Volume 41, Number 15 · September 22, 1994
The Possessed
By Charles Hope
The Cultures of Collecting
edited by John Elsner, edited by Roger Cardinal
Harvard University Press, 312 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Collecting: An Unruly Passion, Psychological Perspectives
by Werner Muensterberger
Princeton University Press, 295 pp., $24.95
The definition of collecting adopted by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal could hardly be broader. In their introduction they refer not just to Noah, with his comprehensive assembly of animals, but also to tax collectors, ticket collectors, and refuse collectors; to the medieval church, which supposedly collected souls, and even to the Nazis, though whether these were collecting unsullied Aryans to create a master race, or Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the insane for slaughter is left ambiguous. From their allusions to tax, garbage, and the Final Solution it is clear enough that they take a rather jaundiced view of collecting in general, and even when they turn to the more conventional sphere of art collecting their distaste is unconcealed.
Review, 3220 words
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