Customer Reviews

Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21

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Ok, we all know Andy Warhol kept everything, but how boring is that? Not so boring at all, as it turns out. Maybe the Warhol Museum picked the best time-capsule box, maybe they are all full of interesting goodies, but box number 21 is a doozey. And everything Andy packed away is there on the page ready to comb over, connect to paintings, make assumptions and check out like any well trained obsessive. For fans of Warhol this book is a must and the best of fun. Lots of pics, not too much elevated art talk and beautifully produced.

Brought to us with care by a colloboration between the Andy Warhol Museum and a German museum, the Museum for Modern Kunst.

Currently (August, 2005) you can see an online exhibition of this time capsule at the Andy Warhol Museum web site. There's information about just 50 of the time capsule objects (more info than in this book for those 50), including not just text but also audio and video. You can see and hear Andy and Candy Darling among others. You can also zoom in on an object, which you will wish you could do with many the picutures of many objects in the book. Even with a good magnifying glass, some writing may not be readable, being either too light or too much a scrawl.

The book is well-packaged with good binding, cover, layout, foreword and guided tour of the time capsule. The text of the contexts is at the end of the book, which does give more room to depict the object in the main body of the book, but means having to go back and forth to the back in order to learn a little about the object. The text for each object is sparse, but you often learn, for example, just who it is in a certain photo. Unfortunately, the text often doesn't tell you any more than the picture does. To be really helpful, the 7-page guide could have been considerably longer.

As it is, this book provides a good sense of how diverse Warhol's interests were. It will take a good deal of time to get to know all the objects and, to do that well, may take searching around for supplementary info. Who's Roslyn Drexler, subject of several photo strips? Who's David Tudor, who presented new piano works?
Who's Andy Warhol and what do all these objects from just this one time capsule, tell us about him?

After reading this, you may very well feel ready to begin filling your own time capsules. As a supplement to or alternative for, a diary, it seems an easy but effective way to capture an interval in your development. Ten years from now, you may find your own time capsules more engaging than Andy's.

"Box 21" is an interesting package, but not something I'm likely to ever go through again. It's interesting only the first time 'round.
The people left in charge of Warhol's world are trying so hard to make money from it. They are sure to be selling each and every "time capsule" he kept. It's a way to keep themselves going and what he would have wanted.
The people in charge of Warhol are not to be trusted. I suggest anyone wanting to really learn about him not buy anything from the Warhol institute, foundation, museum, whatever guise his money is still feeding them.
Believe me, if this book had been good, I'd be praising it. Don't waste your money. Although Warhol would've liked it if you had.