Author Description

Beginning in the 1970s, Andy Warhol collected and stored the remains of his most unusual life in 612 brown cardboard boxes, the so-called Time Capsules. To date, only 100 of these boxes have been opened and examined. Everything Warhol deemed interesting and worth keeping--from precious objects to the most quotidian of souvenirs--was gathered together in these prosaic containers. The collecting strategy was straightforward enough: Warhol would keep an open box beside his desk, dropping in the daily flood of correspondence, magazines and newspapers, gifts, photographs, business records, collectibles, and ephemera that passed through his hands. This Time Capsule in progress would be taped shut and dated by an assistant when Warhol deemed it complete. Today, Warhol's leftovers provide us with the possibility for entering the atmosphere and curious cosmos of a life whose 15 minutes of fame may never really end, despite its physical end having long since passed. This first publication of Warhol's most personal diary will help the careful reader to reconstruct the artist's personality. Each and every item contained in Time Capsule 21 is meticulously revealed. This particular box was chosen because it contains a phenomenal amount of Warhol's art from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as common documents that have turned out to reveal facts about Warhol's life and work--that have, for instance, led to the dating of the drawing Dead Stop (1954) and the establishment of an approximate date for Warhol's first meeting with Leo Castelli. Also included are many images that Warhol used for source material. Leafing through Time Capsule 21, the reader has only to let each object take him or her on a journey into the murky past of The Factory, Studio 54, and Warhol's other haunts.