Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans

Through the 1950s, Andy Warhol managed to establish himself as one of the most successful commercial artists in New York. He produced advertising art that regularly appeared in magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. In 1962, he decided to take a new direction, producing art not to promote a brand but for galleries to exhibit and collectors to purchase; Warhol wanted to produce ‘fine art’.

32 paintings of Campbell’s Soup Cans was the first body of work that Warhol produced for this function. The most influential artist of the 20th century marked his transition from commercial illustrator to fine artist by painting a commercial product. The irony of this decision was certainly not lost on Warhol who exhibited these paintings for the first time at the Ferus Gallery, LA (1962) with each work being displayed on a shelf, in reference to how the product is displayed in supermarkets.

Warhol famously wrote that ‘America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest’. The power of this statement derives from the context of the Cold War and the threat that communism posed to the United States. The fundamental ideal of communism is equality; people across society have access to the same products. However, the products that Warhol represented through his art seem to express that the system communism opposes, capitalism, successfully achieved this aim.
Warhol represented Coca-Cola, Brillo boxes and Campbell’s Soup cans, all of which are items that were sold at affordable prices and consumed across society, transcending social classes. If the wealthiest consumers chose not to buy Campbell’s Soup, they may still purchase Warhol’s art which displays the same design. As the world embraced Warhol, and his unique vision was disseminated, becoming the inspiration for shoes, mugs and Barbie dolls, the Campbell’s Soup Cans evolved into a symbol of the United States and capitalism during the Cold War. This was America's answer to the Hammer and Sickle, the communist symbol representing the industrial worker and the peasant.

Warhol observed that ‘once you “got” Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.’ His Campbell’s Soup series signalled a radical shift in modern art, challenging traditional distinctions between high and low culture, fine art and commercial design, with a selection of objects of mass consumption and prosaic advertising imagery. Campbell’s Soup is the first and most iconic example of this, but Warhol went on to transform Brillo boxes, Heinz branding and Coca-Cola into works of art.

Commercial themes persisted throughout his career, right up until his final years when he created the Ads series (1985). Through this body of work, Warhol elevated magazine advertisements, transforming them into vibrant, captivating works of art. In doing so, he blurred the line between commercial design and fine art more directly than at any point in his career.

In 1967, after Warhol had established himself as the most famous artist in the world, synonymous with the Campbell’s Soup motif, the company took legal action against him for using their label without consent. By 1986, Campbell’s recognised that Warhol had elevated their company to the status of cultural icon and decided to commission the artist to create a series of paintings to promote the release of their new product, Campbell’s Soup boxes. Consequently, 23 years after Warhol first transformed the brand into works of art, he returned to the subject, creating a series of paintings and canvas box constructions for an exhibition held in LA, receiving wide critical acclaim.

Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup has now transcended the original product it was inspired by, with the iconic image taking on a life of its own as artists and brands alike derive inspiration from it. Subsequent generations have been inspired by Warhol’s elevation of consumer goods, including Jean-Michel Basquiat whose collaborations with Warhol depicted the logos of major American brands on monumental canvases. In 2006, the street artist Banksy created his own Warholian parody depicting Tesco value tomato soup cans.

Warhol remains synonymous with Campbell’s Soup in the collective consciousness: an association cemented by his Esquire magazine cover in May 1969, comically staged to depict the artist drowning in a can of tomato soup. Warhol’s grave in Pittsburgh is continuously decorated with cans of Campbell’s Soup – a popular offering and a symbol which has endured beyond the life of the artist who altered the course of art history.  

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