90.5 WESA: “I don’t think there’s another artist in the world with an archive as complete as Warhol’s or as interesting,” said Blake Gopnik, a nationally known critic and author of a forthcoming Warhol biography. “The great thing about Warhol’s archive is that it has a bit of everything in it, and I think that he wanted that to be the case. He wanted to sow confusion, rather than to clean up the story.”
2 comments:
Before reading this article, I only knew of Andy Warhol’s pop art and the time capsules which he kept. However, I didn’t know each box contained up to 800 items each! I find it fascinating that these scholars were investigating the common and seemingly random objects, such as movie tickets, underwear, posters, etc. They may seem completely unrelated but they are finding connections between them. One thing that came to my mind, which the article later mentioned, was Warhol probably collected those items because of his upbringing and culture which he was creating art in. American consumerism rose in the 1950s and 1960s which fits with Warhol’s collection as the context, similar to his other art. Another thing that I found intriguing (and funny) was the scholars deduce that Warhol wanted to create confusion rather than clarity in the story of his time capsules, by making them so random. Sometimes, unclear art is more fun to see because there's no general consensus on what the art is actually about. You can imagine whatever you want.
I, personally, haven’t been a fan of Andy Warhol’s work until very recently. To me, he was just kind of chunky pop art and weird outfits. Recently, though, I’ve realised how much he encompassed an entire period in American history - both socially and in the arts - in the midst of a rapidly changing world. I think that this archive - his collection of and from a lifetime - is an interesting look at both his growth as an artist and a person as he grew in fame and wealth, but also delves into an intriguing view at the lack of growth in relationship to socioeconomic change. Growing up in a lower-class family and becoming such a sensation had to have some effect on Warhol and I think the entirety of his personality and the works of art that he created reflect that. His collections, his “different sorts of obsession” probably stemmed from the newfound ability to just be able to buy things. Growing up with such a scarcity mindset about money (as many impoverished people do) can often lead to a complicated - if not unhealthy - relationship with money and spending. This is not to say that this was necessarily the case with Warhol, though that does seem to be hinted at.
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