bottle labeled coke

A BOTTLE LABELED COKE


One gets a glimpse, when peeping through the door hole,
of art turned into pop, turned into Warhol,
but no one really can be said to get the joke
until they realize Andy is a bottle, labeled Coke.

Brillo soap pads, Kellog’s Corn Flakes, Heinz
tomato ketchup he preserves for shrines,
museums of contemporary art
in which his image is the sacred heart.

Art, thanks to him, is post-historical,
and he’s become of it the oracle;
in the process he’s made dealers rich,
while collectors’ corpuses are kitsch.

Philosophers, his priests, Warhol mocks
by drawing their attention to a box
of Brillo, that, like sacramental wine,
turn into Andy’s blood once he will sign
the illustration, even if he he’s not
the artist who produced this bloody clot.
Lifelike are his illusions, though most miss
the joke, like bottles where the Coke is piss.

And yet “200 One Dollar Bills were sold
for over forty million, turned to gold
by being not two hundred dollars but
an imitation. Copy me a cut!

Inspired by reading Louis Menand’s article on Andy Warhol in the January 8, 2010 issue of The New Yorker (“Top of the Pops Did Andy Warhol change everything?”). Menand focuses on “Pop’s changed everything” theory of Warhol’s art which has been most clearly propounded by Arthur Dino, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, in his latest book “Andy Warhol”. Danto went to see Warhol’s show at the Stable gallery in 1964. He declared that it was a transformative experience for hi. “It turned him into a philosopher of art, attempting to answer the question, “Why is something that looks exactly like a Brillo box a work of art, but a Brillo box is not?” Menand writes: “All styles were now available. And he decided that, with the Brillo box, the history of art had come to an end. Art had become post-historical.” “Andy had, by nature, a philosophical mind, Danto says in his new book; “he was really doing philosophy by doing the art that made him famous.” Menand writes: “Duchamp eliminated the element of imitation in art, and Warhol imitated him. He turned the screw one rotation further than Danto realized. The Brillo boxe did not break the illusion-reality barrier at all. They were just one move in the game; they didn’t bring it to an end.

© 2010 Gershon Hepner 1/17/10