Saturday, April 19, 2025

The Neurocritic: Hoarders and Collectors



 

Pop artist Andy Warhol excelled in turning the on a regular basis and the mundane into artwork. Over the past 13 years of his life, Warhol put 1000’s of collected objects into 610 cardboard containers. These Time Capsules had been by no means offered as artwork, however they had been meticulously cataloged by museum archivists and displayed in a significant exhibition on the Andy Warhol Museum. “Warhol was a packrat. However that want to gather helped inform his creative perspective.” But Warhol was conscious of his compulsion, and it disturbed him: “I am so sick of the best way I dwell, of all this junk, and at all times dragging house extra.”

The place does the pastime of assortment cross over into hoarding, and who makes this willpower? 

Artists get an computerized cross into the realm of collectionism, regardless of their stage of compulsion. The Vancouver Artwork Gallery held a main exhibition of the works of Canadian author and artist Douglas Coupland in 2014. One of many sections consisted of a room crammed with 5,000 objects collected over 20 years and punctiliously organized in a masterwork known as The Mind. Here is what the gathering appeared like previous to meeting.

 

Supplies used within the The Mind, 2000–2014, mixed-media set up with readymade objects. Courtesy of the Artist and Daniel Faria Gallery. Photograph: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Artwork Gallery.

Hoarding, on the opposite had, lacks the creative intent or deliberate group of assortment. Collectors could also be passionate, however their obsessions/compulsions don’t hinder their on a regular basis perform (or private security). Based on Halperin and Glick (2003):

“Characteristically, collectors manage their collections, which whereas in depth, don’t make their houses dysfunctional or in any other case unlivable. They see their collections as including a brand new dimension to their lives by way of offering an space of magnificence or historic continuity that may in any other case be missing.”

 


Fig. 2 (Nakao & Kanba, 2019).
If possessions are effectively organized and have a particular worth, the proprietor is defined as a ‘collector.’ Medical circumstances that trigger secondary hoarding are excluded from Hoarding Dysfunction. The existence of comorbidities corresponding to obsessive-compulsive dysfunction (OCD), autism spectrum dysfunction (ASD), and a focus deficit hyperactivity dysfunction (ADHD) should be excluded as effectively.

I’ve held onto the want of writing about this matter for the final eight months…

…due to the time I spent sorting by my mom’s possessions between July 2020 and November 2020 after she died on July 4th. This course of entailed flying throughout the nation 5 occasions in a complete of 20 totally different planes within the midst of a pandemic.

 

Though my mom confirmed some parts of  hoarding, she did not meet scientific standards. She had varied collections of objects (e.g., glass footwear, decorator plates, snuff bottles, and ceremonial masks), however what actually stood out had been her accumulations — organized however extreme stockpiles of helpful gadgets corresponding to flashlights, slippers, sweatshirts, kitchen towels, and watches (though a lot of the latter had been not helpful).

 

Ten pairs of unworn gardening gloves

In the course of the 12 months+ of COVID sheltering-in-place, some individuals wrote books, printed papers, began nonprofits, engaged in fundraising, held Zoom profit occasions, demonstrated for BLM, home-schooled their children, taught courses, cared for sick family members, mourned the lack of their elder family, or endured COVID-19 themselves.

 

I handled the lack of a guardian, together with the solo activity of emptying 51 years of collected belongings from her house. To deal with this unhappy and lonely and emotionally grueling activity, I took images of my mom’s accumulations and collections. It turned a mini-obsession unto itself. I attempted to make sense of my mom’s motivations, however the trauma of her struggling and the specter of an unresolved childhood had been too overwhelming. Apart from, there isn’t any computational mannequin to elucidate the variations between Collectors, Accumulators and Hoarders.

 

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