|
Andy Warhol's Sister
She started yelling at me as soon as the sliding door to the
supermarket swished open. Of course, the path to the bus-stop led
right past her. I hefted my bag of groceries and ignored her.
"They're blind, they're blind. Blind, blind, blind."
Without thinking, I looked over to her. She was standing by a small
pile of red and white tomato soup cans. She caught my look and
rounded in on me.
"You're blind, you're all blind," she repeated.
I tried not to look-or smell her, as she had the odor of an onion.
Too late, though. She was already fixed on me. I fumbled in my pocket
for some spare change.
She was still hoarsely yelling, "You're blind, you fools. Look at
this!" She held up a Campbell's soup can. I held out some coins,
tried to get her to take them.
She ignored the change and went on. "This is not art," she announced,
picking up the can and holding to my face, close enough that I could
read the word CONDENSED. "That's a nice coat," she continued,
fingering the sleeve of my old suede jacket with her other hand.
"Isn't it hard to clean, though?"
I pulled away sharply and was about to leave when she started talking
about the can of soup again. I just had to hear what this crazy woman
had to say about it.
"Now when Andy Warhol painted an exact copy of this can, put it in a
gallery and sold it for money, that was art. I can do the same thing.
All I have to do is sign my name to it, and it's art." As her voice
rose, she splattered spit.
It sounded crazy to me, and I said so.
"Come on, this is simple logic. If Andy Warhol could do it, so can I.
You're blind to the art all around you," she said, and called out to
more passing people.
At this point, I realized what I was doing, talking about art in
front of a supermarket. Without saying more, I turned around and
left.
Two
After talking to a friend the next day, I found out I had been
talking to one of the downtown characters, Andy Warhol's sister. You
see, this woman was named Andy Warhol's sister for several good
reasons. For one, she looked vaguely like him, with shocked white
hair and glasses too large for her head. Not that I knew what Andy
Warhol looked like. It was just what this guy said.
I'd kind of forgotten about the whole thing when a week later I
walked by the same supermarket and saw her again. As far as I could
see, she was still trying the same trick.
"This can sells for thirty-nine cents. It's not art," she cackled.
She picked up a black pen and slowly scrawled her name across the
white space of the label. Her rust-colored hand was shaking. "All
I've done is sign this, and now it's worth two hundred dollars. It's
worth that because people will pay it. Because it's art. You don't
eat it anymore, you hang it on your wall instead. Anybody gonna go
for this deal? Well?"
Her face was serious the whole time she said this, but when she
finished, she laughed harshly. I was glad she didn't notice me
walking by.
But what she said about money got me to thinking when I was walking
down the main street of the town. As usual, there were a lot of
street musicians on the sidewalk. I tried figuring out whose playing
was worthy of being given change and whose wasn't.
After listening to one long-haired guy singing inaudibly and
erratically strumming his guitar, I wondered whether he knew how to
play or not. Or was it just enough that he was doing it-enough to
make it art and worth giving money to.
It seemed to me that I could just as well get a guitar and do it too.
If people were willing to pay, why not?
Three
These questions made me want to do something with my hands, so I
went back by the supermarket to buy some cigarettes. Andy Warhol's
sister was still there, shaking her fist at the people trying to
ignore her and her soup cans.
She finally noticed me. For some reason, I didn't pretend not to see
her.
She said to me, "Isn't this great? Give me one your cigarettes."
I realized that I'd been holding the pack the whole time. I took two
out, handed one to her and kept one for myself. I was about to offer
her a light when I saw she already had a match.
"That's better," she puffed. "You know, I'm really glad I discovered
the art business. I don't know what I would have done otherwise." She
tried running her hand through her hair, but it got stuck halfway
through and she had to pull it out.
"Did you sell any?" I asked.
"No, not yet. But this place is a den of Philistines. They think two
hundred dollars is too much to pay for a can of soup."
I thought about it for two drags on my cigarette. I felt I had the
answer.
"But why should they buy it from you?" I explained. "They could just
go in there, get a can and sign it themselves. Why should they pay
you to do it?"
To prove my point, I picked up one of her cans, choosing from the
unsigned ones. I got a pen and signed it.
"Hey, what're you doing? Get out of here, these are my cans! Go get
your own." She stood up, dropped her cigarette.
I put the can in front of me, and called to a passing woman with her
daughter, "Hey, only one hundred dollars. A genuine work of art.
Right here."
For the rest of the afternoon, I sat there next to Andy Warhol's
sister, who was splattering her disgust the whole time, trying to
sell that can.
Suggestions For Discussion
- How does the main character's attitude towards art change
through the story?
- Is the story a Marxist critique of how art functions in a
capitalist society? Cite specific references from Das Kapital in
your answer.
- Chris Ernest Hall frequently uses hands and their movements as
a descriptive device in his stories. Briefly outline some examples
of this technique in Andy Warhol's Sister.
- How does the character of Andy Warhol's sister diverge or
conform to our stereotypes of homeless people? How are our
perceptions reflected in the perceptions of the narratorial 'I' in
the story? You might like to consider how this is reflected in our
attitude towards the story as a work of art.
- The character of Andy Warhol's sister is a woman-in some
sense, she is the female twin of a hero of the avant-garde. Is
this story a feminist critique of postmodernism?
|
