Mostel
4291
You know it's funny...
Jul 01, 2014,23:01 PM
I looked at it so many ways.
I used to view a collector as an erudite, tasteful individual with a philosophical bent regarding his objects.
Then I met many collectors and was in general, surprised how, almost to a person, money defined everything-- and price was absolutely the first consideration.
Men buying watches for 200k would quibble over 1k.
So I lost my almost childlike view of collectors, and then I began to view them as people with a hunger that could not be satisfied, or insatiable individuals, who express their insatiability through the collecting of objects.
Then, I met more, read more, and began to view them as obsessive individuals. Easily bored. Always the hunger.
My friend Larry says his favorite watch is always the one 'incoming.'
I saw some collectors who had themes, and was always a little jealous of their focus, as I never had a theme in my collecting-- it was heart and gut and all mixed up.
In general I view a collector as a person who can never find what he's looking for, and who does not really want to. But either does not know it, or does not want to know it.
Words like passion are used to describe us, and I do believe that passion drives us, and is very real and deeply felt, but... I think it is equally a sense of deprivation masquerading as love or what have you.
But then sometimes there is that collector whose collection is greater than the sum of his psychological parts, and it is a little bit like his Artwork, this thing that he created through the act of collecting. His collection may have been created by watchmakers, but his collection is his own vision.
We can know him by his collection.
Just some thoughts and observations.