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The question of why people collect was first formally explored by the 19th-century founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Today the answers remain elusive, and often contradictory. “Things get turned on their head, we change our minds about it,” says the historian James Delbourgo, whose forthcoming book, A Noble Madness, unearths some of the darker sides associated with the collecting habit.

In ancient Rome, he says, the statesman and orator Cicero pointed to the voracious looting carried out by the Sicilian magistrate Gaius Verres to exemplify his misgovernance. “For Cicero, Verres’s desire for objects is an extension of his lascivious drives,” Delbourgo says. Later in time, “the quintessential imaginary collector becomes this desexed loser,” he says, citing Honoré de Balzac’s 1840s novel, Cousin Pons, which features one of the first collectors in fiction. Here, the titular Pons “cannot deal with real life”, Delbourgo says, an idea that prefigures the motivations that Freud identified that are anchored in personal anxieties, notably over sex.

These days, collectors don’t tend to mention sex as a drive or otherwise in their pursuits, although there is still a sense that the ideal collector controls their passions to create some order out of chaos. The difference between the acts of buying and collecting often comes down simply to having a theme. “I started out very impulsive, emotional, for about 10 years, I think everyone goes through that,” says the London and Chicago-based collector Ralph Segreti. “Then, about 20 years ago, I began to focus and now my collection makes more sense.” Segreti buys American abstract and conceptual pieces by emerging and mid-career artists, including Theaster Gates and Lauren Halsey. His collection is relatively small — he owns, he says, about 150 works in total.

At the same time, passion is also de rigueur, particularly when set against the profit motive, which is less approved of in the fine art world (despite art being touted as investment grade for the best part of the 21st century). In the latest Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting, which questioned more than 3,660 collectors last year, the highest-ranked consideration when buying a work of art was found to be “self-focused motivations”, such as self-identity and personal pleasure. This was the primary motivation for 40 per cent of respondents, whereas financial considerations were a priority for 24 per cent, on a par with the social aspects of collecting. “I wonder though, do people buy art and then, because they know it might go down in value, say that they bought primarily for pleasure, as a way to cover their bases,” says Dr Clare McAndrew, the founder of the research and consulting firm Arts Economics and author of the report. 

Confessing to a compulsive addiction is rare — only 8 per cent defined their main driver as such. “I guess I have a shopping addiction,” says Segreti, “but I have steered it into something more meaningful.” This is, he admits, something of a justification. “You could easily say that collectors are hoarders with money.” The hoarder instinct is not helped by the prevailing art market ideal that a good collector should not sell their works.

Some collectors go further and open their own museums. Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, whose public-facing foundation marks its 30th anniversary this year, opened a dedicated space in Turin in 2002, partly to house her collection of more than 1,500 pieces of contemporary art. She also owns about 3,000 historical photographs and a vast collection of American costume jewellery. 

Her urge to collect seems ingrained. “It is my life,” she says. “My mother collected antiques and I grew up seeing her passion. When I was young, about 12 years old, I started to collect small pillboxes, from simple ones from a market to beautiful silver ones.” These number about 1,000. “I still have the exercise books where I described what they looked like, their colour, what they cost.” 

When it comes to her adult thirst for contemporary art, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo talks about using it “to understand the world better, to talk a bit less and to listen to what artists have to say”. It is important in this context, she says, “to meet the artists, visit their studios, establish a relationship”.

Segreti also mostly buys works by living artists, though he has a work by Keith Haring in his bedroom and says that “there are some 20th-century works I would love to have in the collection, but prices are often prohibitive.” 

Female collectors such as Sandretto Re Rebaudengo are still in the minority. But while it might be tempting to identify a male mindset in the thrill of the chase, Delbourgo and others put the discrepancy down primarily to a societal reality — men have historically had more money. The dynamic is changing, notes Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, as women are increasingly part of the High Net Worth Individual set, as well as the likely first recipients of the Great Wealth Transfer, an expected $84tr that will change hands over the next 20 to 25 years. 

Other changes are afoot as collectors define themselves less as buyers of discrete objects and more as philanthropic forces. For Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, commissioning new art has become increasingly important, including a dramatic sculpture by Marguerite Humeau and a glass-tile mural by Tauba Auerbach. “My role is to be more than a buyer and to participate in artists’ lives, support their careers,” she says. Segreti has slowed down his purchasing for a higher cause — “I am buying less and sponsoring more,” he says. Sigmund Freud, himself an antiquities collector, might still have the answer. As he supposedly said: “All giving is asking, and all asking is an asking for love.”