On collecting - art and artifacts

This lecture was very interesting, I took some notes of what I understood and what I would like to explore more.
All in a higgledy-piggledy way...

First , a definition for ARTIFACTS: a representation of human culture - objects that represent a human civilization and culture.

About collecting and creating a collection, I like to associate it to the expressions personal environment, memories, one's own vision of (an aspect of) the world , a vision of his relationship with the world, mysterious love of things, identify something or someone, symbolic ( those terms are taken from the introduction of Art and Artifacts, The Museum as Medium, Putum J. 2001)


The hierarchy of art - how museums and collections give evidences of the hierarchy that occurs in art.
We talked about ethnography, the study of a human culture by another human culture, it is not neutral and will never be.

We looked at Africa.
Africa has been conceived by European as one entity.
When Victorian explorers, scientist and missionaries first arrived in Africa, Africa seemed to get "darker" they saw Africa through an imperialist ideology. an ideology of difference, the creation of others. the illusion of race. Race is a human creation, we are all Homo sapiens.

A practical example of the hierarchy of art ( which can be linked to the surrealist hierarchy of races) is the controversy around the Statue of the Queen Mother from the Kingdom of Benin, now part of Nigeria. The Queen Mother was really important to the Benin population as she was the mother of Oba the ruler of Benin; Oba was poly morph and only his mother could be very close to him and talk to him about his power.
There are several statues that were made of the Queen Mother and Oba himself, the statues were made in a very ingenious way using the lost-wax casting method ( a mold is created of the exact negative of the original objects, the mold is at least made of two pieces that can, then, be put together, bronze is then poured in the empty space in between the molds and create the statue or object wanted.) The art historians do not believe that the Benin population made the statues as it was made in a very clever way.

The debate is also about how museums present the artifacts, and the way they label them as the definition of Africa, but they are in reality only a tiny part of the huge puzzle Africa is. it is an ethnographic metonym. It is absurd to pretend that you can describe the immensity of a whole culture with a few hundreds objects.


Reading and people:
George Kubler The Shape of Time Remarks on the History of Things
Josephine Baker Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s
Robert Goldwater
Walter Benjamin
Patrick Balendger Race, Writings and Differences chapter 8 and 9, edited by Henry Lewis Gates Jr.
James Clifford The predicament of culture

Sir John Soane's Museum

Sir John Soane was a renowned architect ( his most recognised work is the Bank of England) and an art lover and collector.
He hoped that his two sons would follow his path and become architects too, but they showed little interest in art and architecture so Sir John Soane decided to make his knowledge and art collection (that he acquired with time) beneficial to others. Soane was a professor of architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts Architecture Schools. He first opened his collection to his pupils and then to the general public, his house became a museum and is still very frequented by students and worldwide art lovers.

I think that the Soane family story is a common story; similar stories have been heard:the parents expect a lot from their children and end up disappointed by their life choices. To have learned about this aspect of his life and his motivation to create the house-museum makes me feel sympathy for him, I feel it makes him more accessible , he is no longer Sir John Soane but John the guy next door who after his sons told him they did not want to become architects he open his collection to the public...

His house looks, from the outside, very much like any houses on Inn Fields Rd. This is only when you enter that you can realise that his place was/is far from ordinary.

My first feelings when discovering the first few rooms of his house, I felt like I was in Ali Baba’s Cavern but tidier; there are so many objects from the most common to the rarest; I noticed the rooms were not so filled up with objects but the halls and corridors were.

On my visit I made a list of all the objects that I liked; they could be a starting point for a collection of my own or a future project.
-In the first room on the right, I liked the glassed bookshelves, not one empty space.
-The vestibule with archaeology stones up onto the ceiling.
-The plain stained window.
-W. Hogwarts, The marriage, 1697- 1764 in the room of many paintings.
-“Dieu est mon droit” emblem.
-The windows’ view seems to be an artistic composition in itself.
-All the signs that indicate where we could go; West/ South/ Monk Parlour/ Breakfast Room.
-The basement with the tomb and the urns; the outlook from the floor above.
-The ivory table and chairs from India, late 18th century; I liked the pattern.
-The ground floor map of Sir John Soane’s House made by himself.
-The little lobby on the way up the stairs with a pizzaiolo picture look-alike.
-The gold key with the royal arms of William III.
-Bernard Quaritch’s General catalogue of books Supplement 1875-1877 huge!
-The ceiling in the breakfast room, beautiful pattern!