View this famous Warhol Painting as a print.
Campbell’s Soup Cans, which is sometimes referred to as 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, is a work of art produced in 1962 by Andy Warhol. It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring 20 inches (510 mm) in height × 16 inches (410 mm) in width and each consisting of a painting of a Campbell’s Soup can—one of each of the canned soup varieties the company offered at the time. The individual paintings were produced with a semi-mechanized silkscreen process, using a non-painterly style. Campbell’s Soup Cans’ reliance on themes from popular culture helped to usher in pop art as a major art movement in the USA.
Warhol, a commercial illustrator who became a successful author, publisher, painter, and film director, showed the work on July 9 1962 in his first one-man gallery exhibition as a fine artist. in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles, California. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art. The combination of the semi-mechanized process, the non-painterly style, and the commercial subject initially caused offense, as the work’s blatantly mundane commercialism represented a direct affront to the technique and philosophy of abstract expressionism. In the United States the abstract expressionism art movement was dominant during the post-war period, and it held not only to “fine art” values and aesthetics but also to a mystical inclination. This controversy led to a great deal of debate about the merits and ethics of such work. Warhol’s motives as an artist were questioned, and they continue to be topical to this day. The large public commotion helped transform Warhol from being an accomplished 1950s commercial illustrator to a notable fine artist, and it helped distinguish him from other rising pop artists. Although commercial demand for his paintings was not immediate, Warhol’s association with the subject led to his name becoming synonymous with the Campbell’s Soup can paintings.
Warhol subsequently produced a wide variety of art works depicting Campbell’s Soup cans during three distinct phases of his career, and he produced other works using a variety of images from the world of commerce and mass media. Today, the Campbell’s Soup cans theme is generally used in reference to the original set of paintings as well as the later Warhol drawings and paintings depicting Campbell’s Soup cans. Because of the eventual popularity of the entire series of similarly themed works, Warhol’s reputation grew to the point where he was not only the most-renowned American pop art artist, but also the highest-priced living American artist.
Warhol’s production of Campbell’s Soup can works underwent three distinct phases. The first took place in 1962, during which he created realistic images, and produced numerous pencil drawings of the subject. In 1965, Warhol revisited the theme while arbitrarily replacing the original red and white colors with a wider variety of hues. In the late 1970s, he again returned to the soup cans while inverting and reversing the images. Some in the art world consider Warhol’s work completed after his 1968 shooting—which occurred the day before the Bobby Kennedy assassination— to be less significant than that done before it.
Today, the most well remembered Warhol Campbell’s Soup can works are from the first phase. Warhol is further regarded for his iconic serial celebrity silkscreens of such people as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, and Mao Zedong, produced during his 1962–1964 silkscreening phase. In fact, his most commonly repeated painting subjects are Taylor, Monroe, Presley, Jackie Kennedy and similar celebrities. In addition to being a notable fine artist, Warhol was a renowned cinematographer, author, and commercial illustrator. Posthumously, he became the subject of the largest single-artist art museum in the United States. Many Warhol art exhibits include footage of his cinematic directorial efforts (e.g., The Museum of Contemporary Art’s ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, Disasters, 1962–1964 that ran from March 18, 2006 – June 18, 2006). Some say his contributions as an artist pale in comparison to his contributions as a film-maker. Others make it clear that he was not the most conventionally skilled artist of his day. Nonetheless, his techniques were emulated by other highly-respected artists[74] and his works continue to command high prices.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.
When Warhol first exhibited these thirty–two canvases in 1962, each one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a shelf like groceries in a store. The number of canvases corresponds to the varieties of soup then sold by the Campbell Soup Company. Warhol assigned a different flavor to each painting, referring to a product list supplied by Campbell’s. There is no evidence that Warhol envisioned the canvases in a particular sequence. Here, they are arranged in rows that reflect the chronological order in which they were introduced, beginning with “Tomato” in the upper left, which debuted in 1897.
Courtesy of MoMA
Referring to himself as a re-creator, rather than a creator, Andy Warhol (1923 – 1987) established himself as a Pop Art icon through his iconic multiple silkscreened images of Campbell’s soup cans. Produced in a studio called The Factory, Warhol’s repetitive soup cans, Coca Cola bottles and dollar bills represented mass production and assembly line objects that demand quick recognition and consumption. Warhol’s soup cans created a sensation in the art world and launched him as an international celebrity.
Courtesy of Art.com.
More Campbell’s Soup Warhol Paintings as Prints
