Debris

Went to the Andy Warhol Time Cap­sule exhib­i­tion at the National Gal­lery of Vic­toria. Intriguing, fas­cin­at­ing, time consuming.

Warhol, appar­ently, hated the amount of stuff he received and wanted to simply toss it out as it arrived but someone per­suaded him at some point to toss it into card­board boxes instead. There are now hun­dreds of these things, filled with the excess minu­tiae of a life. 15 of them are on dis­play at the NGV. Do not be fooled: these are not 15 small boxes that take a few moments to glance through. Nor is this just any life. You can fit a lot into a small box and when the recip­i­ent of the let­ters, invit­a­tions, rejec­tion slips, mes­sages and news­pa­per clip­pings is Andy Warhol, it makes for com­pel­ling reading.

I spent hours poring over let­ters from MOMA return­ing art with a “thanks, but it’s not what we’re look­ing for”, an invit­a­tion to dinner with the Rock­e­fellers, Clarke Gable’s shoes and the note from Kay Gable saying she’d heard Andy col­lec­ted shoes and did he want these? Post­cards of movie stars Warhol col­lec­ted, letter after letter asking him to con­trib­ute to some­thing, attend some­thing, donate some­thing. Art sent to him in the mail by other artists. Photos of friends cel­eb­rat­ing at clubs, cut­lery stolen from the Concorde.

On the walls, still silent movies Warhol made, hand­some young men in black and white gazing at us unblink­ing, silver models from the 1960s with white lip­stick and white eye­liner, smil­ing, couples kiss­ing. In another room, a young model, too young, talk­ing in a lilt­ing European accent about mod­el­ling. In another, excerpts of a film of Julia War­hola, his mother, next to a time cap­sule filled with her let­ters in Czech, her clothes, her things.

Right at the end, per­fect timing, clips from his funeral and a voice saying Warhol didn’t want a fuss at the end, just wanted to dis­ap­pear. And in a strange way, he has. This is not him, this exhib­i­tion. This moun­tain of evid­ence of a life lived but not one shred of him, of what he felt about these things, whether he valued that one more than another.

And I can’t help but think: I col­lect like this. I have box after box in my cup­boards, labelled by year and I throw everything into them, movie tick­ets and wed­ding invit­a­tions, news­pa­per clip­pings and con­fer­ence badges. Have done for years. It’s unlikely mine will be dis­played in a museum, though. But did Warhol think his would be?