1. This presentation is for educational use only.
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
This presentation is for educational use only.
All images contained within are subject to copyright and may not be reproduced.

2. What did you collect when you were younger?

3. Brainstorm Web: Collecting Why do we collect? What do we collect?
How do we keep what we collect?
Collecting
What do others collect and why?

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Biko’s collection of African-American memorabilia and historical documents reveals many stories about culture and patterns of racism.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

5. What is artistic practice?
Andy Warhol in portrait session with unidentified man 1980.
An artist’s practice is fundamentally the way an artist goes about making.

6. Andy Warhol at work in his studio at 1342 Lexington Ave
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
Artistic practice includes the techniques and media an artist uses as well as an artist’s ideas and approach.

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

8. 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

9. Warhol continued to collect “stars” in his
filmed portraits called Screen Tests:
ST308 Edie Sedgwick, mm, b&w, silent; 4.6 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, mm, b&w, silent; 3.7 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.
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.

10. 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
Plane Tickets
Andy Warhol, 138 of 612 Time Capsules installed in the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Photo by Paul Rocheleau.
Andy Warhol, Time Capsule 232, Collection of newspapers form the Iran Hostage Crisis.

11. Examples of Warhol’s Artistic Practice of Collecting
Source material (left ) for Andy Warhol’s 129 Die in Jet painting, (right) 1962.
Warhol’s Death and Disaster Series were created from his collection of photographs and newspaper clippings of these fateful events.

12. Other Artists Who Collect: Joseph Cornell Stephan Hoderlein Whitfield Lovell Karsten Bott Portia Munson Marc Dion

13. 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

14. Cornell is famous for his box constructions
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 associations
Joseph Cornell, Untitled, (Cockatoo and Corks) c.1948 Construction, 14 3/8 x 13 ½ x 5 5/8 in. Private Collection.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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 Lovell
Hand XIV, 1998
Charcoal, graphite and pastel on paper

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Antique items were shown alongside contemporary items
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 Dion
Cabinets of Curiosities

24. 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
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

25. 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

26. Handouts: Brainstorming List Personal Collecting Project Prompts