Author Topic: Andy Warhol died twenty years ago - Feb 22  (Read 2143 times)

Offline Toast

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Andy Warhol died twenty years ago - Feb 22
« on: February 23, 2007, 04:51:32 pm »
From the New York Times today - Feb 23, 2007.

Bethel Park Journal
Remembering Warhol:
A Tomato Soup Can and a Pocketful of Coins
By SEAN D. HAMILL and IAN URBINA
Published: February 23, 2007

BETHEL PARK, Pa., Feb. 22 — For 20 years, it has appeared every month: one Campbell’s tomato soup can and a pocketful of change left on the plain black granite tombstone.


Claire Gibson, caretaker for Andy Warhol’s gravesite,
where his parents are also buried,
finds items like this gambling chip on his gravestone.

Claire Gibson, who has tended Andy Warhol’s grave since he died 20 years ago Thursday, said she has never figured out who is leaving the items at this Byzantine-Catholic cemetery alongside Route 88 just outside Pittsburgh. “I have my theories,” she said, “but we don’t know.”

The silk-screens, Brillo pads and boxes of crayons are occasional homage. The can and coins, however, are as consistent as the sun, Mrs. Gibson said.

A colorful man buried in this bland place, “Andy,” as people here call their native son, as opposed to the “Warhol” favored by New Yorkers, founded a genre of art that reveled in the temporary and the superficial. But the loyalty of local admiration could hardly be more enduring.

Others, often from out of town, leave cans too. “I can tell though which one is from this visitor,” said Mrs. Gibson, holding the lavender scouring powder she uses to scrub away the rust marks the can leaves after it rains.

The can and the change began appearing within a week after Warhol was buried. Mrs. Gibson speculated that the person behind the items was probably from near the cemetery and perhaps of the same Slovak background as Warhol. “They’re just too loyal to be anyone else, I think.”

John Warhola, Warhol’s 81-year-old brother (Andy dropped the “a” when he went to New York), said he noticed the can shortly after his brother’s death but has never figured out who left the items, or the significance of the coins.

The director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Thomas Sokolowski, said he was equally baffled by the mystery visitor but he recounted that several people at Warhol’s funeral tossed money on top of the casket as it was lowered. “They may be coins to pay for passage to the other side,” Mr. Sokolowski speculated.

Standing on a hillside where the only footprints in the virgin snow meander to this one plot at St. John the Baptist Cemetery where Warhol is buried alongside his mother and father, Mrs. Gibson said she fell into her duty because her husband dug Warhol’s grave.

“I feel lucky,” she said, interrupting herself as she began to cry. “I never knew him when he was alive, but I feel like I’ve become close to him after his death.”

Mr. Warhola said he is surprised by his brother’s continuing influence.

“I still don’t know what the attraction is,” he said. “Why people keep visiting him. Why there is so much love for him. I thought it would stop after a while.”

While some of Warhol’s New York friends lamented that he was taken from the city that made him famous, the decision on where to bury him was left to Mr. Warhola.

Warhol left a will, but never addressed where or how he should be buried. Mr. Warhola reasoned that, despite some who believed Warhol despised his hometown, he would want to be buried here, particularly near his mother’s grave.

“I thought it was only proper,” he said.

He recalled Warhol once famously saying: “I never understood why when you died, you didn’t just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn’t be there. I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’ ”

Mr. Sokolowski said that Warhol’s use of the word “figment” was true to his character. “What endeared people to him and continues to do so is that he was a self-creation,” said Mr. Sokolowski, who knew Warhol. “That’s what is so lasting.”

It was because Mrs. Gibson’s husband, Charles E. Gibson, 76, dug Andy’s grave — two feet deeper than normal to thwart would-be grave robbers — that she was asked by Mr. Warhola to maintain it. She is paid a small yearly sum by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York. She said she has never raised her rate, and she preferred the dollar amount remain unmentioned.

The Gibsons’s son, Charles W. Gibson, 45, is at the cemetery even more than she is, doing maintenance work or digging a grave at least three times a month. In 27 years of working at the cemetery — Mr. Gibson recently took over the business from his father — he said he has never been there when he has not seen a Warhol fan at the grave, or looking for it.

“Most of them are younger people, 18- to 30-years-old, probably art students; a lot of punk-rocker-type people,” he said. But he said that unlike his mother, he is not a fan of Warhol’s work.

“I’ve never really seen it. I’ve never been to Andy Warhol’s museum,” he said. “ I mean, I’m a gravedigger. I bury 300 people a year.”

Picking up a casino chip and a soggy copy of Us magazine left at the base of the tombstone, Mrs. Gibson, a former florist, said she originally left bouquets with geraniums and marigolds at the grave, “more striking displays,” she said, that were truer to Warhol’s personality.

But people kept stealing those, so in the winter, she now just uses evergreen wreaths with simple maroon bows. Tulips were her favorite to plant, but the deer kept eating those. She opts for daffodils now for summer color and plants a purple iris.

“It stands out,” she said, and it helps guide people who otherwise might miss the gravestone.






I like that [his brother John] 'recalled Warhol once famously saying: “I never understood why when you died, you didn’t just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn’t be there. I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’ ”'

A vanished figment?

« Last Edit: February 23, 2007, 05:04:13 pm by Toast »

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Andy Warhol died twenty years ago - Feb 22
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2007, 05:13:22 pm »
I remember that day, I recall being shocked he had died. Thank you for posting this wonderful article. That is mighty nice of Claire Gibson.
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."