Me & Jim

James Clifford's "On collecting art and culture" deals mostly with the appropriation of art and artifacts that are somehow "other" into our own western culture. Be they from a distant culture or a particular place in time of our own, Clifford suggests that their otherness gives them their worth. He compares collecting to fetishizing, the main difference being their publicity – possible other differences being the worth of the collection and the knowledgably the collector shows in it. A collector is expected to know about their collection – the rarer the collection and the more they know about it, the higher status the collector has earned. I was particularly interested in his thoughts on collecting objects as a means to externalize a personal world. He discusses how a person's interests are then expected to be transferred to a public means of display as some sort of form of self-advertisement.

The Western idea of collection is almost unavoidable; it's just the way we think about things. Things as innocent as children's toys are then funneled into the idea of collection, expected to be displayed and discussed. He made a remark about even our own personal belongings are accumulated into a collection of our tastes and interests, which made me think about an idea I had for a character for quite some time. This character didn’t buy any of his or her own clothes, furniture, or belongings, so instead he or she just wore and owned things they were given as a present or somehow came about another way. The somewhat ironic thing about this is that I realized I created this character with a very specific idea of collection: a collection of friends, places, and events in this characters life, a collection of the way others thought of this character, a collection of everything up until then – in a sense making this character a collector of his or her own world rather than some fabricated interest.

My own collection is somewhat reminiscent of my character’s. I have many interests and hobbies, but I don’t collect memorabilia, posters, art, books, tchotchkes... I don’t collect anything but ideas, feelings, and memories. I’ve kept as many of my childhood belongings as I could – clothing, books, toys, notebooks, pictures – and I scour thrift stores and my grandparent’s house and Target for things that remind me of things I used to have or things I saw in movies or read in books. I’m obsessed with getting a wood paneled station wagon, the idea of it just holds so much life for me. As best I can tell, its because this is the car where you go on a road trip to a small town and learn about yourself and life and maybe your mother and maybe “Salisbury Hill” plays on the radio. All of my belongings need to have their own story, their own life. My collection is most closely related to Stewarts idea of the “structure of desire, whose task is the… impossible one of closing the gap that separates language from the experience it encodes.”

Clifford asks questions about the changing view the greater society holds on collections and art and what gives them status. What holds intrigue for me is the rich, unnoticed life of ideas ordinary objects hold – but I am not society. Society places importance of expensive and rare objects. Tastes change over time, America is always choosing some foreign culture to romanticize – Indian, French, Chinese, African. More recently, at least in my social circles, older American folk art has been exalted, perhaps as a response to the larger American interest in monster collections – expensive collections of commonly agreed upon “important” pieces. The rich can decorate their homes with Picasso sketches or ancient tribal masks, more as a means of status than any particular interest. The idea of really searching for worth rather than accepting commonly held beliefs holds more merit as it turns the collector into a true collector, rather than simply a wealthy “fetishist.”

The contemporary art scene holds status, its not only the old and distant. Anything accepted into a gallery holds the possibility of giving the owner status. Like my friend’s interest in folk art, interest in contemporary art is a little less mainstream and therefore exclusive. A home with a Damien Hirst on display could theoretically hold greater status than a Dali, because it says something more personal bout the collector and holds greater meaning to a particular facet of our culture.

Finally, Clifford discusses the Museum of Natural History – something I thought about the entire article. He discusses Stewart’s idea of the inadequacy of museums. “She shows how collections… create the illusion of adequate representation of a world by first cutting objects out of specific contexts… and making them stand for abstract wholes.” I immediately remembered staring at a Chinese dress on a wall and the description of the event for which it was used underneath. However, this museum also displays things in a unique way, like snapshots of life. They have stuffed lions forever suspended in mid battle, bears forever suspended in mid growl. They also have displays that are completely fabricated, like daily pilgrim life or the famous imagined battle between the squid and the whale. Clifford even makes the point that the museum itself is a collection of an idea of collecting. Boy, Jim is trippy.


You can tell Uncle Jesse's into music because his room is filled with instruments, neon pictures of instruments, posters of musicians, a juke box, and furry sheets! Also, this youtube is a collection of every single time Michelle Tanner has ever smiled! Oh, collecting!?


Oh, and beanie babies!