Episode 386- James Delbourgo on the 'Noble Madness' of collectors- from Charles Foster Kane to Norman Bates and others, and what Freud had to say about all of them

James Delbourgo, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of A Noble Madness: the Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now, talks about:

Why he's written about contemporary art so extensively, as a history academic who's very interested in the present, going to galleries and wondering who collectors are right now, raising a lot of questions about archetypes for what would become a big part of his book; how collectors can not only be defined as powerful, they can also be defined as weak, unhinged and deranged, among other things; how the profile of the collector, over time, is more a corkscrew than an arc, with the Freudian view of the collector was seen as repressed and even dangerous, whereas the contemporary collector is seen as being more about power; how in Robert Bloch's book "Psycho," upon which the movie was based, the Norman Bates character is actually described as a collector but one who is ugly and unprepossessing, and how the Hitchcock film turned him into a charming, ingratiating figure who turns the audience on his side; how really thoroughly experiencing housed collections (prime examples are the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA, and    the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone, owned by Gabrielle d'Anunzio) was embedded in his writing the book; the collector as puppeteer, as orchestrator (and collector) of people, as William Randolph Hearst was; how encountering someone's place, and their things, is "a physical experience that constitutes the way you understand this person and your relationship to them," as James put it; and how Freudian interpretation has had such a lasting relevance over the years, even as it's gone out of fashion.

In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon Supporters of the podcast, you'll hear James talk about:

How hoarding, like the Middle Ages, has waned, and is tossed around far too lazily; the 'l' word, as in "loser," which he used to describe Robert Bloch's Norman Bates, whom he qualifies as a 'lovable loser,' particularly because collectors like Bates collect authentically, out of passion, not for financial gains; how he couldn't quite get the marketing department to change the subtitle of his book (particularly "The Dark Side" part), and why he's interested in authentic collectors, those who collect for love, with no thoughts of profits or strategy, the type of collector who he believes is vindicated in the end, as opposed to the Charles Foster Kane-type collector, who colle