Unpacking Warhol's Time Capsule Archive
|
In this article
Introduction
Welcome to the sixth article in the Featured Books blog post where I take a deep dive into one book, artist or publisher. This week we are looking at A is for Archive: Warhol's World from A to Z.
Starting in 1974 during a studio move, Andy Warhol began an obsessive, massive conceptual art project. He kept a uniform brown cardboard box next to his desk at The Factory and everything that crossed his path—mail, hotel toiletries, fan letters, half-eaten food, or valuable original artwork—was swept into the box. When it was full, he taped it shut, signed it, dated it, and sent it to a storage facility, immediately opening a new box. By his death in 1987, he had created 610 sealed capsules, each typically containing 250-300 - overall there are an estimated 300,000 items.
Today, the boxes live at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh where curators have spent decades meticulously unpacking and cataloguing them. While largely unknown as a unified project during his lifetime, the capsules function simultaneously as a personal diary, a commercial record, and a portrait of 20th-century pop culture.
A is for Archive
Warhol's World from A to Z
Matt Wrbican
Hardcover
26.9 x 2.5 x 28.4 cm | 296 pp
Yale University Press | 2019
RRP £30
Now £15
Synopsis
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) remains an icon of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. He also was an obsessive collector of things large and small, ordinary and quirky. The Time Capsules are Warhol’s largest collecting project, in which he saved source material for his work and an enormous record of his own daily life.
Since 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum has studied and safeguarded the artist’s Time Capsule archive encompassing hundreds of thousands of objects, at turns strange, amusing, and poignant. From this array, many of these items have been researched and described in this book for the first time. For the myriad fans of Warhol and his quixotic world, as well as those who never understood the artist before, this volume is essential and unforgettable.
Written by Matt Wrbican, the foremost authority on Warhol’s personal collection, A is for Archive features curated selections from this collection, shedding light on the artist’s work and motivations, as well as on his personality and private life. The volume is organised alphabetically, honouring Warhol’s own use of a whimsical alphabetical structure: “A is for Autograph” (a selection of signed objects, many of which influenced his most popular works), “F is for Fashion” (featuring his collections of cowboy boots, neckties, and jackets), “S is for Stamp” (works of art by Warhol and others relating to stamps and mailed items), and “Z is for Zombie” (a grouping of photographs and ephemera of Warhol in various disguises: drag, robot, zombie, clown). The book also features an insightful essay by renowned art critic and Warhol biographer Blake Gopnik.
Chapters A-Z
Unpacking Warhol
Excerpts from the foreword
by Blake Gopnik
The archives he left behind don't simply
bear witness to his life as an artist. In some sense, they themselves exemplify what this life was about and what drove it. That's because they produce as much confusion and chaos as clarity, and, if you work with them long enough, you start to realise that this carefully cultivated uncertainty - not blotted ink or silkscreens or Polaroid film - was Warhol's most cherished art supply.
Work long enough in the archives of The Andy Warhol Museum, and you start getting the curious sense that Andy is watching. Uncover a batch of his wig receipts, and he whispers about how the toupees made him itch.
...dig still deeper into his archive and life, and you realise that his collecting was more about a true fascination with the peculiar than it was about the joy of simply having. When he could use fine art to spot the peculiar in the everyday - to recognise the puzzling paintings that soup cans want to become - he was at his happiest.
The Author
Matt Wrbican (1959–2019) was an American archivist and authority on the life of the artist Andy Warhol. He earned his BFA in Painting and MFA in Intermedia/Electronic Art from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he studied with Bruce Breland. He began working with the Warhol Archive in 1991 in New York City and became Chief Archivist of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He managed the Archive and Warhol's Time Capsules for more than two decades at the Warhol Museum, where he unpacked, processed, preserved, and documented an estimated 500,000 objects. A is for Archive: Warhol's World from A to Z was his final book.
Review & Further Unpacking
In his review for Library Journal, art critic Michael Dashkin asserts that A Is for Archive: Warhol's World from A to Z captures a collection whose "range is far too diverse and extraordinary to do anything more than hint at." Dashkin highlights an eccentric mix of memorabilia from the Warhol Archives Study Center, featuring items ranging from celebrity photos and food labels to fashion illustrations, a taxidermied lion, and personal notes. Referencing fellow critic Blake Gopnik, Dashkin describes the book as a "mad accumulation of castoffs… inviting future artists and curators to raid as they please". He recommends it as an essential resource "For archivists, students, and fans of Warhol's life and art."
Further Unpacking
The Secrets of Andy warhol's Time Capsules - BBC Magazine
Olivia Laing on Warhol's Time Capsules - Another Magazine
The making of one of Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules - YouTube
Andy Warhol's Time Capsules: the Art of saving Everything - Revolver Gallery
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.