Andy Warhol and his Time Capsules
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Andy Warhol is perhaps the most recognized pop art artist of the 20th century. His popularity quickly made him a leading figure on the world art scene. He was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. In addition to being a visual artist, Warhol was also a filmmaker.
He is considered an initiator and the main exponent of the pop art movement of the 1960s.
His mass-produced art pieces pointed out the supposed banality of American commercial culture.
He was a skillful self-publicist who knew how to project a concept of the artist as an impersonal, even empty figure. This artist is, however, a celebrity, a businessman and a successful social climber. In this article, we will approach, as far as possible, his figure and the keys to his art.
Andy Warhol, life and legacyHe was the son of Russian immigrants from what is now eastern Slovakia. Warhol graduated in 1949 from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), Pittsburgh, with a degree in pictorial design.
He subsequently moved to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator for about a decade.
Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and received sudden notoriety in 1962. At that time, he exhibited paintings of Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and wooden replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes.
By 1963, he was mass-producing these deliberately banal images of consumer goods by means of photographic silkscreen prints. Soon after, he began printing endless variations of celebrity portraits in bold colors.
The silkscreen technique was ideal for Warhol, as the repeated image was reduced to a bland, dehumanized cultural icon. This icon reflected both the supposed emptiness of American material culture and the artist's non-emotional involvement in the practice of his art.
If we briefly review the main aesthetic theories, we will realize that, for a long time, the idea of art was associated with the idea of beauty. Art beautified the world, but it was also linked to more or less realistic representations. It represented what was known. Likewise, with the passage of time, these trends have evolved, but there has always been a certain division between what we consider low culture and high culture. What is worthy of being considered art?
The canons are not static and we observe a certain revaluation granted by the passage of time, for example, the popular has always been marginalized, associated with that low culture. What happened in the twentieth century? Artistic influences come not only from high culture, but also from popular culture and, specifically, from consumer culture. Television, the media, music... All this has left its mark on artists.
Likewise, in a world where everything can be bought, everything can be commercialized and, consequently, dehumanized. This dehumanized art would revolutionize the world, reclaim popular culture and Western society. Art no longer has to respond to the idea of beauty, art, like society, has evolved.
Warhol's work placed him at the forefront of the emerging pop art movement in the United States. He died on February 22, 1987 in New York, New York.
Andy's time capsulesStarting in 1974, Andy Warhol filled 610 boxes with his personal belongings, sealed them and sent them to storage. In doing so, he created a vast collection of time capsules.
The project is considered a serial work of art. When the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh began to carefully exhume and catalog its contents, it was discovered that the boxes contained everyday objects and ephemera.
Warhol's time capsules contain newspaper articles, junk mail, half-eaten sandwiches and toenail clippings. They also contain source photographs for projects, letters for commissions and even the occasional artwork.
The Andy Warhol Foundation hired a team of archivists, to go through everything from cab receipts to fan mail. Archivists had to meticulously catalog all objects, photograph and research the often bizarre items before entering them into a database.
What Andy Warhol's capsules meanThe packaging of objects taken from the surface of everyday life became the warp and woof of this artist's creative work. The capsules are a joke, a joke on the culture of the West. A satirical reflection of our own way of life.
The artist perpetuated until after his death what he used to affirm during his lifetime: "I can simply be an artist without making any art: I am art". In this way, the figure of the artist was elevated, creating a certain cult towards his person. The artist is no longer the one who beautifies the world, but the visionary and eccentric who is able to find beauty or interest in the everyday.
Time capsules are essentially about death. Warhol declared: "everything I do has to do with death. Both the portraits of Marilyn and Elvis and the time capsules are about death.
Trash becomes art, anything fits: greeting cards, business cards, an ashtray lifted from a trendy restaurant, a photograph of Elvis Presley, Christmas wrapping paper and ribbon, a "do not disturb" sign from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, etc.
"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have."
-Andy Warhol
What does it all amount to? Warhol, ahead of his time in many ways, selected these objects with care and decided to give each his own 15 minutes of fame. It's hard to think of another artist who could have kept all his junk and considered it art.
A friend of Francis Bacon's stored and then auctioned off objects by the painter after his death. However, it is unlikely that Bacon considered his old checkbooks to have artistic merit.
Warhol thought his junk on the desk was valuable and, perhaps, if the public came to see them as such, they would become art. Art is no longer so much an ideal, a canon, but a point of view, something more complex to experience. Certainly, the capsules offer a charming glimpse of one of the most important artists of the 20th century.
The WarholWarhol model is not alone, clearly others think the capsules have inherent value. One admirer paid a staggering $30,000 to have the honor of opening the last of them.
"Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains, daisy chains, of interactivity. Social actions are improvised forms, often brave, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, all social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'their' desire and yours.
I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is 'In 15 minutes everyone will be famous.'"
-Andy Warhol on his own work.
Warhol developed a complex artistic persona that played with the celebrity status of the artist and with the notion of the artist as entrepreneur. This model has been replicated by other artists, and is one that many continue to mine productively.
In a way, he became an icon, the symbol of a moment and a revolution. This dehumanized art responds to new needs, to a new consumption and a new lifestyle. At the same time, the figure of the artist went from being that of the craftsman who spends hours in his workshop to being a recognizable figure for the general public, an eccentric character with a peculiar vision of the world, turning himself into art.
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