UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND FACULTY OF ARTS Relics of All Things Precious: Curiosity and Wonder in Artists’ Collections A dissertation submitted by Tiffany Shafran For the award of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2012 SUPERVISORS: Associate Professor Laurie Johnson Dr. David Akenson Certification of Dissertation I certify that the ideas, experimental work, results, analyses, software, and conclusions reported in this dissertation are entirely my own effort, except where otherwise acknowledged. I also certify that the work is original and has not previously been submitted for any other award, except where otherwise acknowledged. __________________________________________________ ________________ Signature of Candidate Date Endorsement: __________________________________________________ ________________ Signature of Supervisor Date i Abstract This thesis proposes that there are specific artists whose practices utilise a collecting methodology as a critical engagement with the world. It argues that even though these artists appear to fit into a museum/archive system, they actually sit parallel to this system. Furthermore, the strategies that they employ navigate the physical, conscious, and unconscious world, creating new directions in collecting to surpass historical models. Therein the thesis examines the misinterpretation of how artists’ collections are situated within a museum or private collection system, proposing instead that these collections should be viewed as an artistic strategy and process for making sense of the world through the repositioning of found and collected objects. This dissertation will focus primarily on the model of the Wunderkammer, as it represents a historical model of collecting that incorporates a vast array of intuitive and conceptual intentions that sit parallel to the traditional museum archive and collection system. It is within this framework that artists create collections that are concerned with aspects of curiosity, chance, wandering and discovery, which form the basis of their artwork. This strategy was first employed by early Modernist art movements such as Dada and Surrealism to approach the world in a new way, however, this thesis demonstrates that this strategy has become a significant concept in contemporary artistic practce, instrumental in the construction of artworks that challenge the historical, political, cultural, and social narratives that the archival structure provides. Relics of All Things Precious proposes that collecting is a strategy employed by contemporary artists in the creation of artwork that seeks to make intuitive, marginal, subjective, forgotten, banal, and irrational experiences and events significant by engaging with the historical nature of the archive. These collections have a specific narrative function that represents a synthesis between collective and individual histories, sensible intuition and scientific inquiry, memory and amnesia, fact and fiction, and the material and immaterial. It is through these various strategies that artists interpret the world, creating new work from visual, conceptual, physical and emotional fragments, which in turn makes artists’ collections different from more traditional and historical collecting models. ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisors Associate Professor Laurie Johnson and Dr. David Akenson for their support, guidance, and feedback during my candidature. For their continued support and friendship, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Visual Art Department. I also wish to thank the Public Memory Research Cluster and the Faculty of Arts Research Committee for assisting me during this research. This project was also undertaken with the support of an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship, for which I am also extremely thankful. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to the artist Martha Rosler for her generosity, time, and insight into her artistic practice. Lastly I wish to thank my friends and family for their unconditional love, support, and patience during the past three years. This has given me the strength to see the project through to completion. My sincere gratitude to you all. iii In memory of my father… iv Table of Contents Introduction – Relics of All Things Precious: Curiosity and Wonder in 1 Artists’ Collections Project description 1 Purpose of the study 2 Generalised understanding of the field – What is a Collection? 3 History of artists’ collections 5 Literature review and scope of project 16 Terms specific to the argument 25 Statement of the argument 28 Structure and methodology 30 Conclusion 34 Chapter One – Curious Spaces: Travel, discovery, and collections 35 The encyclopaedic world: Systems of subjectivity in the cabinet of curiosities 37 The vanishing frontier: Travel and the souvenir 50 Mapping spaces of interiority as the new frontier in the twentieth century 56 Conclusion 65 Chapter Two – The Architecture of Collecting: The artist’s collection as a 67 site of interrelation On Architecture – structure and site 69 The sites of the Wunderkammer, the museum and the artist’s collection 71 The Box 81 The Tableau 87 The Archive 96 Conclusion 103 Chapter Three – Artists’ Relics: The narrative condition of the art object 105 Witnessing experience: Artistic performance and the object 106 Found object photograph as souvenir 117 Relics of everyday life 124 A narrative addressed to oneself – the artist’s proposal and viewer’s interpretation 131 Symbolic function of objects and the narrative metaphor of the collection 137 Conclusion 141 Chapter Four – Truth is Stanger than Fiction: Rendering the familiar 143 unfamiliar as a strategy of discovery The Wunderkammer Model 145 Scientific and intuitive enquiry 152 Discovery and the material and textual condition of curiosity 160 Serendipity – an active search for the chance encounter 166 The strategy of wandering 170 Narratives of ambiguity – the chronotope and delightful incongruities 174 Conclusion 180 v Conclusion – Unclassifying the Classified: Curiosity as an intuitive methodology within artists’ collections 182 Bibliography 193 Figure Reference List 221 vi Table of Figures Figure Description Page Fig. 1 Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, (1822) 6 Fig. 2 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, (1907) © Succession Picasso/ ARS, New York 6 Fig. 3 Unknown, Gabon, Fang Ngil mask, (19th c) 6 Fig. 4 André Breton, Mur de l’atelier d’André Breton, (1922 – 1966) © ARS, New York & ADAGP, Paris 7 Fig. 5 André Breton, Poème-Objet, (1935) © ARS, New York & ADAGP, Paris 7 Fig. 6 Gerhard Richter, Atlas Sheet 13, (1964) © Gerhard Richter 7 Fig. 7 Gerhard Richter, Woman Descending the Staircase (Frau, die Treppe herabgehend), (1965) © Gerhard Richter 7 Fig. 8 Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, (1917), © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ARS, New York, ADAGP, Paris & DACS, London 8 Fig. 9 Kurt Schwitters, Mz 410 irgendsowas (Something or Other), (1922) © Kurt and Ernst Schwitters Foundation/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn & DACS, London 8 Fig. 10 Hannah Höch, Bürgerliches Brautpaar (Streit)(Bourgeois Wedding Couple [Quarrel]), (1919) © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn & ARS, New York 8 Fig. 11 Daniel Spoerri, Repas hongrois, tableau- piège, (Hungarian Meal, Trap-picture), (1963) © Daniel Spoerri / DACS, London 10 Fig. 12 Arman, Poubelle des Halles, (1961) © Arman Studio 10 Fig. 13 Claes Oldenburg, The Store, (1961) © Claes Oldenburg 10 Fig. 14 Claes Oldenburg, Mouse Museum, interior view, (1965 – 77) © Claes Oldenburg 11 Fig. 15 Claes Oldenburg, Mouse Museum, exterior view, (1965 – 77) © Claes Oldenburg 11 Fig. 16 Herbert Distel, Das Schubladenmuseum (Museum of Drawers), (1970 – 77) © Herbert Distel, Bern 12 Fig. 17 Herbert Distel, Das Schubladenmuseum (Museum of Drawers), (drawers nos. 1 & 5), (1970 – 77) © Herbert Distel, Bern 12 vii Fig. 18 Marcel Broodthaers, Musee d’Art Moderne, Departement des Aigles, Section des Figures (Der Adler vom Oligozän bis Heute) (Figures Section [The Eagle from the Oligocene to the Present]), detail, (1972) © Broodthaers Estate 12 Fig. 19 Andy Warhol, Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol (installation detail: shoes), The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, (1970) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York & DACS, London 13 Fig. 20 Andy Warhol, Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol, (installation detail: Windsor chairs), The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, (1970) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS, New York & DACS, London 13 Fig. 21 Joseph Kosuth, The Brooklyn Museum Collection: The Play of the Unmentionable, installation detail, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, (1990) © Joseph Kosuth/ ARS, New York 14 Fig. 22 Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, Cabinet Making, installation detail, the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, (1992) © Fred Wilson 14 Fig. 23 Michael Johansson, Green Piece, (2009), © Michael Johansson 14 Fig. 24 Donald Judd, Untitled, (1971) © Donald Judd Foundation/ VAGA, New York 14 Fig. 25 Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale, (1599) 40 Fig. 26 Frans Francken II, Kunst- und Raritätenkammer (Chamber of Art and Curiosities), (1636) 40 Fig. 27 Balthasar van der Ast, Still Life with Fruit and Flowers (c.1620 – 21) 41 Fig. 28 Mike Kelley Arena #10 (Dogs), (1990) © Mike Kelley 41 Fig. 29 Flemish School, Cognoscenti in a Room Hung with Pictures, (c.1620) 45 Fig. 30 Domenico Remps, A Cabinet of Curiosity, (c.1690) 45 Fig. 31 Levinus Vincent, Wondertooneel der Natuur (Wonder Theatre of Nature) (Tome 2), (1715) 49 Fig. 32 Eadweard Muybridge, Man on a Horse (Plate