Collecting:“I want to throw things right out the window as they’re handed to me, but instead I say thank you…I really do want to save things so that they can be used again someday.” --Andy Warhol

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What did you collect when you were younger?

Brainstorm Web:

Collecting

What do we collect?

Why do we collect?

How do we keep what we collect?

What do others collect and why?

Why do Artists Collect?

• Collecting is visual and cannot really be explained only shown.

• Collecting provides a way to organize & reflect our chaotic world.

•A collection of things reveals personal and cultural patterns and associations.

Biko’s collection of African-American memorabilia and historical documents reveals many stories about culture and patterns of racism. Photo by Jim Judkis.

Detail of Portia Munson’s Pink Project. This artwork could be described as her collection of pink plastic objects that were thrown away but when you see it the visual is much more powerful than the description.

Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules were a way for him to organize a myriad of things over time as well as to reflect on particular moments such as the Iran Hostage crisis featured in these newspapers collected in 1978.

What is artistic practice?

An artist’s practice is fundamentally the way an artist goes about making.

Andy Warhol in portrait session with unidentified man 1980.

Artistic practice includes the techniques and media an artist uses as well as an artist’s

ideas and approach.

Andy Warhol at work in his studio at 1342 Lexington Ave., December 1962

Andy Warhol with Campbell's Soup Can paintings in his Lexington Avenue townhouse ca. 1962.

Warhol began collecting Hollywood movie star photographs at the age of 9 in this scrapbook.

Warhol’s early interest in movies and Hollywood continued into adulthood. In the 1960s Andy Warhol made famous paintings of movie stars from publicity photographs from his collection.

Andy Warhol Liz, 1962

3 –4 minute films in which the sitter posed in front of the film camera in silence. Warhol tried to collect people being themselves. Warhol created over 500 of these short films.

Warhol continued to collect “stars” in his filmed portraits called Screen Tests:

ST308 Edie Sedgwick, 1965 16mm, b&w, silent; 4.6 min. @16 fps. Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Founding Collection, Contribution the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2000 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, All rights reserved.

ST67 Salvador Dali, 1966 16mm, b&w, silent; 3.7 min. @16 fps. Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Founding Collection, Contribution the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2000 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, All rights reserved.

Time Capsules:

Warhol collected more than 600 plain cardboard boxes which he called “time capsules.” He filled them with objects from his everyday life:

– Mail– Newspapers– Food– Clothing– Gifts– Souvenirs– Clothing– Plane Tickets

Andy Warhol, Time Capsule 232, Collection of newspapers form the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Andy Warhol, 138 of 612 Time Capsules installed in the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Photo by Paul Rocheleau.

Examples of Warhol’s Artistic Practice of Collecting

Warhol’s Death and Disaster Series were created from his collection of photographs and newspaper clippings of these fateful events.

Source material (left ) for Andy Warhol’s 129 Die in Jet painting, (right) 1962.

Other Artists Who Collect:Joseph Cornell

Stephan HoderleinWhitfield Lovell

Karsten BottPortia Munson

Marc Dion

Joseph Cornell created his art from a large collection of objects including:

•Photographs

•Maps

•Feathers, balls, miscellaneous trinkets

•Fabrics and textured papers

•Packaging and wrappers

Cornell is famous for his box constructions. He was influenced in part by Surrealism:

• an art movement emerging in the 1920s

• showed cynicism about the world

• embrace dream theories of Sigmund Freud

• juxtaposition of incongruous things to represent reality in an irrational way

Cornell used this juxtaposition of things to create poetic associationsJoseph Cornell, Untitled, (Cockatoo and Corks) c.1948

Construction, 14 3/8 x 13 ½ x 5 5/8 in. Private Collection.

Aesthetic Response Question:

What do the objects in this box make you think about? Do they remind you of a feeling or of a memory? Describe:

Narrative Writing Assignment:

Pretend this box is a window into a story. Use the feeling or memory you have about this box to create a story.

Joseph Cornell, Untitled, (Cockatoo and Corks) c.1948 Construction, 14 3/8 x 13 ½ x 5 5/8 in. Private Collection.

Personal Collecting: artists who use their personal collections in symbolic ways to convey their ideas about the world

Professional Collecting:artists whose practice can be compared to anthropologists and other professionals whose work strives to reveal new information about culture.

Institutional Collecting:artists whose work questions institutional collecting and display in natural history and art museums.

Personal Collecting:

 

Stefan Hoderlein photographs his collection of clothing against black backgrounds. The combination of clothing changes in each figure.

Stefan Hoderlein, Matching Jacket and Pants, 1996, Slide Projection, 3 views, Installation at Gallerie Fricke, Berlin. Matching Jacket and Pants

Whitfield Lovell uses his various collections of personal and anonymous artifacts as source material and inspiration for his artwork.

Whitfield Lovell’s hand collection, detail, installation at The Andy Warhol Museum, 1998

 

Whitfield Lovell did a series of portrait drawings involving large hands.

•What is the feeling you get from this art work?

•Who do you think this woman is? If she could talk what would she say?

•What does the hand make you think of? What does it remind you of?

Whitfield LovellHand XIV, 1998Charcoal, graphite and pastel on paper

Professional Collecting:

Portia Munson collected pink plastic objects that had been thrown

away.

• Her work speaks to the volume of garbage produced in our plastic world as well as to what is promoted to female consumers.

•She collects objects as an anthropologist might in order to reveal larger cultural attitudes or trends.

Portia Munson, Pink Project, 1994, detail, Installation of found pink objects,Courtesy of the artist.

Karsten Bott loves collecting, storing, exhibiting, and scientifically classifying objects. His exhibited items have no labels so that the viewer may freely associate with the objects. He tries to create a link with peoples’ personal histories through his collection.

Karsten Bott,One of Each, 1993, detail, Installation at the Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, 1993, 10 x 30 m.

Institutional Collecting:

Mark Dion questions the classification systems placed on objects in The Tate Thames Dig public project in London. With a crew of assistants in protective clothing, he combed the muddy banks of the Thames for objects.

This project consisted of three phases:

• the archeological dig phase

• the cleaning and classifying stage

• and the final display in what Dion terms his “Cabinets of Curiosities.”

Mark Dion, The Tate Thames Dig Project, The Tate Gallery, 1999.

The final exhibit Cabinets of Curiosities shows how Mark Dion organized the objects from the dig according to location in a large mahogany cabinet:

• Dion classified items loosely according to type (such as bones, glassware, pottery, metal objects), in seemingly unhistorical and largely unexplained arrangements.

•Antique items were shown alongside contemporary items

•Ephemera and detritus were next to objects of value

Mark DionCabinets of Curiosities

Warhol’s Raid the Ice box:pun referring to many museums’ cold storage areas

that are filled with objects that the public does not see

Gallery View, from Raid the Icebox with Andy Warhol, Exhibition at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, April 23 - June 30, 1970

His radical displays broke institutional values about display and the value of certain objects over others:

• Warhol was interested in elevating lower objects in R.I.S.D.’s art museum to a higher status

• These Windsor chairs which had been kept in storage as lesser pieces were hung on the wall as if they were master paintings

Gallery View, Installation of Windsor Chairs, from Raid the Icebox with Andy Warhol, Exhibition at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, April 23 - June 30, 1970

Handouts: Brainstorming List

Personal Collecting Project Prompts