Artist Andy Warhol Stored Thousands of Pieces of Junk in Cardboard Boxes
Andy Warhol is an artist who became famous in the 1960’s for his pop art and short films. Some of his most famous pieces were his images of Cambell soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. He began making “time capsules” of his life, but they were actually filled with random things. Andy Warhol sealed away a total of 300,000 items in 610 boxes over the course of 13 years. Some of the items included were magazines, photographs, letters, toys, watches, stamps, and even old Cambell soup cans that were now rotten from decades of decay. This sounds like a lot of random junk, but Andy Warhol actually curated these boxes to be considered a work of art. A British art historian named Tim Marlow said, “There is an element of surrealist about Warhol. These odd, disparate objects put together have a kind of curious poetry.”
When it was time to open the boxes, The Andy Warhol Museum sold tickets to fans of his work to witness the event. One person even paid $30,000 just to have the privilege of opening the last box. To a lot of people, this just seems like a lot of trash. Andy Warhol held onto this stuff for decades. Even though it was neatly packed away in boxes, doesn’t it still count as hoarding? But since he was a famous artist, it’s interpreted as “art”.