Economies: How does creative practice sit within systems of power and exchange?

Anthropologist James Clifford’s book “On Collecting Art and Culture” (1998) gives a critical analysis of Twentieth Century Western cultural practice and the tradition of collecting objects of “art-culture” (215)  

He cross-examines Western ideas of the “good” verses bad or the “obsessive” practice of collecting, within the historicity of “ethnography as a form of cultural collecting.”(p231)

Clifford claims that it is perceived “the good collector (as opposed to the obsessive, the miser) is tasteful and reflective.”(p219) because  s/he’s is a pursuit of purpose “It’s taxonomic” (p219); serving a social obligation to record and preserve human civilization in order to educate future generations of their cultural past.

Clifford connotes that the “obsessive” collector’s activity is perceived “negatively marked as fetishism.”(p217) s/he is engaged in “a gathering up of possessions in arbitrary systems of value and meaning.” (p217) The ‘obsessive’ is driven by a personal desire to satisfy ownership of an object(s) which are wrongfully horded in a kind of possessive manner and kept as private collections.

My own childhood memories of visiting the Auckland Museum are negative; somewhat depressing and frightening. I experienced the cabinets as prisons of empty ‘vessels’ clinically and coldly displayed. The ‘objects’ appeared sadly displaced from their original existence, their vitality extinguished and reduced to the function of some sort of perverse public entertainment of ‘naval gazing’.   

Clifford believes we need to critically rethink and analyse current western places of cultural-art display and exchange. He appears to think that the current affect of collections is an experience of alienation.  Clifford’s reference to the American Indian student discussing values of tradition within their own culture: - “We live for today and never forget the past.” (p251) suggests significance in understanding their past is remembered with a sense of currency. It’s about recognizing its ‘life-force’ and connecting past and present simultaneously. History is not dead or defunct. It speaks of who we are as humans and gives our personal life meaning and vigor.  

When I also consider Isabelle Graw’s “Beyond Dualistic Art/Market Model” (2009) and her discussion of the “artist’s artist” (p84) whose art by virtue resists becoming an object of ‘ownership’, therefore the work exists as the artist intended and within the context that it was intended, perhaps then this type art work can be seen to escape the sad fate of my ‘museum cabinet’.  

References:
James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture" in The Predicament of Culture:Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge. MA Harvard University Press, 1998,pp. 215-251

Isabelle Graw, High price: Art Between the Market an Celebrity Culture, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009, pp.81-94 & 112-116