“The Factory,” c.1966, Image: Tuscene, Landlord letter to Andy Warhol, Image: The Velvet Underground: New York Art (Rizzoli, 2009) (via Lettersofnote)

Maybe I am missing the archives and the particular blend of ennui and exhilaration that comes from passing days and days sifting through folders of collated scraps and piecing together like a quilt an image of history in all its infinite multiplicity. From slapdash napkin scrawl to laboriously typed transcripts, I, we, historians, mine paper mountains to construct footnotes and arguments and to stave off insecure job prospects. And with any luck, we enjoy the journey along the paper trail. Hundreds of miles from my archives in Paris and without the right to post my photos (must get permission from both sender and recipient of letters, I am told), I have been enjoying blogs and sites that traffic in the revelation of historical documents. My recent archive crush is www.lettersofnote.com, where “correspondence deserving a wider audience” is posted and contextualized for our delightful discovery. 

The above letter is from the company that owned Warhol’s space known as the Factory, the famous aluminum-clad loft where art parties, films, silkscreening, and much much more went down. Alfred Goldstein describes the “large parties” “after usual business hours” and the resulting “debris and litter in public areas” and implores, or warns, Warhol “not to have any such parties in this building.” Had Warhol abided, we may not have such films as The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound (1966), an hour-long improvisation of aural pleasure and pain filmed at the Factory until the police arrived due to a noise complaint.