Andy Warhol Collection

Always exploring the outer limits of artistic expression, Andy Warhol was a contemporary's contemporary. From soup cans to celebrities, he was a man of the moment. But it wasn't until his estate was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1988 that the truth about the world's most famous wig-wearer was revealed.

To the surprise of many, Warhol's interior taste was grounded in the past and, for all his wealth, defined by a bargain.

"One of the most shocking things that came out of the Sotheby's auction was finding what he surrounded himself with," said John Smith, curator for the exhibition "Possession Obsession," running through May 19, 2002 at The Andy Warhol Museum. "It was a very grand 19th-century sort of decor."

Though his Factory had a 24-hour party atmosphere, Warhol's residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was a traditional townhouse to which very few were admitted. "The people close to Warhol were aware of the way he had decorated his home, but he rarely entertained there," said Smith.

"Certainty for the general population and people who thought they knew who he was, it really came as a complete shock. His private, domestic interior was completely different from what one would expect."

About 300 pieces of furniture and other items from Warhol's home, all sold in the 1988 auction, are on display at the museum in Pittsburgh. Along with the pieces, which include fine art deco furniture and museum-quality American, English and French antiques, are photos of them in the rooms of Warhol's home.

Sotheby's Matthew Weigman came to know the place very well after giving daily tours from December 1987 through the end of March 1988. "The desire to see the house was that great," he remembered.

"Here was a person who essentially stood for today, pop, what's happening right now, and he's collecting American Classical furniture," he said. "I mean, even the high-style Art Deco like the sharkskin-covered commodes he owned aren't as much of a stretch as the American Classical or the academic art."

Warhol bought the four-story house with close to 30 rooms in 1974. Jed Johnson, his partner at the time, decorated it, incorporating Warhol's furniture and accessories. "Rich fabrics, great rugs, hand-stenciled wallpaper--the place had an almost Edith Wharton feel," Smith said.

Johnson, who later became a well-known interior decorator, was a stabilizing element in Warhol's life, and while he lived there, the house was orderly.

"The truth is, (Warhol) would shop and bring the stuff back and leave it in bags. It would accumulate on table tops, under tables and on the floor," said Weigman. "When our experts actually opened the house, they had to tread their way through rooms. You couldn't just walk through, it was so crammed with stuff."

Weigman was both impressed and amused by Warhol's collection--and his shopping obsession.

"Even after our sale, they discovered a stash of jewelry in the false bottom of his metal filing cabinet. They took a drawer out and there was, I don't know, a million dollars' worth of jewelry! Lord knows why he did it."

Before Johnson moved out of the townhouse in the late 1970s, many of the rooms reflected a traditional opulence. The centerpiece of the master bedroom was an elaborately dressed Federal mahogany four-poster bed. The leaf-carved and reeded posts were topped with a mahogany box tester featuring painted stylized bowknots.

"He also had a beautiful mahogany secretarie in his bedroom, which is in the exhibition," said Smith. "It represents a wonderful use of veneer. It is one of those pieces of furniture you look at, and it is completely right."

The cylinder-front American secretarie is a rare piece centered by a turned-urn form finial above a marble shelf. Experts attribute it to Baltimore cabinetmaker William Camp, circa 1825.

Much of Warhol's Federal and Classical American furniture was made in Philadelphia and Baltimore from around 1815 to 1840. His choices were motivated by price as much as aesthetic value. "Warhol collected Philadelphia because it was cheaper, but he did see the beauty of it," said Weigman.

Warhol had an eye for trends, but being a practiced shopper, he could spot quality in a foreign flea market as easily as in his neighborhood antique shop. His sideboard, made by Irish-born cabinetmaker Joseph Barry of Philadelphia, is now owned by the Winterthur Museum.

A pair of matching knife boxes that sit on top of the sideboard balance the impressively carved and beautifully veneered mahogany design. A photograph in the exhibition shows the sideboard in the dining room exactly as Warhol lived with it, its surface cluttered and shopping bags piled all around.

"He didn't treat his things as precious," quipped Smith. "He never took some things out of the bags, and after a while, he just used large rooms like closets," added Weigman.

It's a different story today. Since the auction, items have found their way to museums around the country and into private collections, where they are cherished. A rare brass-mounted, slate-topped center table from Baltimore is in the American Decorative Arts Gallery in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A suite of French Art Deco furniture by Pierre Legrain is now in the hands of a private collector in Switzerland who felt it was too fragile to ship for the exhibition.

The suite includes two Galuchat (stingray skin) and sycamore throne chairs with block feet, a rounded rectangular Galuchat cabinet with mirrored plate doors and a wonderful settee topped with veneer Galuchat panels.

In Warhol's townhouse, the cabinet shared a room with a chiffonier made of ivory and Amboyna (a rare wood from Southeast Asia) by Emil Jacques Ruhlmann, circa 1923.

His love of a stylish bargain turned Warhol into a collector of French Art Deco. Warhol started collecting Art Deco in the 1960s when the look wasn't on any collector's radar.

"He realized that it was so available and so affordable--he just kind of went crazy," said Smith. "He loved a bargain and was picking this stuff up for a song at Paris flea markets and shops."

Smith believes Warhol's love of deco came from all the Hollywood musicals and movies he devoured growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1930s. It became a style he always associated with class and elegance.

"One of the reasons for doing the exhibition was to explore the way in which collecting for an artist like Andy Warhol really represented a vital part of the art-making process," Smith said. "It wasn't just a hobby. It was a way to express himself."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)