Clifford response

Clifford's "On Collecting Art and Culture" discusses the motifs of authenticity of artifacts and how the collections give a person an identity, despite that the reproduction of the object loses its original authenticity as it is taken out of its original environment, which gives it a different meaning, and/or loses its meaning completely. What is considered to be taboo is fascinating as we "do not encounter these objects except as curiosities to giggle at, art to be admired, or evidence to be understood scientifically." (217) Griffith brings up the idea of creating an identity through the collecting of art, and how that created identity itself, is a "kind of wealth" (218). The collections have a hierarchical nature because in a sense, a person with more other-worldly objects and art is considered to be of a higher social rank due to their ability to own such exoticized art. As I mentioned before, this reading reminded me that when objects are taken out of context, they lose their original meaning as well as their authenticity. Griffith discusses this further that "collections-most notably museums-create the illusion of adequate representation of a world by first cutting objects out of specific contexts...and making them "stand for" abstract wholes." (220) The objects which are exhibited and collected lose their original meaning when they are presented as merely non-Western objects, and in a setting that presents them out of context. When non-Western art and artifacts are exhibited and/or collected, their presentation out of context loses all sense of time and place, as well as the "concrete social labor of its making." (220)

It is interesting that non-Western artifacts have been called "objects sauvages," "sources of fascination with the power to disconcert." For someone to be considered wealthy and powerful, they discover, collect, and exhibit their artifact as a sort of exotic prize for all to gawk at and acknowledge that they have acquired a taste for exoticism, as a sort of cultural fetish that is appropriate to collect. Objects which served a purpose, which had a deeper meaning in its original context, like many artifacts and works of art, once brought over and adapted to the Western world, lose their authenticity and instead become an object of fetishism, an artifact that is merely objectified and its creation is not at all questioned, instead it is simplified to a collectible that the bourgeois are entitled to own and exhibit at their own expense. This is evident throughout history, and I think even today, with the people who are wealthy enough to 'collect' art are causing original works to become less authentic in a Western environment, and even the way that it is exhibited at all causes objects to lose their original meaning.