The corner of Broadway and 17th Street was the location of one of Andy Warhol’s Factories in the 1970s and early ’80s. So what more appropriate spot to honor Andy than that?
Commissioned by the Public Art Fund, the artist, Rob Pruitt, having been inspired by the art and life of Andy (like so many of us), unveiled a nearly ten-foot-tall sculpture, The Andy Monument. As the silver cloth was lifted, Pruitt appropriately exclaimed that he hoped the monument would last more than 15 minutes. Thanks so much to Public Art for making life on the streets more interesting. Admirers were already leaving soup cans at Andy’s feet to celebrate him.
The sculpture, fittingly facing downtown (and, by the way, directly looking at a statue of Gandhi at the other end of Union Square), depicts Andy with Polaroid camera and shopping bag filled with what else but copies of Interview magazine that he handed out to people on the streets. Andy was old-school in that way and loved to walk around and give away the latest issue. If you were lucky, he might have even signed one for you. I think that Andy would have loved the sculpture in how slim he looked.
