Institutions and Collectors

14/5/2012

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Museums and galleries are a Western invention and largely began as a way for rich private collectors to showcase their acquisitions. These institutions have had a long standing relationship with collectors. They have their own collections that they have gained through donations and their own purchases but they still very much rely on private collectors loaning their pieces for show.

In the art world large collectors now have the influence to make-or-break the name of an artist and dictate this through their buying power. Charles Saatchi is a prime example of this. The annual Art Review Power 100 list is a good indication of the rapidly changing power and influence in the art market. In recent years the websites Flickr and Google have made an appearance on the list. The internet has given a platform for hobbyist collectors (and artists) to share their passion with a wider audience than they ever could have reached in that past. The number of hits and tags an artist, curator or even a dealer gets can legitimise them in the same way it can anyone else. What this means is that art and collections are being interacted with in a new way, collectors have a new outlet to cleanse their psychological wounds and find validation through visitor feedback.
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Psychology of Collecting

14/5/2012

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An important part of the act of collecting is the psychology behind it. Collectors can range from part-time hobbyists to influential buyers that have a hold over the art market and what trends. Many psychologists have written on the subject and a running theme is that collecting can be a way to cope with and control feelings of loss and a way to make sense of the world by making order from it. For now I shall focus on the theories of Sigmund Freud as he was a collector himself of ancient artefacts, which he displayed in his office and shared with his patients. He had a number of ideas about collecting and what basic fundamental drives lie behind the need for some people to collect items. Some of these theories are typical of a lot of his psychoanalysis and based around the erogenous zones and analogies about human faeces; and like much of his psychoanalysis it does not hold favour with the wider field of psychology and is largely disregarded. So for these purposes the focus will be on his metaphor between archaeology and psychoanalysis. His idea was that objects from the past, like memories, both reveal and conceal traces of a past that have become unconscious. Like archaeology, psychoanalysis dealt with uncovering the past, with fragments, and with interpretation or reconstruction. This is what collectors of historical objects do when they bring items together and form connections between them and a wider cultural history.

Regardless of the collectors focus and choice of items it seems that the act of collecting is an endless task that will never be complete. It would be impossible, for example, to single-handedly collect all existing postcards of Southampton. Or in the case of collecting limited items from a series it is never enough to own one series; another fascination will come along to carry on the need to collect.

As I started buying postcards and creating my own collection I found myself taking on characteristics of a real collector. The frequency of my purchases increased and so did the amount I spent on each card. I began regarding certain cards more important to obtain than others. My role hand changed from an outside analysing the psychology and process of collecting to becoming one myself and taking on the spirit, enthusiasm and sometimes obsessive characteristics of a collector.

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