Remembering Warhol: A Tomato Soup Can and a Pocketful of Coins
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, 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.
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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.