SLIP INSIDE THIS HOUSE

Amor Mundi: The Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman is a clothbound two-volume set in a slipcase available at The Conservatory. Courtesy of Ridinghouse and Lewis Ronald; Peter Doig pages. Courtesy of Ridinghouse and Jeff McLane.

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Slip Inside Marguerite Steed Hoffman’s thoughtful and rigorous collection weaves interconnectedness and expansion with the publication of Amor Mundi.This House

BY BRANDON KENNEDY

Giving thanks as the front door was slowly closing, I found my eyes lingering over Gerhard Richter’s Familie (Family) hanging on the foyer’s left wall while I was gently negotiating the weighty boxed two-volume set and its attendant tote in my receiving arms at Marguerite Hoffman’s home. I was cradling the swaddled books—first expectant, now anticipatory—watching the blurred, black-and-white image of the three adult women and two children in the countryside being horizontally wiped away into the timelessness of the 1964 painting.

Published by Ridinghouse and designed by A Practice for Everyday Life—both based in London—the execution and production of this exquisitely designed object as the document of a collecting vision is a complete experience unto itself. Beautifully photographed and illuminated by writings from artists and scholars as well as a few artists’ inventions, Amor Mundi: The Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman, is an inspired testament of what is, in her own words, “a collection of objects that speak to both the heart and the mind.”

The first volume opens with an honest and sincere preface by the collector, offering up emotional and historical insights into the objects in her collection as well as wrestling with the idea of what it means to compile them into the form of a book. Hoffmann outlines her relationship with her late husband Robert—already a collector of 20th-century masters by the time they married in 1994—and how their collecting journey together helped forge a deep connection with the Dallas Museum of Art, to which the stellar collection will eventually be bequeathed.

After Robert’s untimely passing in 2006, Marguerite continued along an expanded journey that was both informed by grief, a conversation upturned, and an opportunity for her to expand upon the somewhat male and canonical nature of the collection with an open curiosity and inner dialogue that still pushes her into new areas of discovery. Not only in terms of art—whether focusing on the underrepresentation of women or a recent appreciation of installation-based practices—but also in a grouping of hypnotic antiquities, Chinese monochrome porcelains, and an exquisite collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts. These were new areas of collecting explored by Hoffman after losing her husband and finding her way in objects while “looking for hidden messages.”

Editor Gavin Delahunty notes in his preamble that Amor Mundi (“Love of the World” in Latin) has literary forebears in both the

Marguerite Steed Hoffman. Photograph by David Needleman.

Clockwise from top left: Rita Ackermann, Mama, for the Left Hand, 2019. © Rita Ackermann. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Jeff McLane. Francis Picabia, Les papillons (Papilliomanie) (Butterflies [Papilliomanie]), 1926–27. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022. Photograph by Jeff McLane. Peter Doig, Red Man (Sings Calypso), 2017. © Peter Doig. All rights reserved, DACS 2022. Photograph by Jeff McLane.

From top: Philip Guston, Studio Landscape, 1975. © The estate of Philip Guston. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth; Maria Lassnig, Untitled (Selbstportrait mit Hasen) (SelfPortrait with Hare), 2000. © Maria Lassnig Foundation/Bildrecht Vienna, DACS London 2022; Julie Mehretu, A Mercy (after T. Morrison), 2019–20. © Julie Mehretu. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. All images courtesy of Ridinghouse. Photographs by Jeff McLane. namesake poem by the Pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rosetti as well as the humanist question of Hannah Arendt, the German-born political philosopher, but it ultimately points back to the query of “Why collect?” The following section, “To Love the World as It Is,” is an erudite analysis of 25 objects in the collection arranged chronologically. An epilogue further explores the motivations and propositions raised during the two-year production of the book.

With inset images of an atmospheric Tacita Dean and the aforementioned Richter on the front panel of each volume, the thick quartos weigh in at a total of 980 pages and almost eleven pounds. A putty-colored linen slipcase protects the pair while repeated, staggered titles rain down one side and the back, visually calling on the influence of concrete poetry within the collection. Mark your navigation of the experience with two matching ribbons in each volume.

Every artwork that appears in this book (around 400 out of more than 900 total in the Hoffman collection) has been rephotographed for this publication by Jeff McLane, who does a superb job of maintaining both clarity of presentation and compatibility from one artwork to the next. Likewise every detail—from font selection, paper choices, and the overall simplicity of design and use—invites the reader/viewer to play an active role, with multiple entry points and endless revisitations.

The writing component is tantamount to the heart of the project, with almost every invited scholar or artist contributing a pair of entries on artists of their choosing, illuminating each with elan and/or scholarship that offers both equal footing. There are also a handful of artists’ interventions sprinkled within, occasionally adding a dash of unexpected levity, or laying down some weighty literary propositions. A rousing conversation regarding painting in postwar Germany between the editor and publisher/professor Isabelle Graw rounds out volume two, leaving some historical questions and political quagmires still in active discussion.

Thoughtful epigraphs and single-line quotes pop up amid spatial pauses and can quickly lock a brain down or simply stir the soul. Louise Erdrich’s opening quote fills and deepens the void of brokenheartedness that is living in this world, typographically laid out as a hole. Martin Jay’s essay on the mania of collecting and his conversation with Hoffman thereafter open up the second volume, which then continues with artworks and essays regarding the artists whose last names run from L to Z.

For the few weeks I’ve had these two volumes in hand, I’ve explored, read, and revisited their pages many times, while also simply appreciating their presence and objecthood as they sit encased upon my desk as the late afternoon light shifts. A collection born of love, care, and dedication, passing through grief and renewal, now provides ample and varied opportunities for connection between reader/viewer and the artworks and words that speak to them. One can feel and appreciate the organic nature of collaboration therein, the dedication and energy that vibrates through the project, and the construction of a thoughtful and beautiful book that, according to the editor, “has life.” P

Clockwise from top: Dana Schutz, Mountain Group, 2018. © Dana Schutz. Photograph by Jeff McLane; Mark Bradford, A Truly Rich Man Is One Whose Children Run into His Arms Even When His Hands Are Empty, 2008. © Mark Bradford. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Jeff McLane; Charles Ray, School Play, 2014. © Charles Ray. Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. Photograph by Jeff McLane.