Things R Us
Embrace Materialism!
Objects enhance our creativity, express who we are and teach us about the past.
The French writer George Pérec wrote a book called “Things” (les choses) in the 1960’s which has long descriptions of objects. The main characters are consumed by consumerism and measure their success by the number of things they can buy. Like Pérec, I used to despise objects too. Growing up in France, my parents had plenty of stuff: from furniture (chests of drawers, mirrors, fake Persian rugs, wardrobes) to dinnerware (silverware, china, crystal glasses…) to paintings and more. None of it was worth a fortune, but none of it was cheap either. I couldn’t understand my mom’s relish at setting up elaborate tables for Christmas with three different types of glasses and new plates, forks and knives for each course. I hated their massive dark wooden wardrobes and gilded mirrors. Too many curves and flourishes. In the same way that I preferred Roman style cathedral to gothic ones, I wanted objects to be plain and simple rather than full of themselves. They were asked to render a function and not preen, taking over the room. I cherished this saying I heard somewhere: “some people have furniture, others have luggage”. I wanted to be a luggage person, travel all over the world, and not be “crushed by the weight of objects” according to a French expression. When it was time for me to buy furniture, Ikea worked great. It was cheap and efficient. I had a few decorations but there were not ostentatious or particularly expensive. I didn’t want to care about stuff.
It is ironic of course because when I was going on vacations as a teenager, I carried with me numerous objects that are now all combined into one object: my mobile phone. I took a portable CD player with a box of CDs, a camera, a few books, my diary, an address book, paper, envelopes, stamps and pens to write letters, and so on and so forth. And that’s barely scratching the surface of what I can do with my swiss army knife-mobile phone. Condensing so many objects in one is a natural trend when the world is telling us that we have too much stuff. Reduce, reuse and recycle are the key words of the times. Plastic crap is polluting our oceans. The right thing to do is to have less things and use them for a long time.
Unfortunately, growing older I started developing a fondness for objects. First for making them. Ceramics became a great passion of mine. I was churning out objects that I didn’t have room for, adding to all the stuff in the world. Ceramic does not pollute per say, since the finished product is mostly rock and glass, and we use some of my stuff to eat and drink and put flowers in, so they’re not completely useless. Still, they use energy to create and most of them just sit on a shelf. It’s a luxury. But these objects are a way to express myself and I love it. After I die, there are people who will keep using a mug or a plate I made for them, forcing them to think about me every day until the object shatters. Even if they decide to take them to Goodwill, they will have to carry them there as a last reminder of my own tangibility. Your kids never belong to you - realistically it’s the other way round- but your stuff stays yours forever. It is reassuring.
Creating ceramics led me to care more about my decoration and buying new objects I didn’t really need but wanted: a clock, side tables, a sideboard, a lamp. They were useful, but that was a slippery slope, considering that after buying some of those objects I wondered if I could make them out of ceramic, and I ended up with 3 lamps instead of one and about 10 clocks instead of one. At some point I had 5 clocks in the lounge and three in the kitchen.
Recently, during a stay in France, I started watching a TV program called something like “the deal is sealed”. It’s similar to the Antique Road Show where people get their objects appraised by professionals, but there is a twist. After the appraisal, the object is presented to a panel of professional antique dealers who are betting on it. It’s fun to see which objects never reach the estimated appraisal, and which sell for ten times the estimate. This program makes you want to wander through second-hand store with an open mind, checking ugly glass vases and ceramics, just in case one of them turns out to be worth thousands of dollars. It’s a guilt-free hobby since we’re talking about recycled objects. Indulging in this past time is good for the environment, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Although so far I haven’t found any Daum vases at Goodwill.
Probably spurred on by seeing so many pretty objects on TV, I bought the most expensive piece of art I ever indulged in. The price (130 euros) will look pathetic to some and decadent to others. To me, although I could spare it, it was a big deal to spend on something that is not essential, like food or clothes, even though I don’t mind spending more on high-end food or clothes. I can justify it to myself because I do need food and clothes. I don’t need a new bowl on my shelf, just to look at. I had noticed a similar bowl from the same ceramic artist in the same gallery a couple of years before and loved it then but didn’t dare shelling the dough. It was unnecessary, too expensive, and I had already too many ceramic objects in my house. I took a picture. Taking pictures is my way of owning things that I can’t keep, be it objects, mountains or the shimmery shadow of the sun on my kitchen wall.
I tried copying this bowl with my humble potter abilities, but although it had some similarities with it, it wasn’t the same. So this Fall when I saw another bowl from the same artist, I bought it. My favorite TV program had shown me that things can gain a lot of value in a few decades. I could pretend that this bowl was an investment, even if I didn’t really believe it. I don’t play the lottery, and most objects lose half of their value as soon as you buy them, even when both you and the creator think they’re very artistic. Whatever its actual worth, I don’t regret buying it for one minute. Every time I walk into the lounge and look at this bowl sitting on my shelf, it makes me happy. Sometimes I take the bowl into my hands. It sits perfectly inside my cupped fingers. The rough exterior communicates in some primal way with my skin. I love the shape, the contrasting colors (matte black on the outside and pale blue inside), the play between the rough and smooth parts. I joke that if the house burns down, that will be the first thing I save.
Bowl by Isabelle Leclerq
So I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I like stuff, however greedy and consumerist it sounds. I realized when Trump got elected and I toyed with the idea of moving back to Europe that I couldn’t bear the idea of getting rid of some of my stuff. Of course, we could ship everything I cared about, but my pots and trinkets are not exactly outstanding enough to justify the cost. I endured four years of Trump in part because I couldn’t lose my stuff. I understand now that I was not being shallow. Pretty objects have this ability to make us happy. And hanging on to whatever joy you could find during the Trump presidency was worth its weight in gold.
I came to realize that an appreciation for nice objects is not something to be ashamed of. A pretty plate is a useful object that some people will expose on their wall. The line between a mercenary object, all function and no style, and a piece of art, all style and no function, is extremely blurry. I won’t apologize for enjoying Art. Art is essential because it brings us joy, and joy is as important to us as food and oxygen. Art is often viewed as a luxury, one of the first subjects that gets cut in schools when funding is short, and yet everyone needs it. I defy you to find a single dwelling which doesn’t have some unnecessary decoration. People will get the art they can afford, but they will scour second-hand shops for nice glasses and prettily colored plates. Art is basically just pretty stuff we think we don’t need. Except we do.
But objects are even more vital than this. objects are also part of our history and tell us who we are. Watching that French TV program made me realize that objects have a personality, a story, and tell you a lot about the world we live in. Appraisers are like wizards. They look at the shape of the legs on a table, the type of wood used, the type of decoration and tell you in what decade of what century it was made. They glance at a vase and tell you who made it and when and which type of artistic current it belongs to. They look at an orange plastic chair and can tell you that it was made in the 1970’s by such and such Italian designer. It’s a superpower of sorts.
What objects are worth doesn’t hinge on their age, size or ornate appearance, but what is trendy. A 1970’s floor lamp in the shape of a palm tree could beat a 17th century chest by a thousand euros. A simple pine wood bench from a famous designer can sell for a lot more than a 18th century oak wardrobe entirely carved by hand. The same Lalique sculpture made from the same mold but with an earlier signature has a bigger value. It is the same object but worth more. Go figure.
No matter what period you’re talking about, objects are representative of what people liked at any given time, what objects they were surrounded with. Seeing them allows us to understand historical periods and what living through them entailed. That is why museums are filled with objects. They teach us about the past. They’re tangible and real, a proof that different generations of people lived and died before we did. From prehistoric shards of pottery to ancient Egypt tombs all the way to present time, objects witness our history. They reflect the evolution of society too: petrol lamps and spinning wheels underline the changes in our world. They’re useless objects that used to be essential. I find them touching. I took my kids to an art exhibition once. The artist (Todd McLellan) had taken iconic objects and deconstructed them entirely into separate pieces, from the tiniest to the biggest, laid down side by side before taking a picture. He took apart a piano, a small airplane, a watch and an Iphone among other things. My son was intrigued by a walk-man. What could it possibly be used for? I owned a walk-man when I was just a little older than he is. It was weird to see how in one generation the use of a specific object could be forgotten.
This realization that objects have a history made me look at the stuff stored at my parents in a different way. I decided to take pictures of some of them. I love the fact that “taking” pictures implies going away with something in hand. Although with digital pictures this is unfortunately not true anymore. Disembodied photos will never give as much satisfaction as a polaroid print. My way to select the objects I wanted to “take” was erratic. I didn’t choose the prettiest objects or the most valuable. I went for what interested me. I decided to take a picture of each object inside a big black tray to give a sense of scale and a uniform background, so I could only take pictures of objects I could move (no furniture, nothing too bulky). So far I photographed 34 objects, including a sculpted ivory tusk that belonged to my great-grand father who lived and worked in Zanzibar at the end of the 19th century, a bunch of rusty keys that don’t open any doors, a small ceramic pot with some kind of black oozing liquid permanently stuck to it, a tube filled with pills supposedly able to cure cholera, an enameled plaque advertising for a chocolate brand, an old scale with metal weights, a few souvenirs from Africa, an abacus and more. I love the poetry created by this accumulation of objects, from useful to useless, from expensive to worthless, from rare to common like dirt.
left to right and clockwise: small yellow pot with oozing black liquid, sculpted ivory tusk, cholera medicine, old keys
To sum up, objects are worth paying attention to, for their ability to bring us joy and for what they’re teaching us. I also want to point out that people can become objects too. Literally in the case of mummies or plastinated dead bodies that were showcased at a recent exhibition. But the experience can be less macabre and downright common when people become sculptures, paintings or photographs. Objectifying someone is not necessarily demeaning. Statues are used in many culture to celebrate important people . There are also religions who forbid the representations of gods and humans but I think it proves the power of objects, that they would be considered a threat to gods…. Objects do have power. They talk to us, they reflect who we are where we come from. We can even become one. Let’s not look down on them.