One may start from the fact that the true collector detaches the object from its fundamental relations. But that is hardly an exhaustive description of this remarkable mode of behaviour. For this isn't the foundation (to speak with Kant and Schopenhauer) of that 'disinterested' contemplation by virtue of which the collector attains to an unequalled view of the object - a view which takes in more, and other, than that of the profane owner and which we would do best to the gaze of the great physiognomist? But how his eye comes to rest on the object is a matter elucidated much more sharply through another consideration.
Walter Benjamin, Sketches for the Arcades Project, c.1927
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