Genesis and genius of an eccentric son
His 610 personal time capsules collated between 1974 and his death reveal a hoarding tendency inculcated by his Depression-era childhood
This glitter swirl vanishes on the street. Pittsburgh is not a place that cares for mini-movie montages. It may be the Andy Warhol Bridge that lifts me back into downtown, but even in its canary-yellow paint, it is solid and swarthy; functional, not foppish.
Away to the east in South Oakland, I trawl a maze of the nondescript in search of 3252 Dawson Street, Warhol’s adolescent home. It is as mundane as its context, 11 concrete steps leading to a chipped brown door.
Future genius
However, one pivotal place in Warhol’s formative years does still sing. He studied for a degree in commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in North Oakland — and devoted high school Saturdays to painting classes at the next-door Carnegie Museum of Art.
Seven decades on, this institution still shines as a bastion of higher thinking, stuffed with masterpieces by greats both American (Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent) and European (Van Gogh, Monet, Munch).
It was founded in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist, who wanted a gallery that would enthuse the city and its (his) workers.
Exploring the Hall of Sculpture, which replicates the interior of the Parthenon in Athens, I notice a group of school pupils drawing their surroundings, as Warhol would have done, and idly wonder if there is a future genius among their number. This time, I do not hear laughter. —