Today is Andy Warhol's birthday, marking 85 years since the artist was born. To honor the icon of pop art, the Andy Warhol Museum, located in his hometown of Pittsburgh, is streaming video from his gravesite.
The museum calls the project Figment — a reference, it explains, to this quote from the late artist:
"I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, and 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.'"
Warhol died in 1987. He is buried alongside other members of his family, whose tombstones bear the name Warhola.
As Maria Popova tells us over at the Brain Pickings site, fans have had a steady of flow of Warhol materials in recent years. First came a suite of songs for Warhol's famed Screen Tests film; then a book came out, The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol, by John Wilcock.
Update at 2:45 p.m. ET: We have rewritten the last paragraph of this post to clarify that the book and music Maria Popova refers to were published before 2013.
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