EXCLUSIVE: Andy Warhol was an incurable hoarder who filled his five-story brownstone with cheap watches, wigs and 610 ‘time capsules’ of balled up clothes, leaking Campbell’s soup cans and decayed orange-nut bread

Pop artist Andy Warhol was an incurable hoarder of such epic proportions it shocked even his closest companions. His passion for shopping and ‘possession obsession’ was all about the thrill of the chase. 

Most of what he brought home, he never unpacked.

There was so much ‘stuff’ in his Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, every inch of floor, table and sideboard space was filled with ‘stuff’ – boxes, shopping bags, wrapped packages, and even old pizza crusts.

His hoarding became a substitution for the absence of intimacy in his life. He wrote he had an affair with his TV and married his tape recorder.

Science journalist, Christine Kalb provides compelling insight into the fine line between mental illness and greatness and creativity that plagued some of history’s most celebrated icons, including Warhol, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Lloyd in a compelling book, Andy Warhol Was A Hoarder, Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities, published by National Geographic Books.

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Andy Warhol created 610 Time Capsules in the early seventies, initially intended only as temporary storage while moving his studio. They became the repository for lunch receipts, ticket stubs, letters, cancelled postage stamps, dead batteries, even junk from trash picking

Andy Warhol, one of the most prolific and popular commercial Pop artists in the 1960s, grew up in a working class neighborhood in Pittsburgh in the late twenties and thirties.

He was shy, effeminate and artistic, the youngest of three boys.

He suffered his first bout of Sydenham’s chorea at age eight, a neurological disease that causes involuntary muscle movements and discolors the skin. It left Warhol’s face blotchy and the artist remained self-conscious about his skin the rest of his life.

Often sickly and socially isolated, Andy escaped into celebrity magazines, comic books, the movies and drawing. He went to art school and headed to Manhattan where he launched what became an enormously successful commercial art career.

Here his ‘possession obsession’ flourished. He couldn’t throw anything away even when he didn’t want it.

Warhol created 610 Time Capsules in the early seventies, initially intended only as temporary storage while moving his studio.

They became the repository for lunch receipts, ticket stubs, letters, cancelled postage stamps, dead batteries, even junk from trash picking.

When he moved to a five-story brownstone he filled the rooms with heaps of ‘stuff’ he purchased --- from cheap watches, perfume bottles, 175 cookie jars, Tiffany lamps, paintings by the Abstract Expressionist artists

He had a persistent inability to part with anything and soon after moving into his Upper East Side apartment, clutter followed.

Warhol was a tireless shopper from 5 and 10-cent stores, to flea markets, antique dealers, art galleries and the city’s finest stores.

When he moved to a five-story brownstone he filled the rooms with heaps of ‘stuff’ he purchased --- from cheap watches, perfume bottles, 175 cookie jars, Tiffany lamps, paintings by the Abstract Expressionist artists, anything and everything.

‘The key feature distinguishing hoarding disorder from run-of-the-mill cluttering is that living spaces become so deluged with possessions they cannot be used for their intended purpose’, writes the author.

When Warhol died, they found rooms in total disarray, boxes stacked high in front of a fireplace, paintings leaning against the wall.

Boxes blocked the entrance to rooms. ‘Occupying every inch of floor, table and sideboard space were so many boxes, shopping bags and wrapped packages – that the appraisers could not penetrate further’, his close friend, David Bourdon stated.

One had to climb over boxes to get to Andy’s four-poster canopied bed, the television and his stack of wigs.

And then there were his Time Capsules that contained balled-up clothing, leaking Campbell’s soup cans, desiccated pizza dough, decayed orange-nut bread, wigs that ‘looked like road kill’.

Warhol enjoyed his shopping sprees and that took him out of the OCD irrational behavior category and into the hoarding disorder.

Research points to deprivation early in life as a motivating factor but also anxiety as emotional impoverishment.

Warhol, a self-described loner, had one relationship with another man, interior designer, Jed Johnson. The rest of his years he was alone.

In April 1981, he wrote in his diary: ‘Went home lonely and despondent because nobody loves me and it’s Easter, and I cried’

Andy Warhol Was A Hoarder, Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities, by Christine and published by National Geographic Books is available on Amazon.