[PDF] Collecting as Modernist Practice (Hopkins Studies in Modernism) by Jeremy Braddock at Arts-Photography

Review

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Collections: collectors or collectives?By Daniel WilliamsThe most striking and immediate aspect of this book is the sheer marshaling of facts. the fruit. it is clear. of years of careful research and more importantly years of careful writing. The most important result of this is the avoidance of abbreviating the story through portentous theorizing about modernism(s). Animated on every page. instead. is the the extraordinary internationalism and multiplicity of the Modernist moment. Jumping around the globe. and especially leaping across the transatlantic. we see groups and individuals. striving for a market share in authenticity. both cultural and aesthetic. measured in economic value. lack of economic value. wide audience. narrow readership. engaging with or avoiding the totality of history. inclusivity and exclusivity alike. The book maintains an impressive historians assumption that all definitions of modernism are contingent and are open to thorough critical investigation.Within this striving lie parallels and surprising turns all contributing to a compelling story. Particularly appealing. and of central importance to the book as a whole. is the identification of instructive homologies between art collections and anthology forms. between the grouping of art objects and poetry especially. Beyond this lies the also central history of the contribution of African American writers. artists and literary figures to the story of modernism and collection. Identified early on in the book is what Braddock calls. for instance. the pointedly blurry line between Zora Neale Hurstons fiction and her anthropological work as a collector of folklore. This is craftily compared to similar traits in W.B. Yeats and Jean Toomer. A salient parallel in the fine-arts is found in the collection of lawyer and patron of the arts John Quinn. a collection which contained a virtual whos who of Parisian and London Cubists. Fauvists and Vorticists etc in sculpture and painting together with hundreds of African and Asian objects. Thus one attempt to firm-up modernist cultural authority enters the marketplace (Quinns collection was sold off in its entirety. in various stages. after his death) in a peculiar alliance between innovation and folkloric and non-European authenticity.This history would not come as a surprise. I imagine. to later African American artists from Josephine Baker to Miles Davis. who found a highly receptive space in Paris. former and first hot-bed of high-modernism. a space in which they were lauded as artists for precisely the same apparent marriage of (progressive) innovation and daring with (non-European and ancient) authenticity. The appeal of such a marriage echoed more recently in the dance of. for instance. Bill T. Jones. whose choreography articulates a long established transatlantic love affair. In his 1992 Dance performance Last Night on Earth. the music of decadent European composer Kurt Weill. brilliantly selected from his early late-Romantic songs to his famous Weimar Republic theatre music to his later Broadway show-tunes. is seamlessly programmed with the authentic blues of Bessie Smith. a fascinating and highly effective musical and cultural narrative.In the innovation-authenticity alliance we meet a battleground for the definition of the modern in terms of. on the one hand. the exclusion on grounds of racial or cultural emphasis. later to become echoed in the complaints of left-wing critics about modernisms fragmentation in the face of social reality. and. on the other. defining the modern by its attempt to ground innovation in the folkloric. the lost and the fragmented as precisely an attempt to ground artistic work in an ancient authenticity in the face of then current historical fragmentation and loss. To this we can add attempts by figures such as Philadelphia industrialist Albert C. Barnes to offer the art work as an ideal. non-alienating image of work within society to his employees.At each point in this tale. we have the fascinating image of the collective. Are collections more expressions of a collective identity of the works and artists collected therein. or are they overridden as a group by the individual vision of the collector. the editor or the anthologist?In another very different contemporary field. Detroit techno has been for two decades celebrated in Germany and other European countries because it is seen as being able to better or more articulately marry technical innovation in machine music with soul. that much sought-after ingredient combining ancientness. body. spirit and (non-European?) authenticity. For all that the Detroit techno project is multi-ethnic in origin. it special appeal and adoration in Europe is in large part a celebration of non-European innovation-with-soul (an aspect. naturally. of lesser importance in its country of origin). Braddocks book might make a very good basis for a consideration of how this contemporary music becomes collected and labelled as such. how this labeling and collecting functions in different markets world-wide and of what the current market for authenticity in machine music consists.One further interesting contemporary example of back and forth transatlantic innovation-as-roots might be the music of Rhythm and Sound. produced by Berlin duo Mark Erenestus and Moritz von Oswald. The music is machine-made stripped down dub-techno. often with vocals from a Caribbean singer. Thus. in an act of quasi-religious thanksgiving. European techno machine music returns to a moment of non-European innovation. namely that of early-seventies Jamaican dub reggae producers. in order to offer a much sought-after feeling of contemporary and indeed modern authenticity. It might be noted that Rhythm and Sound have never released albums as such. but release rather collections of singles releases.Braddocks book draws compelling attention to the collection. the anthology. the exhibition etc. - and indeed the auction - . as important areas for the consideration of any cultural moment. and his writing offers a dense but always readable example of the academic rigor with which to begin to undertake this consideration.