At the moment I’m engaged in a strange task, but one my wife has been encouraging me to undertake for some time. The restrictions imposed by the pandemic have removed any excuse I might have had for deferring the job any longer. She thought that it would be useful to have an inventory of things in our possession that are either of some monetary value, or which have some personal significance. The idea behind this is that when we die our descendants will know that some objects might actually have a special interest for the family. Occasionally, also, a few things might have enough monetary importance to make it important that they are not simply sent off to a charity shop. It has been an interesting and time-consuming effort.
It has not been a surprise to discover that there are few items that could commend any great price in the market. Possibly even more of a surprise has been the large number of things that we have accumulated that deserve preservation because of their family associations. One of the aspects of the task that has been of particular interest to me, however, has been the story behind various art objects in our collection. A few pieces we have bought, but a much large number of things have come to us as gifts from people we have known who are artists.
I was well aware that when we have bought things we have tended to prioritise ceramics, because there is a natural tendency otherwise for us to attract into our collection prints or paintings. I have been pleasantly surprised, during my cataloguing exercise, to discover that the artists with whom I became acquainted during my academic career in the former Yugoslavia, at that time relatively early in their careers, have ended up today as quite widely recognised for their work, although I could not have known this at the time.
Dragan Poposki-Dada left with us two wonderful drawings during his stay in Bradford, and he is now a major figure in Macedonia. I have a little gouache by Miroslav Masin. At the time of my stay in Skopje he was a rather wild and eccentric figure on the margins of the regional art scene, but is now (to my amusement) very much part of the artistic establishment there. The three prints given me by Halil Tikvesa have always been close to my heart. I came to know him as a struggling and marginal figure in the Belgrade scene in the late ‘sixties, but in his old age he is not only a pillar of the art establishment in Sarajevo, but a print-maker with an international reputation.
I have no idea what the market value of these things might be, and don’t particularly need to know, but I continue to value them for the personal and artistic impact they have had on me. When I think about it, surely this is why art should be valued.