The Act of Collecting: A Symptom of Anxiety?

The image of the contemporary art collector is often associated with appearances and with luxury, so it’s no coincidence, then, that this cliché drives the parodic work of Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf (MAKP). On the other hand, the interest in pulling closer the existential malaise revealed by our relationship to objects — that of always aspiring to be more — and the argument about the collector put forward by Jean Baudrillard in The System of Objects doesn’t lie in those qualities. For Baudrillard, the act of collecting and the activities inherent in it — arranging, classifying, manipulating — consist of a primary reflex developed by a child in order to master the world around it.¹ 1 - Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 1996), 87. From the start, collected objects play a role in managing anxiety; they give the subject who accumulates them a feeling of mastery over his or her immediate environment while reassuring them of their identity. In fact, Benjamin sees the discourse of subjectivity exemplified in such objects, since through them the subject not only projects a specific image of him or herself, with which s/he wishes to be associated (our objects act as a mirror for a desired image and not a real one),² 2 - Ibid., 89. but these objects also allow the subject to place him or herself beyond time by conjuring the fear of death. One could go so far as to suppose that it is a feeling of lack, a feeling of not being enough that drives one to collect. The activity thus produces a compensatory effect as it aims to make an individual’s desire for accomplishment — the supreme contemporary value if there ever was one — tangible by piling up the material goods associated with the idea of social success. This is the reason Baudrillard identifies the passion for private property as the engine that drives the collector’s act.