notes

For those handful of my gentle readers, you’ve noticed I’ve lately cited Russel Belk and Susan Pearce and their books of several decades ago about the nature of collecting. Dr Pearce’s On Collecting is particularly cogent and amply repays a number of rereads. In the course of doing this just now I’ve found something about which I take exception, that a person’s collecting, if what’s gathered truly is a collection and not just an accumulation, must in the fulness of time come ‘naturally’ (her word) to an end.

Really? Perhaps I am more acquisitive than the normal run of collector, but I must say, now approaching my 7th decade, there is no end in sight. What do Japanese woodblock prints, Hawaiiana, and Bloomsbury Group artists have in common? If you can answer that, then you’ll also know that, during my mortal span, collecting will be lifelong. The answer, as you will have divined, is that these are my collecting interests, and if I broke these down respectively into ukiyo-e depictions of the Chushingura, ‘umeke, and the paintings of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, it’s apparent that there’s some focus and my interests are not just acquisitive. A sidebar, I could break these down by several additional degrees of specificity, but I sense even at this remove that my readers’ eyes have begun to give hints of a sleepy heaviness.

While of course, anyone’s collecting interest starts out as an enthusiasm, and is for many people and most objects short-lived, the sustaining passion lies in what I have so often written about, a connoisseurship that lies in a general rubric consisting of a deep understanding of the object and its placement within the history of material culture. Indeed, collecting is basic to material culture, and connoisseurship is an integral component, dressed up, if you will, with the application of a number of methodologies. When was it made? How was it made? Who made it? And what motivated the maker? Is it a good example, or a bad example of its kind and why? Any method, whether just an analysis of form or a more complex consideration of cultural context, can be a sustaining driver for a collector, and in my case as in that of most others, this leads into some fascinating byways. My partner Keith McCullar and I began collecting ukiyo-e forty years ago based on not just their aesthetic appeal but also because they fit into our budget. A pretty good impression by the prolific early 19th century artist Kunisada could be had, then as now, for a couple of hundred dollars. What we both found, though, was that these so-called images of the floating world were so often bound up with the popular kabuki theatre, this then sparked an interest in kabuki, and, in particular the Chushingura, the tale of the 47 samurai who sought revenge at the cost of their own lives, following the suicide of their master shamefully forced by his own overlord. This becomes a long story of Japanese culture that amongst other things led me to read a yearlong course on the subject at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London the many aspects of which, although dovetailing into my interest in ukiyo-e-e would itself take a year in the retelling- interesting to me, but even at this point sense an ever-increasing heaviness of the eyelids amongst my own patient readers.

Although absent the sense of honor that was the driving force of the 47 leaderless samurai, or ronin, our own collecting activity, and this accords with Pearce’s own explanation, does also accord with the ronin in that it allows for order and control of at least a portion of one’s life. Collections are one’s own, and provide a safe space from which one can escape the vicissitudes of the world outside one’s collecting ambit. It is ironic, now I think about it, that the long Eurocentric tradition of capitalism and concomitant

stresses associated with it can be relieved in a musing associated with a pleasurable aspect of capitalist acquisition.

Still and all, collecting and an understanding of the nature of the pieces we’ve acquired remains sustaining, particularly in this time of COVID forced isolation. Indeed, it is the introspection wrought by isolation that has caused me more deeply to consider the nature of collecting, and brought me to the works of Belk and Pearce. And, I must say, the coincidence of an academic consideration has considerably enhanced the enjoyment of my own collecting activity.

And, indeed, there is no end to it in sight. Something not particularly specific to my own interests but worthwhile considering, is the prolific output of those artists whose work Keith McCullar and I collect. Whether it is the unknown Hawaiian artisans who crafted ‘umeke from countless kou trees, or Kunisada whose prints naturally were reproduced in their multiples, or the long lived Duncan Grant who painted anything and everything during his 80 year career, we’ve ample opportunity to acquire objects and then, in the fulness of time, achieve a level of understanding which I would prefer to consider connoisseurship, allowing us to discriminate between the better and the lesser productions of the artist. At the risk of becoming immodest, I can say that my own vocation as a dealer in art and antiques helps me in my collecting avocation, giving me a better ability than I might have otherwise to make these distinctions. In our own time where art and artists are so often lionized, it should be borne in mind that not every artistic production is a masterwork- a plain fact with is often- and very often by the artists themselves- occluded.

For all this, though, my musing on collecting is entirely that and shouldn’t serve as a guide for anyone else. In the chapter in her book entitled ‘The Poetics of Collecting’, Dr Pearce identifies five basic collecting strategies, including completing a set or series of objects, which makes it clear that this strategy is self-limiting. Perhaps realizing that what she’s identified is not a catchall, she concludes by writing ‘It is the collector who decides upon the rules of the game.’ And in this we are in complete agreement- my game has no end in sight.

What do the names Warhol, Pollock, Still, Wyeth, and Rockwell have in common? Besides instantly recognizable as firmly established within the canon of American art, their works have also recently graced the New York salerooms, offloaded not by Wall Street types who have to fund a costly divorce, or rogue investors who got caught on the wrong side of GameStop, but by accredited art museums who felt some significant financial pinch.

As my gentle readers will doubtless remember, I have argued that keeping the doors open is of paramount concern to cultural institutions. With doors closed and in the case of fine art, storage rooms hermetically sealed with controlled atmosphere, public museums and other cultural institutions serve no purpose. If in the case of the Everson Museum, this requires the sale of an early drip painting by Jackson Pollock, or as with Covent Garden the sale of the Hockney portrait of a former director, so be it.

The problem as pointed out in an article by Andrew Russeth in yesterday’s Art News is that what were the occasional deaccessions have gathered speed, and there seems to be a flood, with museum after museum parting company with some of their key holdings. That this has been decried generally by the Association of Art Museum Directors hasn’t made much difference, but then, the AAMD doesn’t have to pay to keep the lights on.

What has made de-accessioning acceptable, and something museums have readily bought into, is the notion that sales of canonical art for high prices will allow the acquisition of other works not as well established within the canon by those of diverse background. Indeed, this has fed into a move generally toward racial equity in the arts that is ostensibly a good thing, acknowledging finally that institutions of high culture in the western world are inherently white, Eurocentrically oriented, with a strong bias toward work favoured by if not royalty then certainly by those in the highest economic strata. Indeed, patterns of patronage of the arts are still highly functional in the 21st century in a manner even the Esterhazy’s would recognize.

A move toward racial equity does just at this time beg the question, that it is basically window dressing in a time of stress for the arts. In Russeth’s article, pictured are the facades of the Baltimore, Brooklyn and New Orleans Museums of Art, with their grand Greek revival architecture clearly derived from the mother ship of the museum world, the British Museum. This visibly betokens what’s at work- a short-term acknowledgement of diversity in the modern world, but without change to established cultural structure. Moreover, ‘diversity’ often means the inclusion of works by people of colour who have already moved into the established canon. Russeth quotes museum studies scholar fari nzinga, who questions the sincerity of cultural outreach when she asks ‘If it is going to be the same high-profile handful of black and people of color artists that get all the museums show, are they really even helping anybody out?’

Indeed. In her 1995 book On Collecting: an Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition, Susan Pearce points to the establishment of patterns of collecting that go back into European prehistory, with modern museums as the outgrowth of patterns ingrained over millennia. As part of that, it is museums that enshrine objects- be they wall art or medieval reliquaries- that for those who

display them and those who see the display, have become fetishized. ‘Enshrine’ then becomes the operative word- the modern artwork certainly within the museum environment serves the same function as the reliquary of a thousand years ago.

As a retail vendor in art and antiques, with everything in my ambit just merchandise, I am perforce resistant to the mystical element that rarefies and canonizes museum holdings. It is then a bit easier for me to understand the commercial imperative that then yields to deaccessioning. And, too, I realize that everything in my stock has been owned by someone prior to me, likely many generations of someone prior and that, inevitably, museums will fail and pass away- as will their contents- as surely as did Hypatia and the library of Alexandria.

For all high culture, though, this seems to be an inflection point, with the Eurocentric structures tottering, but will they be saved by expressions of diversity? Does this signal both a path forward and a sea change- or is it tokenism serving as an expeditious stop gap? As it always does, time alone will tell. Bear in mind, though, that those Greek revival buildings still contain within their walls objects and traditions that in form, content, and most importantly, ethos and worldview strongly match and are consonant with their Eurocentric exterior.

Perhaps post Brexit any discussion about the cultural links between Britain and France is fraught with, shall we say, dissension. Still, there’s no denying those links go back centuries, and just at the moment, following on from the rather muted celebrations of the bicentenary of the accession of Francophile George IV in 1820, a spate of publications and exhibitions are overt reminders of what’s been hiding in plain sight.

I’ve just finished reading a masterful account of the so-called Anglo-Gallic interior that found its apogee in the early years of the 19th century in the recently published The Tastemakers: British Dealers and the Anglo-Gallic Interior 1785-1865. Written by academic and furniture historian Diana Davis, it provides a wonderfully lucid account of the demand for French luxury goods, including furniture and fabrics, that spawned an international trade to which dealers in London- English and emigres- responded. That response, in the case of Edward Holmes Baldock, arguably the most successful of these, artfully tailored French taste to suit English preference. Perhaps I should say ‘altered’, as his firm made a career of breaking up French pieces to suit the needs of his English aristocratic clients. Now of course all of us of a connoisseurial bent shudder at the thought of this, but at the time, there was nothing of what in our own time would be considered an unforgiveable solecism.

Frankly, any discussion about what design and decoration meant in its own time I find somewhat liberating, and the expansive, well-reasoned view that Davis employs in her book makes me realize, as it should anyone who reads it, that what we consider in this day and age as an English country house style has much more to do with the imaginative strictures employed by 20th century interior designer John Fowler. The bright, gilded, highly ornamented ‘Louis’ interiors all the rage in the early 19th century were toned down and very often occluded, certainly in the case of soft furnishings, with a cover of floral chintz. Cozy, perhaps, and a rubric that informed most 20th century design, but far, far distant from what was wrought a century or so earlier.

We’ve ourselves handled a few pieces of what I formerly, and dismissively, considered confections by Baldock, including a pair of cabinets with central panels of impressive Boulle marquetry. Upon inspection, it becomes apparent that, while the Boulle panels are well made, the balance of the piece is rather less skilled- not crude, mind you, but the moulding in lacquered brass is cut and mitred at the corners. The fine chasing of the premier partie of the Boulle panels is not matched in skill by the less than perfect casting of the mounts on the rest of the cabinet. Even so, they were plainly stamped with ‘EHB’ marking them the production of the Baldock workshop- and, frankly, they look wonderful in their current home in Chicago.

In our current stock, we’ve got something else of Baldock that may be entirely his workshop’s own manufacture, albeit in the then fashionable ‘Louis’ style- a bonheur du jour in rosewood and kingwood, inset with wonderfully detailed porcelain panels. Florid, but again, in the style of the time. Among the piece’s many intriguing features is to consider that the porcelain panels, though in the manner of the Sevres that was sought after by British aristocratic buyers, might in fact be Coalport- Baldock, as with other dealers who catered to the demands of the British bon ton, provided something French inspired in the manner of the ancien regime, but of entirely English manufacture. Intriguing and, between

ourselves, the several talking points about it rendering the piece all the more appealing. Indeed, when I first caught sight of it, it was the joinery and the finely wrought dovetails of the mahogany drawer linings that made it apparent the piece had much more to do with England than its ‘Louis’ outline would indicate. Was this legerdemain on the part of Baldock? Perhaps, but not done in a manner or with a motivation that we might today consider particularly egregious. As Davis makes clear, anything in the French manner, whether ancient or newly made was equally acceptable in any aristocratic home.

Highly suggested reading

Diana Davis, The Tastemakers: British Dealers and the Anglo-Gallic Interior, 1785-1865, Getty Research Institute, 2020

Kate Heard & Kathryn Jones, George IV: Art & Spectacle, Royal Collection Trust, 201

For all the profoundly overarching features of 2020 common to all of us, for every single one of us, we have to travel our own road day to day. With this in mind, this past week I’ve been given to consider significant events in my own life in the year past. What’s related below is limited to three that are of prima facie albeit entirely personal significance but my gentle readers most of whom have come to know me over the years might find the doing of this relevant to their own lives, and consequently spark their own, hopefully productive, introspection.

June 28, 2020- Keith and I mark 40 years together

It is hard to overstate the importance of this in my own life, to say nothing of the naked fact that, save my own mortal span, nothing is of longer duration. I joke that, if we decided to call it a day, our mutual affairs would be so difficult to unwind that Keith McCullar and I find it easier to just soldier on. And that’s always what it is- a joke not to be taken one whit seriously. When we met and within weeks plighted our troth, gay relationships were typically measured in weeks, not years- and were yet in many jurisdictions outright illegal- but for myself, it never seemed that we’d be anything but a permanency. Of course, we’ve had some trying times but not recently, and in hindsight, those very few times were brief and ultimately had little effect on either singly, or more importantly, both of us together. Though our relationship was legally sanctioned in 2013, it is the earlier date we both of us continue to mark.

July 25, 2020- Keith’s 60th birthday

For the few of you arithmetically inclined, you’ve now worked out that Keith was 19, on the cusp of 20, when we got together. He should pen this, by rights, as perhaps he should have at least contributed something to the prior entry above, but, well, I’ve got the keys to the blog posts. So of course this represents my opinion entirely, and my opinion is, there is no one I know who’s character and probity, strong in the beginning, has remained so steadfast. Not quirky, not erratic, but always the same. Mind you, that’s not to say dull, because certainly within our own relationship, Keith remains- what shall we say?- a live wire. He has strong opinions, but expresses them to me, fits of anger, but generally expresses them to me- or more typically ‘at’ me the result of some kind of error, egregious or otherwise, I’ve committed. My gentle readers might be surprised, I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, to find that some consider my ego at times inflated, which inflation results in some occasional episodes of self-importance and pomposity. It is a job Keith has taken on gladly, and to my benefit, gleefully serves as the deflator man. Neither of us is less than complex in our personalities, but it is Keith who functions to keep us both at a level where we can at least occasionally interface with those possessed of shall we say simpler mien. In the main though, and this from the start, there’s been laughter, and though Keith has never been able to tell a joke, he can make me laugh quicker than anyone can. Mind you, those few who’ve seen Keith’s anger directed at them, and there are very few, will never forget it.

September 17, 2020- the death of Ann Chappell

My mother’s death a few months ago was expected, having been diagnosed a couple of months prior with a type of bone cancer. Her wish was to not receive treatment, with the ultimate consequence. Mother had lived her own life on her own terms up to the end, and in her own home. My father died five and a half years earlier- similarly, largely in good health until his short final illness. My mother though did not repine, but enjoyed herself the last few years, with innumerable trips to see her grandchildren, great grandchildren, and friends near and far. I can’t honestly say her death left me bereft in any measurable degree, and this may be my inheritance from her- a well-centred practicality in accepting that death is ultimately what waits for all of us and if we can enjoy our lives up to the end, what more could we want?

These three are briefly told and doubtless the global pandemic and political upheaval in this country must perforce color these events. Not sure how in any material way, however, but for travel that was postponed or condensed social interaction, but everything of significance occurred anyway. I doubt whether not traveling to London or Rome or Honolulu, or having a smaller funeral, all external factors that shouldn’t have, and in my opinion didn’t, function to make anything for me this past year any less important.

‘….and I fall asleep counting my blessings.’ So the Irving Berlin song goes, made famous by Bing Crosby in the movie ‘White Christmas.’ I watched it the other day on one of the 1,000 or so cable channels that have been our mainstay during the COVID crisis. I forgot but was reminded of the funniest part of the movie- the low drag duet of Bing and Danny Kaye singing ‘Sisters’, but that’s a consideration for another blog post.

What’s more germane, though, is the first scene of the movie, in wartime with the soldiers in a forward position at risk of bombardment. It made me think of how when I would in better times complain about various and sundry to one of my best friends, a wise old bird of 101, her rejoinder has frequently been ‘Well, it isn’t wartime.’ And so I would then pull back from the emotional brink, and as Bing sang it, count my blessings.

However, that trope that has stood me so well for so many years doesn’t work anymore, because it is wartime, and against something we can’t see or yet with complete effectiveness fight against, but is every bit as devastating as cannon fire or an aerial bombardment. Where one had only to see the deathly grim statistics on the news reports to know this is so, very nearly all of us now has tragic first or second hand knowledge.

It astonishes me, though, that so very many people do not, however, seem to care and insist on being horrendously bad citizens. When the COVID epidemic first came upon us, and not yet recognized as a pandemic, health care experts advocated for the wearing of surgical masks, not so much, as they said at the time, for protecting oneself from the inhalation of the virus laden droplets exhaled by others, but more effectively to keep one’s possibly infectious droplets to oneself.

And nothing has really changed- wearing a mask is the quintessence of good and responsible citizenship. And, along with social distancing and staying within one’s bubble, is simple to accomplish.

Grievously astonishing, that so many people have so often since the start of this spurned best practice in favor of- what? Stupidity masking itself as some kind of selfishly wrongheaded expression of personal rights. But for every person who every time they should fails to wear a mask and/or practice social distancing, the question is begged- what about the rights of the rest of us? Another old friend, himself likewise a wise old bird well into his 90’s, mouthed the pithiest statement in this regard when he said ‘My rights end where yours begin.’ Neither you nor I have any right to ignore the right of anyone else to stay healthy.

So where does that leave us over the holiday season? Not a hoax, not an expression of partisanship, but a real live war that can be won.