Collecting

What do you collect? What do you keep about you that rewards you just in the keeping?

I have never considered myself to be a collector, but not for a lack of trying. I have gathered lots of things over the years, but I have also discarded most of them. There is a coin collection, made up of random international coins and quite a few U.S. coins. Yet they all fit into one small box that was easy enough to fit in one of my suitcases when I moved to Europe. The stamp collection is even smaller (collecting it lightly occupied me for about 1 year as a young teenager), with just a few inspired or opportunistic additions more recently. That is all as far as traditional collections go.

On the nontraditional side, I have about 15 half-liter bags of sand of different colors, from black to pink to almost white, from different beaches around the world. These are meant for a future artwork of some kind, but they function more like a collection, just sitting there for now.

Should I include movies and music? If so, then perhaps I underestimate myself. However, my iPod is less then half full at 60 Mb of music. How many days would it take to listen to all of that music? Well, on a long drive a few years ago (just under 1000 miles/1600 km), I started to listen to all my songs—in alphabetical order. I barely made it into the B’s during the return trip. So maybe that makes it a collection.

I am a lover of film, and yet my DVD’s fit into a small cabinet and just a few boxes in the basement cage beneath my Versoix apartment. iTunes holds more, but these amount to just over a hundred. How many days would they take to watch? Well, I suspect I could suffer a serious broken leg and not run out of films for a while. Do I need this many movies and this much music when I have Netflix, Spotify, TV and radio? They mostly sit idle, so perhaps these also comprise a collection. Yet like all collections, they somehow assert a power, a potential.

And then there are books. I forgot to mention that I have a small but not insubstantial number of cookbooks, even though I rarely use them anymore, preferring spontaneous creations with web search inspiration. I also have books about the countries I have visited or want to visit, but my books on art and film are the most substantial category. I do not care to calculate how much they cost to ship to Europe, but I do refer to them from time to time, which makes it worthwhile (more than just a lurking power). The books line 3 large bookshelves, but many also remain in boxes locked in the cellar cage, like most of the DVDs, and the LPs I forgot to mention.

As I write, I am looking at the line of plants (flowers and herbs) at the edge of my balcony. Additional dried herbs and spices in the kitchen occupy one large tray near the stove (those most used), and one additional drawer containing less often used Mexican chilis and the curry mixes that were spontaneous purchases (and will eventually by thrown out in preference to freshly made ones).

I became curious, and found that I have 9,909 photos in my iPhotos collection since I began using it in 2012. That is approximately 2500 per year. Before that, I did not count, but I have an external hard drive somewhere with an equal number of photos, no doubt. And there are boxes of traditional printed photos as well, as yet un-digitized, and therefore innumerable.

I live in a small apartment, or I would collect more I suppose. It is our nature.

Collections are a passion for many people. They collect memorabilia related to sports or other disciplines, or items generally representing certain decades, forms of fine and folk art (some of which are produced specifically to be collected, and even numbered to help collectors). Some collect common souvenirs from as many places as possible (pins, buttons, spoons, postcards, refrigerator magnets, shells, etc.), specifically named “souvenirs” for their power to recall events and places visited. Souvenirs can hold power even if the visit was made by family or friends—it is still a connection. Some are more interested in collecting the places themselves, and do so with photos, air tickets, or just memories. Many tourists rush to visit as many famous places as possible for the photo opportunities they present during their too brief holidays. While I try to avoid that kind of travel myself, I do have an up-to-date Virtual Tourist map that shows I have visited 38 countries and all 50 US states. I keep count at Virtual Tourist. Some put pins in a physical map.

And that is part of the fun of collecting I suppose, counting what you have and hold. Collecting is a way of getting your hands around some aspect of life—of quantifying it and also possessing it. Collecting can help you learn, leading to new knowledge through comparisons of the things you collect (consider the natural philosophers’ collections of fossils), and deepening your understanding of a particular facet of life. Collections also can support identity-building through maintaining a connection with something meaningful to you and to others with similar interests--which can help build a learning community. Collecting is an aesthetic activity, offering no personal gain (see the disinterest theory of art), frequently based on a desire to engage with life within a manageable scope.

Artists also collect at times. Writers and filmmakers may create story collections centered around a theme, such as Kieslowski's Decalogue and Three Colors series, Wallace Steven's poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, or Monet's haystack series of paintings under different lighting conditions. Some contemporary visual artists have made the act of collecting a subject of their work.  

Collecting begins in childhood, perhaps because it is a natural and intuitive activity. We might collect stones, cards, toy soldiers or stuffed animals. Maybe this desire was born out of the need to collect food and water, or raw materials useful for survival—hoarding for winter, perhaps. If this is its source, it has evolved to become more about meaning. Some collections are composed of things from outside everyday experience, things that bring the remote closer (stamps, coins, minerals, historic items, rare minerals). Alternatively, some collections are composed of things representing notable personal experiences that one wants to recall (photos, awards, souvenirs, autographs, jewelry, or even the chocolate wrappers and beer cans recalling other pleasures). Others represent exquisite examples, works of great craftsmanship and effort (art itself, but also finely designed practical objects, and even the tools for creating them). But others are just about enumerating some subset of innumerable things (from butterfly collections to stones and grains of sand).

 These four categories, the exotic, the personally meaningful, the exquisite, and the innumerable, do cover a lot of ground, but I suspect they are not exhaustive. I will conclude with a list (a collection) of additional things not already mentioned directly that might also qualify as collections, fitting in these categories for the most part, but suggesting others perhaps. Even if such a list could never be complete, it is interesting to consider the range of possibilities.

• Animal and bird sightings: Many people expend significant effort to record their sightings of animals, trying to collect as many as possible. On African safaris, the goal is to see the “Big 5” most dangerous animals. For birders, the ultimate sighting goal is one that can never be accomplished, with almost 10,000 species of birds in the world, but more limited local goals are within reach. Others tackle even more enormous tasks, collecting butterflies and other insects, which comprise 950,000 species (approximately 250,000 of which are butterflies and moths).
• Physical achievements: With new technologies available in the form wrist devices or cell phone apps, many are encouraged toward healthy habits by counting steps or kilometers of running, biking or running. While it does not count as a disinterested activity per sae, the counting is fun on its own, and quite motivating (similar to games). Others set their sites much higher, counting mountains ascents or oceans sailed. Other health oriented collections include number of days not smoking or drinking, or years as a vegetarian.
• Games: It is almost cheating to count games as aesthetic, because they embody meaningful engagement, even if some question the importance of that meaning. Games usually include some form of collecting and counting of items or points as part of their engagement strategy. Gamification is catching on as a way to enhance motivation in many activities not typically associated with gaming, such as learning and job performance, and a central part of games is collecting badges or points.
• Connoisseurship: The collection of artifacts that represent epitomes of human creative ability can take many forms. Oenophiles keep cellars of many wine vintages, and some collect things as expensive as cars, finely crafted swords, jewelry, or, of course, works of art. Rare books, maps, and historical mechanical instruments fill other connoisseur collections.
• Membership: Particularly in these days of computer-based social networking, but also going back to clubs like the Masonic Temple, connecting to societies and contributing to them can be seen as a form of collecting. How many friends do you have in Facebook? How many LinkedIn connections? How many follow you on Instagram? These connections help to define us, and always have. Collections themselves can be a communal activity.
• Records and awards: Another form of collection related to gamification is setting personal or competitive records. Numbers of “wins,” even if personal, contribute to the ongoing motivation to engage with life, symbolizing, if not exemplifying, success.

I am sure that others can expand on this list, indefinitely.

The Purpose of Art

What is the purpose of art? Why do people invest time and money to make and enjoy aesthetic objects and events?

For many people, engagement with the arts, whether in the form of the things we hang on our walls, the books we choose to read, the films and programmes we see in theaters and on our TVs, the music we listen to in so many different contexts, and the visits we make to museums or theatrical performances, accounts for significant amount of their time. The question of why we invest this time has been the stimulus for a lot of thought over the centuries, even though most people don't feel the need to ask it. For many, art is enjoyable--and perhaps there is nothing to gain in dissecting a good thing.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

But many do ask, and I think that this asking is a reflection of the best answer to the question. Let me back up and offer some of the many purposes proposed over the years for art.

First, there have been strong arguments that art in fact serves no purpose, or more specifically, that we derive no personal gain from aesthetic things—and that this is at least partly the source of their enjoyment. This is the “disinterest” theory of art, that we take pleasure from art precisely because it serves no practical purpose. Kant argued that disinterest (not in the sense of “not interested,” but in the sense of “providing no profit”) is essential for being able to see something as aesthetic--that as soon as a practical purpose becomes a driver, aesthetic value is squashed. However, most of us would agree that pleasure is not without value, and although the value of pleasure is not as direct as sustenance, it might be a sign of other gains.

In contrast, some have said that art is our way of making aspects of our world “special,” or distinct from everyday experience, in order to celebrate our humanity. Art allows us to give human meaning to things (Dissanayake, 1995). Baroque and Rococo visual art, for example, emphasized the pleasures and drama of being human. But stories and rituals offer more universal and fundamental examples. Whether captured as literature or related over dinner, stories put a frame around a certain experience and provide it a structure; they define relationships and uncover motives. Stories distill plots and themes from the ongoing flow of experience. In other words, stories make life special in a critical way--they help us make sense of our lives when everyday experience fails us (Burke, 1945; Bruner, 1985). The “making special” purpose is also clear when we consider the universal drive for social rituals, some of which are not only filled with decoration and elaborate works of art, but become art forms in themselves.

Others offer that the function of art is to to create a distraction for the miseries we encounter in everyday life (Connor, 1999). It can be argued that art disguises the true state of the world--its messiness, inconclusiveness, seeming randomness, or worse, malignancy. Some people use television and Internet entertainment excessively, preventing potentially more productive behaviors that require more effort and helping them forget their troubles. Some read adventure, intrigue and romance novels to make up for the lives they see as mundane otherwise.

This distraction argument is very similar to Plato’s assertion, in The Republic, that art is merely imitation, and a negative influence on one's ability to live a good life. In Plato’s case, and the case of those that have interpreted him, art does not disguise misery, but prevents the discovery of a more beautiful truth that can be discovered only through philosophy and other intellectual disciplines, leaving it concealed under a pleasant, easier, and therefore addictive veneer.

The concept of catharsis has some similarities to the “distraction” argument, but instead suggests “redirection,” in that art, especially in forms that evoke powerful emotion, can be therapeutic in helping us work out issues and anxieties that are otherwise difficult to address directly. Some argue that dreams function in the same way, so art might be seen as a form of dreaming in waking life. Catharsis is seen as both emotional purification (relieving harmful emotions) or as building emotional resilience (a sort of emotional practice). But in both cases it is suggesting that art is still a substitute, or imitation of life.

Art has a more direct positive impact if it is assumed to be instructive--showing us life as it is or ought to be (in direct contrast to Plato's concern about imitation). Realism is an approach to art that strives to depict the life we know, reassuring our communal perceptions and at the same time impressing us with the artist's skill in reproduction. But more than just being realistic, artistic realism also intends to help us see aspects of life that might otherwise be difficult to see. It might depict a social ugliness often ignored, or celebrate the everyday beauty of life we sometimes forget. In other words, art may function to point out what we should see and value, but too often miss.

But some suggest that art is much more significant, even capable of transcending everyday life. Romanticism saw artists as having a special connection to nature or spiritual dimensions, as being conduits to the truth that lies beneath the surface of everyday life (Emerson, 1844). From this stance, artists are especially sensitive to the symbols that nature offers instead of revealing its truths directly. They have the ability to understand and use these symbols, or metaphors, in ways most of us cannot. Some see artists as voices for god and nature, as offering expressions of the divine. Medieval artists also held this role, although the church itself was the conduit to the divine, and the artist merely the church’s servant.

Coming perhaps full circle, back to the belief that art is primarily without purpose, others have recently claimed that art has no inherent purpose or value, but that it is merely what a privileged social group calls “art” (Dickie, 1971). In other words, a particular art work, art form, or artist gains status through visibility (in the right places) or word-of-mouth (from the right sources). Awards, critical reviews, gallery openings, and even political support are in control, and can permit the emergence of widely disparate examples of modern and postmodern art, or, on the other hand, narrow perspectives. From this perspective, aesthetic value may not exist until it is institutionally designated, for whatever reason (even one of the above). Art is not the product of a personal judgment or experience, but a socially contrived one. So in this case the ultimate purpose of art is simply a way to show your sophistication, through group membership, to others.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Given the diverse purposes of art that have been proposed, all of which contain a grain of truth, some have questioned the value of any theory of art that attempts to define it (Weitz, 1956). What is more useful is to view art as an open concept, one that has multiple references and evolves as new uses of the concept emerge. I began this post not with the question, “What is art?,” but “What is the purpose of art?” The "What is art" question creates lots of conceptual problems, and can force us to prematurely assign a purpose and context in order to get the answer we want. The answer might be very different if you feel art should instruct, provide distraction, or have no purpose. It might be better to explore what broad category of things serve all the purposes we attribute to art.

In various situations, art can function in any the ways mentioned so far--to cleanse, heal, distract, celebrate, instruct (or obstruct), transcend, or simply impress, all of which suggest that everyday life somehow holds us back. As Picasso rather dramatically put it, the purpose of art is "washing the dust of daily life off our souls." But art has another critical function that fully embraces everyday experience as being without dust. This function is engagement--appreciation and participation in life, even everyday life, in ways that strengthen our involvement and help us to derive not just more pleasure, but more meaning. The meaningful engagement hypothesis helps to explain each of the other purposes, but casts them in a new light. Under this light, art is not trivial by any means, but neither is everyday life. And the conceptual problem of defining what art IS is made simpler. In fact, it is all around us.
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References
Dissanayake, E. (1995), Homo Aestheticus
Burke, K. (1945), A Grammar of Motives
Bruner, J. (1985), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Connor, S. (1999), What If There Were No Such Thing As The Aesthetic?
Dickie, G. (1971), Aesthetics, An Introduction
Emerson, R.W. (1844), The Poet. Essays, Second Series
Weitz, M. (1956), The Role of Theory in Aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15: 27–35