Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder (10 page)

It took several decades for hoarding to make its way from these astonishing cultural spectacles to the ranks of serious science. Until the early 1990s, little research existed, says Randy Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College and a pioneer in the field. At the time, Frost was teaching a seminar on obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, when a student asked if there were any studies on hoarding, a condition that mental health experts then believed to be a subtype of OCD. The answer, Frost told her, was no. That inquiry prompted Frost to take a look at hoarding in its own right. He and his student posted ads in local newspapers seeking people who considered themselves to be “pack rats” or “chronic savers.” They were surprised when they received more than 100 phone calls. Visits to their volunteers' homes revealed that hoarders didn't just hold on to old newspapers or sentimental stuffed animals, as many had long believed—they collected new items as well. Some still had their price tags attached. Frost discovered that people who hoard have deep emotional attachments to their items, no matter how ordinary. And he documented an important trend: Hoarding runs strongly in families, a finding that has since been confirmed by studies of twins.

Over the last 25 years, hoarding research has accelerated, and scientists have made several striking discoveries that have altered their earlier conception of the condition as a subtype or symptom of OCD. It turns out, says Frost, that many hoarders do not fit the diagnostic criteria for OCD, which includes a cycle of obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions. Most significantly, patients do not view their actions in the same way. People who struggle with OCD are almost always upset about their irrational behavior; hoarders, on the other hand, enjoy their shopping sprees, despite
the inordinate mess they create. This realization, says Frost, “led people to say, ‘This really does look very different.' ”

Science is also beginning to uncover distinct visual clues about the inner workings of the hoarding brain. In a 2012 brain scan study, researchers including Frost asked compulsive hoarders to choose whether they wanted to keep a selection of paper items or get rid of them and have them shredded. Half of the items came from the volunteer's own home; the other half belonged to the investigators. Compared to a group of people with OCD and a group of healthy controls, the volunteers discarded far fewer of their own possessions and took slightly longer to make their decisions. They also reported more anxiety, indecisiveness, and sadness as they made their choices. Most fascinating, they registered different activity levels in areas of the brain related to decision-making, depending on whose stuff they were looking at. When the goods
didn't
belong to them, these brain regions didn't generate much excitement. When making choices about their
own
stuff? Fireworks.

This buildup of research has led to a more comprehensive understanding of hoarding as a distinct condition, and it is now listed as a separate but related disorder in the
DSM
. Researchers are beginning to sort out the most effective and acceptable treatment methods. Patients do not respond well to dramatic interventions like forced cleanouts, which can increase anxiety and depression as treasured possessions are hauled out to the trash. Preliminary data suggests that antidepressants may reduce hoarding symptoms, but many patients are averse to taking medications, and it can be difficult to keep track of them in cluttered homes, says Stanford's Rodriguez. Many patients prefer to attend support groups or individual therapy sessions, which can provide them with the skills to help them organize, discard, and make decisions about their possessions.

There is still much to nail down, including the factors that lead people to hoard in the first place. “In many ways, it's an exaggeration of normal behavior,” says Frost. But what pushes normal to pathological? People with hoarding disorder often disclose stressful or traumatic events earlier in their lives, suggesting that the accumulation of stuff may serve as a distraction and even a source of security. Deprivation is also considered a factor, but views are shifting on the type of hardship that has an impact. It makes logical sense that an individual might hoard to make up for a lack of material abundance in childhood—a reality that Warhol experienced. And yet the research so far does not substantiate this theory—nor, for that matter, do the Collyer and Beale cases. Frost says emotional impoverishment may be more important. He has found that hoarders are much less likely to report growing up in a warm and supportive family, compared to people with OCD and to people who have neither condition. Hoarding may provide comfort to those who feel neglected.

One condition hoarding and OCD do share is anxiety. Hoarders get nervous about throwing things away; they worry that they might need their possessions, won't remember them if they're gone, or must hold on to them for sentimental reasons. By
not
getting rid of anything, they are able to ward off their uneasiness. Difficult life circumstances can make hoarders anxious, too—a death in the family, abuse, loss of a job. Feeling desperately overwhelmed, they turn to inanimate objects as a substitute for the unpredictability of life. “Hoarding affords many of its sufferers the illusion of control and replaces fear with a feeling of safety,” Frost and his co-author Gail Steketee write in their book,
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things
.

In some cases, the emotional connections hoarders form with their stuff may signify trouble attaching to people. Warhol's entourages certainly kept him entertained. A regular at Studio 54, Warhol hobnobbed with everyone from Calvin Klein to Liza
Minnelli, and his Factory was filled at all hours with his minions making silk screens, filming movie scenes, playing music, and experimenting with drugs. An indefatigable gossip, he picked up the phone for his “checking in” routine each morning, grilling one friend or another on the juicy details of their love affairs and party-hopping. But these were snippets of others' lives. Warhol himself was a self-described loner who lived with his mother and, outside of a 12-year relationship with interior designer Jed Johnson, had few deep and lasting connections. On Good Friday in April 1981, Warhol noted in his diary: “Went home lonely and despondent because nobody loves me and it's Easter, and I cried.”

Objects became a substitution for intimacy. “When I got my first TV set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships with other people,” he reflected. He had an “affair,” as he described it, with his TV and then “married” the tape recorder he bought in 1964. For years, Warhol carried the device, which he referred to as his “wife,” everywhere and recorded thousands of hours of conversations. This rabid collection of information is its own brand of hoarding (4,000 of Warhol's audiotapes are now archived at the Pittsburgh museum). But the tapes also served to distance Warhol from the complexities and turmoil of human interaction. “The acquisition of my tape recorder really finished whatever emotional life I might have had, but I was glad to see it go,” he reported. His problems were no longer problems once they were transferred to tape, he explained.

In Warhol's case, “it would make a lot of sense that he would feel connected to his stuff, because he could not connect to other people,” says Zasio. “The more stuff he had, the better he would feel psychologically—because he's connecting to something, and it fills that void.”

O
N
J
UNE 3, 1968,
V
ALERIE
S
OLANAS
, a bit player in one of Warhol's movies, stepped off the elevator at the Factory, pulled out a .32-caliber handgun, and shot Warhol, piercing his abdomen. Solanas, who had written a manifesto calling for the elimination of the male sex, blamed Warhol for losing a screenplay she had written. “He had too much control over my life,” she was quoted as saying. Still conscious, Warhol was rushed in critical condition to Columbus Hospital on East 19th Street, where he spent five hours in surgery and almost two months recovering. He later posed for photographer Richard Avedon, showing off an elaborate maze of scars covering his torso.

In the years following the shooting, Warhol dreaded the thought of returning to the hospital. Despite being told in the 1970s that he needed gallbladder surgery, he put off scheduling the operation for years. Instead, he took painkillers and Valium and turned to crystal healing to give him energy. Not that he didn't worry chronically about his health; among other concerns, Warhol fretted that x-rays would give him cancer and that he might contract HIV. In early February 1987, the artist felt a sharp pain after eating dinner at a Japanese restaurant. “So now I'm throwing out all the junk food,” he reported afterward in his diaries. “I guess it was a gallbladder attack.” After a scan showed that his gallbladder was indeed severely infected and in danger of rupturing, the artist finally agreed to have surgery. The operation went smoothly, but Warhol died of a heart attack the next morning, on February 22, 1987. He was 58.

After appraisers completed the gargantuan task of sorting through Warhol's belongings, Sotheby's published a six-volume catalog,
The Andy Warhol Collection
, chock-full of almost 10,000 items. Their auction, held over ten days in the spring of 1988, drew standing-room crowds, which included international dealers
who had flown in to buy up the famous goods.
Newsweek
declared the event, which raised $25 million, “the biggest garage sale ever.” It was an ironic epilogue for the enigmatic artist who routinely dodged questions about himself (“The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and I'll repeat them after him,” he once said) and kept his home and his hoard under wraps.

In perhaps the most famous quote attributed to him, Warhol said: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” For Warhol and his stuff, 15 minutes turned out to be forever.

I
T WAS, AS WE WERE ALL TOLD,
a fairy-tale wedding. It certainly
looked
like one, anyway. There was Lady Diana Spencer sitting next to her father, Earl Spencer, in a horse-drawn Cinderella glass coach with red and gold trimming. As the coach made its way through the throngs of admirers lining London's streets, the cameras zoomed in on Diana's face, shrouded by a veil that tumbled across her lap like snow on a hillside. When she stepped out of the carriage at the entrance to St. Paul's Cathedral, all eyes were on the fresh-faced 19-year-old and her lavish silk taffeta gown, which had been kept a closely guarded secret and engulfed her slim frame in puffy sleeves and a 25-foot train. “If you asked a little girl to draw a princess, I think she'd draw a dress just like that, with tiny
bodice, tiny waist, and a great big skirt,” a BBC commentator said to an estimated 750 million television viewers around the globe.

Groom Charles Philip Arthur George had entered the church first, dressed in his naval commander uniform with gold braid, his white-gloved hand clutching a ceremonial sword. Now he awaited his bride on the steps of the dais under the cathedral's regal dome. After some initial fussing to tame her train, Lady Diana began her journey down the red-carpeted aisle on the arm of her father, past more than 2,500 VIP guests who had gathered to witness the much awaited royal celebration that 29th day of July 1981. The TV announcers, fueling the fairy-tale depiction, made dreamy pronouncements throughout the festivities. Underneath Lady Diana's veil, one of them said, “There is an air of mystery about her as she quietly takes this longest and happiest walk she will ever take.”

At the altar, the archbishop of Canterbury presided over the couple's vows in his magisterial headdress. “This is the stuff of which fairy tales are made,” he said. “The prince and princess on their wedding day.” There was the memorable gaffe on Lady Diana's part: “I, Diana Frances, take thee, Philip Charles Arthur George,” she said, mixing up the order of the groom's first two names. No matter. The rings were exchanged, the couple blessed, and the wedding concluded with traditional solemnity and pomp. The prince and princess, now married, were greeted by a fanfare of trumpets as they bowed and curtsied to Queen Elizabeth, then walked arm in arm down the aisle to exit the church. “Those who are married live happily ever after the wedding day if they persevere in the real adventure, which is the royal task of creating each other and creating a more loving world,” the archbishop had said in his address to Charles and Diana. “That is true of every man and woman undertaking marriage. It must be specially true of this marriage in which are placed so many hopes.”