Are you collecting art, or chains?

Genuinely I had thought this discussion would long be over by now. 4 years ago most artists I spoke with already viewed the chain as secondary to the art. We made our choices based on accessibility, if the UX met our needs, not cultish allegiance.

Yet it seems many of the “leading” curators/collectors in our space are still unable to fathom the idea of collecting art for the arts own sake. They simple will not take the time to explore, to talk to those who operate in different currencies to their own. As though the nature of a chain somehow renders the artwork in an indecipherable foreign language to them.

This is because many aren’t looking to collect art, they’re looking to collect investments and social capital, they’re looking to feel included, to buy the culture, the sense of identity and self expression they lack. They are afraid the world won’t like who they are inside, they’ve let this fear fester until its rot reshapes them, now they barely know who they are without the group.

We see the effects of this feeling elsewhere as well. The hive mind, a cultish, pitchfork wielding mob that decries… anything really, so long as others also condemn it, so long as they can make themselves feel included and right by asserting the otherness and wrongness of something or someone else.

At the great risk of repeating myself ad-nauseam, this very human fear of exclusion is preyed upon and played up for profit. By algorithms and outfit designers, the fomo cultivated isn’t just the fear of not experiencing, it is the fear of being in the out group.

Now this phenomenon of in and out groups has been written about I’m sure at great length by people far greater than I in this realm of knowledge. The reason I write about it now is to simply remind us all that we should not be so easily led.

We should not be so afraid of who we are, what we enjoy, the art that captivates us, the films that thrill us, the colours we wear. We cannot live our lives by fears homogenised desire to only act in ways predetermined to be accepted.

If all artists, patrons, and curators did this we would choke on mundanity, drowned in a shallow sea of self serving platitudes, starved with nought to eat but wilted wallflowers.