To the collector belong the spoils : modernism and the art of appropriation

**__To the Collector Belong the Spoils__** **rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice which flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives**. Through a constellation of three author-collectors—Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Carl Einstein—Annie Pfeifer examines the relationship between literary modernism and twentieth-century practices of collecting objects. From James's paper hoarding to Einstein's mania for African art and Benjamin's obsession with old Russian toys, she shows how these authors' literary techniques of compiling, gleaning, and reassembling constitute a modernist style of collecting which reimagines the relationship between author and text, source and medium. Placing Benjamin and Einstein in surprising conversation with James sharpens the contours of collecting as aesthetic and political praxis underpinned by dangerous passions. An apt figure for modernity, the collector is caught between preservation and transformation, order and chaos, the past and future. Positing a shadow history of modernism rooted in collection, citation, and paraphrase, __To the Collector Belong the Spoils__ traces the movement's artistic innovation to its preoccupation with appropriating and rewriting the past. By despoiling and decontextualizing the work of others, these three authors engage in a form of creative plunder that evokes collecting's long history in the spoils of war and conquest. As Pfeifer demonstrates, more than an archive or taxonomy, modernist collecting practices became a radical, creative endeavor—the artist as collector, the collector as artist. To the Collector Belong the Spoils rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice, which flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives. Through a constellation of three author-collectors—Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Carl Einstein—Annie Pfeifer examines the relationship between literary modernism and twentieth-century practices of collecting objects. From James's paper hoarding to Einstein's mania for African art and Benjamin's obsession with old Russian toys, she shows how these authors' literary techniques of compiling, gleaning, and reassembling constitute a modernist style of collecting that reimagines the relationship between author and text, source and medium. Placing Benjamin and Einstein in surprising conversation with James sharpens the contours of collecting as aesthetic and political praxis underpinned by dangerous passions. An apt figure for modernity, the collector is caught between preservation and transformation, order and chaos, the past and the future. Positing a shadow history of modernism rooted in collection, citation, and paraphrase, To the Collector Belong the Spoils traces the movement's artistic innovation to its preoccupation with appropriating and rewriting the past. By despoiling and decontextualizing the work of others, these three authors engaged in a form of creative plunder that evokes collecting's long history in the spoils of war and conquest. As Pfeifer demonstrates, more than an archive or taxonomy, modernist collecting practices became a radical, creative endeavor—the artist as collector, the collector as artist. Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Dangerous Passions Part One: Possessing the Old World 1. James’s Human Bibelots 2. Sardanapalus’s Hoard Part Two: Between Salvation and Revolution 3. The Collector in a Collectivist State 4. Trash-Talking in The Arcades Project Part Three: Collecting Africa Introduction 5. The Collector and His Circle 6. Einstein’s “Critical Dictionary” Epilogue: Hoarding in a Digital Age Notes Bibliography Index "Rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice that flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives and examines the relationship between literary modernism and twentieth-century practices of collecting objects through three author-collectors, Walter Benjamin, Carl Einstein, and Henry James"-- Provided by publisher