collecting vs owning -- different universes

Remember as a child, preschool, watching my fifteen year old uncle deal from a ragged cigar box the neat rows of carefully sorted and ranked baseball cards. It was a complicated business, trading these cards back and forth, angling to get the better deal, and of course there was always the potluck of a nickel’s worth of bubblegum. This was a fascinating business from several angles.

On the front of each card was some skinny kid in a baggy uniform, but on the back was the important stuff, batting average in the minors, on base percentage, mother’s maiden name, phase of the moon when he was drafted. Lot’s of numbers and in those numbers the clever could make a killing, lot’s of fun. I’ll trade you two mid-career ‘Phil Rissutoes’ for that ‘Duke Snyder’ rookie card -- no way. The rookie cards were the emerging artists of the national pastime. Most washed out, went back to the minors, but can you imagine owning a ‘Pete Rose’ rookie card, anyone who later became a big star? Not only was the on-field career of the ball player important, the bubblegum people could control the rarity by printing lots of mid-range players and restricting the more successful ones, and that added to their value too.

There are many successful people out there who ruefully regret letting their cigar box of baseball cards slip away -- probably worth millions by now. Thankfully grownups can graduate to collecting art, all the same principles. Heard some mature artist is getting another look because he was a roommate of some other artist who later become famous, oh really? Each artist has a ranking based on all these numbers, awards, corporate collections, former roommates, calculated indiscretions, it’s difficult to keep up. One difference between collecting baseball cards and art is with art there is no on-field performance, no sweat and flies, no bus rides with rattling windows, nothing except a quivering, volatile, manipulated consensus to determine worth.

What’s on the front of a baseball card never mattered much, low definition, out of register, subject to color slippage due to high levels of acid in the pasteboard -- just some ballplayer holding a bat anyway. Here at owning art we don’t care what’s on the back of the card, the long, glorious resume of official affirmations, we want to see the picture first. All that other stuff might be interesting but it won’t make the art any better. There’s a difference, after all, between ‘collecting’ art and ‘owning’ art, a deep and profound difference almost like residence in different universes. You guys and gals swap your stories of ten-fold increases overnight, chortle about blunders among your peers, but don’t imagine any of it has anything to do with art. Works of art are nothing more than baseball cards to you.

We think of buying and owning art is an investment in self, that art has inherent worth and can become a restorative element in a home or working environment, worth its price in strictly utilitarian terms, if justification is necessary. Collectors have plenty of ‘bluebooks’ to sort through, lots of ‘homework’ concerning who’s hot and who’s not, but I’d just as soon piss away the loot at a slot machine. On the other hand, there are thoughtful artists all around with something to say but no prior approval by the gatekeeper experts, and while finding their art is hard, owning their art is easy.