Collecting:- opinions sought - Page 2

Bjorn · 12th May 2013, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ariel

Alan,
I found myself in front of the computer and felt that I had to answer you.
Yes, there are as many collections as there are collectors, and we all have our own ways to engage in this mild form of insanity. I can imagine a person whose ethnographic interests lead him to collect weapons of the culture of his original interest. I may even know one. But I bet that for every such sequence of events there are 1000 people who started as collectors and only later on began digging into history, ethnology, beliefs erc of the original owners of his wll hangers. You yourself, - what would have happened to you had it not been for your politically-incorrect uncle? :-)

As to the degree of involvement... I still find it mildly amusing to see perfectly normal Mid-Western guys trying to act Persian, Japanese ( ninja, here I come:-)) or Indonesian as if they have a hope in the world to pass for the legitimate inheritors of totally foreign traditions. Perhaps you, who spent a lot of time in Indonesia, may feel some understanding and involvement with the Javanese "society and culture", but for the rest of collectors it is a pretend game. As you have seen from the answers, most people here prefer to maintain their sanity and be "involved but not committed": the difference between the chicken and the pig in the process of creation of scrambled eggs and bacon:-)

So, I am perfectly happy to leave all esoteric functions and fearures to the native collectors of all ethnic swords: it is their patrimony and they are the legitimate owners of it. Most of us are just outsiders and enjoy purely military, historical, metallurgical or decorative components. More than enough, to my taste.

You bring up an interesting point, Ariel: outside versus inside. I suppose you are correct in assuming that the masses of collectors outside of Indonesia operate on the outside. I myself fall somewhere in between the two extremes as my family is of mixed Dutch and Indonesian descent; but as I was born in Holland I'm sure I fall more on the outside than on the inside of it all. Even so, I have a greater familiarity with Indonesia and Java than the average collector (although I imagine that, especially in Holland, there are many collectors with a similar background to my own).

For me, collecting keris started as an interest to learn more about it beyond the usual stories, and as I started to explore and read, it soon turned into a starting point to dig deeper into Indonesian history and culture. It's allowed me to learn more about symbols and world views that I've been familiar with on a superficial level since I was young but am only now starting to understand on a deeper level. I suppose for me collecting keris is also somewhat of a personal journey in that regard.

I've always had a vague and rather incomplete knowledge of Indonesian history, touching mainly upon the broader strokes of the existence of Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, the coming of Islam, the Dutch colonial period, the Japanese liberation/occupation, and finally independence. Delving deeper into these broad categories has always been somewhat of a daunting task but I find that the keris allows me to do just that. Perhaps because it is one of the, if not the, Indonesian symbol pur sang (or rather Javanese but to me - even if incorrectly - the two overlap to a significant extent). It's existed since ancient times and has undergone continues changes since then; changes that reflect the period and associated cultural values and world views that it was made in. It's a portal into Indonesian history and culture throughout the ages, a focal point, an eye in the storm of historical change.

While within the keris community outside of Indonesia not many people will have a similar motivation for collecting keris, I do feel it is a motivation for at least a part of the community. This likely also holds true to a certain extent for people with other cultural backgrounds (e.g. an ethnic Japanese collecting katana or an ethnic Chinese collecting calligraphy scrolls). There are collectors on the outside, on the inside and everywhere in between.

Tim Simmons · 12th May 2013, 08:49 PM

If you do not learn you are always in the dark even if it appears of a quality, pretty or even kitsch. Also you pay to much for a common standard of production and availability but that seems to be what people like

.

A. G. Maisey · 13th May 2013, 08:25 AM

No disagreement with anything you've written Ariel.
A very perceptive comment, not an answer to my questions, but a perceptive comment none the less.

As for people from one society and culture using the dress and manners of a person from a different society, yes, I also find that a little strange, still if it makes them happy who am I to say they're doing the wrong thing?

Rather than dress and habits in synch, a more useful device may be to try to adapt one's thought processes to similar patterns as those in the society which one wishes to understand. It’s a bit difficult to communicate on a common level with somebody from a different society who exists on less than $100 a month and who cannot read, or write, and who thinks that foreign airlines should pay tax for flying over Indonesia when they go from New York to London, because of course they need to fly over Indonesia as it is between those two places (NY to the east, London to the west), and who sees spirits rising out of the ground to give approval for a digging well, if one has a world view that is stuck firmly in the 21st century.

DAHenkel · 13th May 2013, 02:00 PM

As an institutional man, perhaps I can add a little to this conversation from an institutional perspective. The origins of the museum as an institution are usually traced to the Enlightenment period and the age of exploration. This is not discounting the fact that collecting on an institutional scale was being done well before the modern period. China’s Emperors, for instance, were building collections of antiquities before antiquity had fairly ended and even before the Enlightenment, European courts, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, often accumulated objects and artefacts of various types for various purposes.

Two factors can be seen to coalesce in the enlightenment though which led to the foundation of the modern museum. What began as an efflorescence of curiosity about distant places which were virtually unknown and deeply misunderstood gradually evolved into the notion that “knowledge” could be attained from the accumulation of objects. When the early European explorers returned from their travels they brought with them curiosities, both natural and ethnological, which eventually found their way into what are referred today as cabinets of curiosities. While initially these rooms full of wonders and oddities (in the minds of Europeans who had never laid eyes on such things) were private, it wasn’t long before the entrepreneurial spirit took hold and various individuals started creating them in order to charge paid admission. These appear to have been rather successful and drew the interest of both the educated and ordinary laymen.

As modernist ideas took hold educational and state (and their parallel religious) institutions also began to form collections of objects, as well as the edifices in which to house them. Here the notion takes hold that collections could in fact be acquired in a scientific manner (basically accumulating one of each “thing” – it has been noted incidentally that in this sense, Noah was the first collector) and that these collections in turn could teach us something about humanity. This in turn led (perhaps inevitably) to the Linnaean and Darwinian influenced notion that artefacts could be classified from primitive to advanced. It also lead to the (fundamentally racist) Colonialist belief that technologically (and aesthetically, and spiritually) “advanced” societies had not only a right but an obligation to promote (by force when necessary – which was usually) the advancement of the so-called “primitive” peoples. As a result, collection, in the high-modernist sense, became an exercise in the accumulation of power (attendant to the collection of territory, and subject peoples) and museums, by extension, a demonstration of that power. The enlightenment also triggered a concomitant burst of creativity and exploration in notions of beauty and the value of art. Without going into detail, it should also be noted that the museum became an institution for the display of and appreciation for works of art. This development moved along largely (but not entirely) Eurocentric lines through the colonial era.

The collapse of colonialism and the post-modern critique has driven a fundamental re-evaluation of the importance and utility of the museum. This process continues today quite often in rancorous arguments which would be tedious to examine here in great detail. Suffice it to say that museums continue to be controversial and contested spaces. For practical reasons though, most museums continue to regard themselves as some combination of edifices of learning (about ourselves and others) and the exploration of the notion of beauty. These are admittedly problematic reasons for existence, however I would suggest that they are also institutional expressions of innate human needs to understand the world around us (both near and far) and to seek spiritual inspiration in beholding beauty (through beautiful objects). Museums also often consider themselves as (ideally, if not practically) guardians of the material objects – warehousing them for their preservation for future generations of humanity. This last aspect is probably the most controversial and divisive of the contested roles museums continue to play. It does however hint foundationally at an even more fundamental need of the human animal to accumulate objects.

Which brings me to your initial questions – 1, clearly knowledge enhances in some sense the collection of the object; it is however, I would argue, not primary to the object’s collection. I agree regarding question 2 that neither all, nor even most collectors actively pursue extraordinary knowledge about the objects which they collect (they may seek to know something about it but not in a systematic or profound manner). Rather, I would argue that, while knowledge enhances the value of the object (which is largely why institutions and serious collectors invest considerable effort into studying their collections), it is not essential to the object. Instead, I would suggest that there is a fundamental utility for acquiring and storing objects that is rooted in their materiality. This is both in the sense of the object's form, beauty, function, rarity, the value of its materials, magical power etc. and in the demonstration of the command of resources to acquire and preserve collections of objects (and present them to others). The object in this sense becomes a form of power, the collection of which expresses an innate human need to acquire, demonstrates our ability to do so, while satisfying a need to order and make sense of our material world. The accumulation of knowledge about that object enhances that power (adding value which may not otherwise be apparent) but is, I would suggest, not fundamental to it.

A. G. Maisey · 14th May 2013, 11:02 PM

Thank you for your comments Dave. As a professional in this field (of collecting) your comments and perspective are of more than a little interest.

12th May 2013, 08:49 PM	#32
Tim Simmons Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: What is still UK Posts: 5,739	If you do not learn you are always in the dark even if it appears of a quality, pretty or even kitsch. Also you pay to much for a common standard of production and availability but that seems to be what people like .

13th May 2013, 08:25 AM	#33
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,700	No disagreement with anything you've written Ariel. A very perceptive comment, not an answer to my questions, but a perceptive comment none the less. As for people from one society and culture using the dress and manners of a person from a different society, yes, I also find that a little strange, still if it makes them happy who am I to say they're doing the wrong thing? Rather than dress and habits in synch, a more useful device may be to try to adapt one's thought processes to similar patterns as those in the society which one wishes to understand. It’s a bit difficult to communicate on a common level with somebody from a different society who exists on less than $100 a month and who cannot read, or write, and who thinks that foreign airlines should pay tax for flying over Indonesia when they go from New York to London, because of course they need to fly over Indonesia as it is between those two places (NY to the east, London to the west), and who sees spirits rising out of the ground to give approval for a digging well, if one has a world view that is stuck firmly in the 21st century.

13th May 2013, 02:00 PM	#34
DAHenkel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 125	As an institutional man, perhaps I can add a little to this conversation from an institutional perspective. The origins of the museum as an institution are usually traced to the Enlightenment period and the age of exploration. This is not discounting the fact that collecting on an institutional scale was being done well before the modern period. China’s Emperors, for instance, were building collections of antiquities before antiquity had fairly ended and even before the Enlightenment, European courts, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, often accumulated objects and artefacts of various types for various purposes. Two factors can be seen to coalesce in the enlightenment though which led to the foundation of the modern museum. What began as an efflorescence of curiosity about distant places which were virtually unknown and deeply misunderstood gradually evolved into the notion that “knowledge” could be attained from the accumulation of objects. When the early European explorers returned from their travels they brought with them curiosities, both natural and ethnological, which eventually found their way into what are referred today as cabinets of curiosities. While initially these rooms full of wonders and oddities (in the minds of Europeans who had never laid eyes on such things) were private, it wasn’t long before the entrepreneurial spirit took hold and various individuals started creating them in order to charge paid admission. These appear to have been rather successful and drew the interest of both the educated and ordinary laymen. As modernist ideas took hold educational and state (and their parallel religious) institutions also began to form collections of objects, as well as the edifices in which to house them. Here the notion takes hold that collections could in fact be acquired in a scientific manner (basically accumulating one of each “thing” – it has been noted incidentally that in this sense, Noah was the first collector) and that these collections in turn could teach us something about humanity. This in turn led (perhaps inevitably) to the Linnaean and Darwinian influenced notion that artefacts could be classified from primitive to advanced. It also lead to the (fundamentally racist) Colonialist belief that technologically (and aesthetically, and spiritually) “advanced” societies had not only a right but an obligation to promote (by force when necessary – which was usually) the advancement of the so-called “primitive” peoples. As a result, collection, in the high-modernist sense, became an exercise in the accumulation of power (attendant to the collection of territory, and subject peoples) and museums, by extension, a demonstration of that power. The enlightenment also triggered a concomitant burst of creativity and exploration in notions of beauty and the value of art. Without going into detail, it should also be noted that the museum became an institution for the display of and appreciation for works of art. This development moved along largely (but not entirely) Eurocentric lines through the colonial era. The collapse of colonialism and the post-modern critique has driven a fundamental re-evaluation of the importance and utility of the museum. This process continues today quite often in rancorous arguments which would be tedious to examine here in great detail. Suffice it to say that museums continue to be controversial and contested spaces. For practical reasons though, most museums continue to regard themselves as some combination of edifices of learning (about ourselves and others) and the exploration of the notion of beauty. These are admittedly problematic reasons for existence, however I would suggest that they are also institutional expressions of innate human needs to understand the world around us (both near and far) and to seek spiritual inspiration in beholding beauty (through beautiful objects). Museums also often consider themselves as (ideally, if not practically) guardians of the material objects – warehousing them for their preservation for future generations of humanity. This last aspect is probably the most controversial and divisive of the contested roles museums continue to play. It does however hint foundationally at an even more fundamental need of the human animal to accumulate objects. Which brings me to your initial questions – 1, clearly knowledge enhances in some sense the collection of the object; it is however, I would argue, not primary to the object’s collection. I agree regarding question 2 that neither all, nor even most collectors actively pursue extraordinary knowledge about the objects which they collect (they may seek to know something about it but not in a systematic or profound manner). Rather, I would argue that, while knowledge enhances the value of the object (which is largely why institutions and serious collectors invest considerable effort into studying their collections), it is not essential to the object. Instead, I would suggest that there is a fundamental utility for acquiring and storing objects that is rooted in their materiality. This is both in the sense of the object's form, beauty, function, rarity, the value of its materials, magical power etc. and in the demonstration of the command of resources to acquire and preserve collections of objects (and present them to others). The object in this sense becomes a form of power, the collection of which expresses an innate human need to acquire, demonstrates our ability to do so, while satisfying a need to order and make sense of our material world. The accumulation of knowledge about that object enhances that power (adding value which may not otherwise be apparent) but is, I would suggest, not fundamental to it.

14th May 2013, 11:02 PM	#35
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,700	Thank you for your comments Dave. As a professional in this field (of collecting) your comments and perspective are of more than a little interest.