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Less commonly known, until recently at any rate, was that Warhol was an inveterate hoarder, as showcased by his Time Capsules project. The title of the project is straightforward, as was Warhol’s way; it hides nothing, reveals everything. The project was exactly what its name suggests: a decades-long exercise in collecting ephemera from his life, storing it in boxes – aka, Time Capsules – and, often, forgetting about it.
Now forming the highlight of the Andy Warhol Museum’s archives collection, the Time Capsules comprise 610 standard sized cardboard boxes, which Warhol, beginning in 1974 when he relocated his studio, filled, sealed and sent to storage.
Like almost anybody in the process of moving, Warhol packed his life into cardboard boxes. Like a few, he didn’t unpack. Unlike almost everybody, he didn’t stop. He continued packing his life into boxes until his death in 1987.
Keeping a box next to his desk for the next decade or so, the artist simply dropped his stuff in when he was done with it. When the box was full, he’d seal it up, mark the date on it, and start a new one. Over time, countless boxes filled with source material for his work and an overwhelming record of his own daily life.
According to the Museum, this includes “photos, newspapers and magazines, fan letters, business and personal correspondence, art work, source images for art work, books, exhibition catalogues and telephone messages, along with objects and countless examples of ephemera, such as announcements for poetry readings and dinner invitations.”
In addition, inventory of the boxes has revealed a pair of Clark Gable's shoes, a mummified human foot, a pizza, World's Fairs memorabilia, children’s books, greeting cards, folk art, Hollywood publicity stills, crime scene photographs, dental molds, Art Deco silver and Native American objects – the typical consumer culture detritus of his Pop Art inspiration, but so much more as well.
As a record of Warhol’s life – public and private – and inspirations, it’s understandably unrivalled. It’s also a unique documentation of one of the more turbulent periods of 20th Century history, as well as an unmatched insight into the cultural, social and artistic backdrop of Warhol’s life.
More significantly, perhaps, the boxes reflect one of Warhol’s primary artistic notions: that art is not merely what you can get away with, but everything, life – that even the most trivial and mundane things can be elevated to the status of art if viewed the right way, whatever the right way may be.
"Art was for Warhol a way of capturing life just as it was lived, with as little editing and authorial intervention as possible," explains Keith Hartley, curator of the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh summer 2007 show, Warhol: A Celebration of Life… and Death.
The boxes certainly didn’t start out as art; and they’re not necessarily art now – although the artist came to see them as a conceptual self-portrait. They are, however, artistically significant for what they say about the creative process of one of the most famous artists of the 21st – or any – century.
It’s almost as if the Time Capsules are the physical manifestation of the contents and workings of Warhol's brain, the raw, unedited data of his imagination revealed to the world.
They are, ultimately, his greatest work of art: his life.
By Melanie Sheridon |
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Everybody knows something about 
“What you do,” 
