Image by Antenna.

Below the center, just on the left, I see a man fallen from his horse, who runs off to the right. And coming down from above in large letters are the words from God commanding Saul, the sinner that man formerly was, to become Saint Paul. In a semicircle behind the fallen Paul are a vast array of figures. And in the foreground on the left is a magnificent, large soldier on his horse. I am looking at a print by Jacques Callot, The Conversion of St. Paul (1620s), which is small enough to be held in the palm of my hand. It would be instructive to compare and contrast other versions of this scene, which can easily be done online. For years, this print has hung by the desk on which I am working right now. Sometimes when I doubt whether my writing makes sense, I like to take my Callot down and look at this scene. The engraving is a masterpiece. Callot was an unusual artist— he seems to have made only prints.

I write in praise of art collecting, which can be a most instructive activity. We, leftist art writers, are accustomed to discussing the critical powers of contemporary art. Or to critique in Marxist terms the contradictions of the art market. But we are less accustomed to praising art collecting, an activity which is all too easily associated with all the worst aspects of this capitalist marketplace, ruled at the high end by the superrich. Collecting, we know, is a necessary part of the art system. Still, isn’t this concern with commerce slightly distasteful? As a philosophy professor at a provincial university, I never had enough money to be a real collector. And so, it’s just as well that I was never interested in doing serious collecting myself. My own very modest collecting experience was initially fostered by a marvelous store in London, Craddock and Barnard, where you could sit for hours and look at the prints, and maybe find one to purchase for a few pounds. Then in Paris, and in Rome I found similar stores. And later in Tokyo, after I was paid in cash for a lecture, I spent my fee on Japanese works on paper. In all of these stories I could look at files of inexpensive works on paper, and at leisure, choose one or two to live with. And when I was married, my London host gave me a Craddock and Barnard Degas engraving.

I can think of no better way to learn about art than to be a collector. But it’s always essential to choose for yourself what to purchase, not with an advisor, for the goal is to educate your eye. When I write about work in New York’s commercial galleries, of course I don’t purchase anything; the works on display are far beyond my budget. But the process of looking, and making critical discriminations is familiar to me. Collecting always involves choices. But the only way to learn anything is to make your own choices. That’s why it’s so essential to choose for yourself, not with an advisor. There are numerous books offering advice to collectors.I’m not sure that you need any of them, for what matters is looking for yourself. Just as you better appreciate fine restaurant cooking after trying to do a recipe for yourself at home, so you learn a lot about the upscale public art world by being a modest collector yourself. At any rate, my interest here lies less in the very minor economic value what you gather than what’s to be learned in that process.

The art historian Leo Steinberg, a great print collector, showed how useful they could be to a resourceful scholar. Close scrutiny of the ways in which these copies modify original artworks proves in his criticism often to be very revealing. (See Holly Borham, Simone WIcha and Peter Parshall, The Circulating Lifeblood of Ideas: Leo Sternberg’s Library of Prints (2023)). Steinberg started buying prints in the 1960s, when even a poorly paid adjunct professor could afford to collect. My own interest a generation later is different from his: I am usually concerned with what collecting of inexpensive artworks tells us about the activity of making aesthetic choices. But when I was writing about Walter Pater, I purchased the Alphonse Legros print describe in his essay “The School of Giorgione,” a work that inspired my writing. Pater discusses the aesthetic qualities of this image, which is not expensive.

Thanks to gentrification, the print stores I visited a few decades ago are mostly out of business. Now, however, you can shop (or just look) online. The market in art on paper has survived on eBay. In my experience, this business is reliable. You will receive what you’ve paid for. Whether you will like it, that’s of course a trickier question. Best, then not to put too much at stake. And, to add the obvious, I have no personal stake in this business. Set yourself an arbitrary, very low limit, say $50. And see what you can find. Humble objects can be great teaching tools. After a week, do you come to dislike an image that initially pleased you? Ask yourself why. Did you find another picture that turns out to be oddly pleasing? Why that difference? Do try to explain your reaction. Sometimes bargaining is required online. I enjoy it, for as in an Islamic souk it creates a momentary personal relationship between seller and buyer, but it does take time. I advise that you avoid name artists, and look for anonymous works with varied subjects. I found fascinating images of the Neapolitan revolutionary Masaniello, which appear in my published essay on him. See here.

My unchecked hunch is that eBay not heavily regulated. And so, some attributions are very optimistic. In general, if a work is much too cheap, there’s likely a good reason. Making aesthetic decisions, what do you prefer, and why. Study how some works grow better with time, while others wear our your welcome. Experiment with writing about your collection. Aesthetic experience is fascinating, so, unfortunately, all too many people never have experienced it. The bargain-basement collecting I am describing might, for them, prove liberating. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984) tells a lot about how the French bourgeois taste of his generation was formed. But you don’t have to accept any such rules. Choose for yourself! My unacademic goal is to promote reflection about aesthetic preferences. Forty-some years ago, I couldn’t quite afford Callot’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. I look at it longingly occasionally in shops now, the price gone up so that it’s still beyond my budget. The work that you choose reluctantly not to purchase is sometimes memorable.

Since Chardin, artists have known that humble subjects can be the basis for important works of art. Art collectors, too, can learn from humble materials, because in many relevant ways the activity of judging and scrutinizing modest prints is identical, in its essential active structure, with the processes by which connoisseurs make their judgments of museum-worthy, valuable works of art. In that way, in my judgment, a certain commercial concern is unavoidable in the activities of judging artworks, even when they are politically critical artworks. Here, as in all collecting, there are moral issues. But the political implications of this last claim really are the subject for another essay.