seeking" type or obsessive archivist. Perhaps it is misguided for me to be so normative about what collecting ought to be, but I thought we were discussing it "as an art". The reductive thrust of most neuroscience is in my opinion the biggest enemy of aesthetics and humanity, and its demystifying agenda does not enhance the experience of good, valuable, epoche inducing art.

Shogun8- I appreciate you calling me out on my remarks about Pez collectors. I am deeply post-critical in most respects, as most critical perspectives we encounter lack nuance and complexity, and can be viewed as pedagogical instruments of interpellation. Critical thought itself is very "western", though i think the east/west dichotomy operative in your recent curatorial exhibit is itself unstable when you really press on it.

As much as I try to step out of my own ideological processes I still find it difficult to rank all objects on an equal plane: my empirical experience of the world is characterized by inequity, difference, and disparity of value. So I voice my opinion and take a position. Just as I don't care for when innocuous ideas and concepts dominate the production of clothing, I also don't care for when their theoretical counterparts dominate a discussion. I prefer more creative modes of thought, and I think that underrepresented ideas like distributive agency (advanced by Jane Bennet following Deleuze and Latour), which destabilize the prime mover paradigm and canonical thinking, and can enhance our understanding and multiply our appreciation of the material non-subjects we choose to collect and the reasons we admire the designers that we do.

Faust- That Benjamin essay was a great read--I had forgotten how much I enjoy his deeply personal analytic style.

THANK YOU! I am glad I'm not the only one who thinks that way.

Shogun, I disagree with you a) lumping the high/low art divide and b) art/craft divide together. I think either it got lost in translation or you are misinterpreting something about Japan here - there is no divide there when it comes to quality (masterful executions of objects, whether art or craft), but certainly a divide between well-made and badly made.

So, yeah, those Pez dispensers - there is a difference I think between a housewife collecting Beanie Babies and an art collector. The fact that they are both collectors does not mean they are driven by same impulses.

And, you are welcome, everyone, re: Benjamin's essay

[a bag of it]

Psychological discussion aside...does anyone here want to answer the OPs questions? Do any of you guys collect anything besides clothing?

[Shogun8]

What is the difference between a sophisticated/non-sophistocated visual culture if not high and low?

I like sophisticated ideas but Japan lacks a sophisticated critical culture. This is one of the many things holding the culture back with respect to civil rights issues and is precisely what I dislike about it the most.

Aside from my own personal interest in Japanese culture in general, I use that country's approach to aesthetics as my primary example for a few different reasons, none having to do with human/civil rights and/or the nation's martial history (which themselves are worthy of another thread entirely).

Firstly, I would establish as my beachhead that the Japanese approach to aesthetics is certainly one of the most sophisticated and nuanced amongst world cultures, with the philosophical and material groundings dating back centuries and coming to their full realization during the Edo period when the island nation developed in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world. Shintoism, Buddhism, Bushido and the samurai, the tea ceremony, the concept of wabi-sabi, Zen, etc., though introduced much earlier, really took hold and became entrenched during this period.

The tendency in the West is to pigeonhole art forms, hence we have folk art, outsider art, street art, etc. as so-called "lowbrow" or lower art forms with the implied unsophistication. There is another distinction made between art and craft, with the implication there that if an object was created for utilitarian purposes (i.e. without conceptual merit) then it can only be appreciated as a decorative object - it lacks the "power" of a work of art. In Japan such distinctions are not made and in fact, there apparently is no separate word for art and craft, as we know it (Japanese speakers correct me if I'm wrong here). Thus, the Japanese appreciate and value a simple tea ceremony cup (of course, using their standards of judgement) with the same veneration as a masterpiece scroll or painting. The concept of wabi-sabi is another good example of an extremely sophisticated, nuanced philosophy and aesthetic approach which is unique to Japan. And don't get me started on the whole cult of the samurai and their own aesthetic lifestyle. Japan is also the only culture in the world that honours "Living National Treasures", who can be swordmakers, lacquer box artisans or simple woodcarvers as well as painters, calligraphers, etc.

Then there is the distinction between art and product. In the West, we bristle at the thought that these two descriptors can exist in the same sentence, much less in the same object. It's no surprise that an artist like Takashi Murakami, whose work oscillates so frequently between the two supposedly disparate worlds, comes out of Japan. He himself has said that he makes no such distinction with his work.

Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of "High Art". In the west, it's certainly dangerous to blend the two, because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that's okay - I'm ready with my hard hat.

[Shogun8]

Psychological discussion aside...does anyone here want to answer the OPs questions? Do any of you guys collect anything besides clothing?

Hear, hear!

[Faust]

Ooops, we forgot all about that. I don't know - do art books count? Or just books? I feel like in America that counts - no one seems to have a home library anymore.

[Shogun8]

Ooops, we forgot all about that. I don't know - do art books count? Or just books? I feel like in America that counts - no one seems to have a home library anymore.

I think that if a collection means something to the collector, then it certainly counts. The original thought was just to see what members were into...

Here's my home library - hopefully it will get the ball rolling with people sharing their collections...

[bukka]

Ooops, we forgot all about that. I don't know - do art books count? Or just books? I feel like in America that counts - no one seems to have a home library anymore.

To answer OP question, mainly books: old editions from my favorite authors, art books and "La Pléiade". Also bonsaï, that's recent, but I already know it's going to grow big.

I do no collect clothes, I never owned a "grail" (like the ccp parachute coat that I'd love to see in details). I'll maybe try if I change my job and increase my income (which will probably never happen).