Hoarders and Collectors

Andy Warhol ' scollection ofdental models Pop artist Andy Warhol excelled in turning the everyday and the mundane into art. During the last 13 years of his life, Warhol putthousands of collected objects into 610 cardboard boxes. TheseTime Capsules were never sold as art, but they were meticulously cataloged by museum archivists and displayed in a major exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum. “Warhol was a packrat. But that desire to collect helped inform his artistic point of view. ” Yet Warhol was aware of his compulsion, and itdisturbed him: “I ' m so sick of the way I live, of all this junk, and always dragging home more. ”Where does the hobby of collection cross over into hoarding, and who makes this determination? Artists get an automatic pass into the realm of collectionism, no matter their level of compulsion. The Vancouver Art Gallery held amajor exhibition of the works of Canadian writer and artistDouglas Coupland in 2014. One of the sections consisted of a room filled with 5,000 objects collected over 20 years and carefully arranged in a masterwork calledThe Brain. Here ' s what the collection looked like prior to assembly. Materials used in theThe Brain, 2000 –2014, mixed-media installation with readymade objects. Courtesy of the Artist and Daniel Faria Gallery.Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.Hoarding, on the other had, lacks the artistic intent or deliberate organization of collection. Collectors may be passionate, but their obses...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs