Campbell's Soup Cans

Campbell's Soup Cans

Infobox Painting|

title=Campbell's Soup Cans
artist=Andy Warhol
year=1962
type=Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
height=Each 50.8
width=40.6
height_inch=20
width_inch = 16
diameter_cm =
diameter_inch =
city=New York, NY
(32 canvas series displayed by year of introduction)
museum=Museum of Modern Art

"Campbell's Soup Cans" (sometimes referred to as "32 Campbell's Soup Cans") [Frazier, p. 708.] is a work of art produced in 1962 by Andy Warhol. It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring convert|20|in|mm|lk=on in height × convert|16|in|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.cite web|url=http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79809|accessdate=2007-03-09|publisher=The Museum of Modern Art|year=2007|title=The Collection] 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.

For Warhol, a commercial illustrator who became a successful author, painter, and film director, the work was his first one-man gallery exhibition as a fine artist.Angell, p. 38.] Livingstone, p. 32.] First exhibited in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles, California, it marked the West Coast debut of pop art.Lippard, p. 158.] 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. 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,Stokstad, p. 1130.] but also the highest-priced living American artist.Bourdon p. 307.]

Early career

New York art scene

Warhol arrived in New York City in 1949, directly from the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology.Livingstone, p. 31.] He quickly achieved success as a commercial illustrator, and his first published drawing appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of "Glamour Magazine". [Watson, p. 25.] In 1952, he had his first art gallery show at the Bodley Gallery with a display of Truman Capote-inspired works. [Watson, pp. 27–28.] By 1955, he was tracing photographs borrowed from the New York Public Library's photo collection with the hired assistance of Nathan Gluck, and reproducing them with a process he had developed earlier as a collegian at Carnegie Tech. His process, which foreshadowed his later work, involved pressing wet ink illustrations against adjoining paper. [Watson, pp. 26–27.] During the 50s, he had regular showings of his drawings. He even exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art ("Recent Drawings", 1956).

Pop art

Warhol followed the success of his original series with several related works incorporating the same theme of Campbell's Soup cans subjects. These subsequent works along with the original are collectively referred to as the Campbell's Soup cans series and often simply as the Campbell's Soup cans. The subsequent Campbell's Soup can works were very diverse. The heights ranged from convert|20|in|mm to convert|6|ft|m|lk=on. [Bourdon, p. 91. ] Generally, the cans were portrayed as if they were freshly produced cans without flaws. Occasionally, he chose to depict cans with torn labels, peeling labels, crushed bodies, or opened lids like those in the images in this section. Sometimes he added related items like a bowl of soup or a can opener, such as the one in the image on the right. Sometimes he produced images of related items without any soup cans such as "Campbell's Tomato Juice Box" (above right), which are not strictly a part of the series although a part of the theme. Many of these works were produced at his famous studio "The Factory."

Irving Blum made the original thirty-two canvases available to the public through an arrangement with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC by placing them on permanent loan two days before Warhol's death.Archer, p. 185.] However, the original "Campbell's Soup Cans" is now a part of the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. A painting called "Campbell's Soup Cans II" is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. "200 Campbell’s Soup Cans", 1962 (Acrylic on canvas, 72 inches x 100 inches), in the private collection of John and Kimiko Powers is the largest single canvas of the Campbell's Soup can paintings. It is composed of ten rows and twenty columns of numerous flavors of soups. Experts point to it as one of the most significant works of pop art both as a pop representation and as conjunction with immediate predecessors such as Jasper Johns and the successors movements of Minimal and Conceptual art. [Lucie-Smith, p. 16.] The very similar "100 Cans" from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery collection is shown above on the left. The earliest soup can painting seems to be "Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato Rice)," a 1960 ink, tempura, crayon, and oil canvas.Bourdon p. 99.]

In many of the works, including the original series, Warhol drastically simplified the gold medallion that appears on Campbell's Soup cans by replacing the paired allegorical figures with a flat yellow disk. In most variations, the only hint of three-dimensionality came from the shading on the tin lid. Otherwise the image was flat. The works with torn labels are perceived as metaphors of life in the sense that even packaged food must meet its end. They are often described as expressionistic. [Bourdon, p. 92.]

By 1970, Warhol established the record auction price for a painting by a living American artist with a $60,000 sale of "Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Torn Label (Vegetable Beef)" (1962) in a sale at Parke-Bernet, the preeminent American auction house of the day (later acquired by Sotheby's). This record was broken a few months later by his rival for the artworld's attention and approval, Lichtenstein, who sold a depiction of a giant brush stroke, "Big Painting No. 6" (1965) for $75,000.

In May 2006, Warhol’s "Small Torn Campbell Soup Can (Pepper Pot)" (1962) sold for $11,776,000 and set the current auction world record for a painting from the Campbell Soup can series. [cite web |author= |url= http://www.stephaniejbrown.com/article_warhol.html |title= Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Sells For $11.7 Million |publisher = Stephanie J Brown Contemporary Art | accessdate = 2007-01-29] [cite web |author= |url= http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195011,00.html |title= Andy Warhol's Iconic Campbell's Soup Can Painting Sells for $11.7 Million |publisher = www.foxnews.com/Associated Press |date=2006-05-10 | accessdate = 2007-01-29] The painting was purchased for the collection of Eli Broad, [cite web |author= |url= http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/10/060510131536.nfluwoy0.html |title= Warhol painting fetches 11.8 million dollars |publisher = |date=2006-05-10 | accessdate = 2007-01-29] a man who once set the record for the largest credit card transaction when he purchased Lichtenstein's "I … I'm Sorry" for $2.5 million with an American Express card. [cite web |author= |url= http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/01/25/topics_26.php |title= American Topics |publisher = International Herald Tribune |date=1995-01-25 | accessdate = 2007-01-30] The $11.8 million Warhol sale was part of the Christie's Sales of Impressionist, Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art for the Spring Season of 2006 that totaled $438,768,924. [cite web |author= Roux, Bendetta |url= http://www.christies.com/presscenter/press.asp?location=&month=May&year=2006 |title= Press Center: Press Releases |publisher = Christie's |date=2006-05-11 | accessdate = 2007-01-29]

The broad variety of work produced using a semi-mechanized process with many collaborators, Warhol's popularity, the value of his works, and the diversity of works across various media and genre have created a need for the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board to certify the authenticity of works by Warhol. [cite web |url=http://www.warholfoundation.org/authen.htm |accessdate=March 9 |accessyear=2007 |title= The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc. |publisher=Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (http://www.warholfoundation.org)]

Conclusion

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 even produced numerous pencil 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. [cite web | author= Hughes, Robert | title= American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America | publisher=Knopf, Alfred A. Incorporated | year=1997 |month= 04 | url= http://www.artchive.com/artchive/W/warhol.html | accessdate=2006-12-17 ]

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. [Sylvester, p. 384. ] 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. [ cite web |author= Adams, Brooks |url= http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n9_v82/ai_15828110 |title= Industrial-strength Warhol—Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |publisher = Art In America | accessdate = 2007-01-24 |month = September | year = 1994] [ cite web |author= |url= https://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/pghconnections/places/warhol.html |title= The Andy Warhol Museum: 117 Sandusky Street |publisher = Carnegie Mellon University | accessdate = 2007-01-24 ] 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). [cite web | author= | title= Past Exhibitions: ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, Disasters, 1962–1964 | publisher= Museum of Contemporary Art | year=2006 | url= http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=1&syear=2006 | accessdate=2007-01-08 ] Some say his contributions as an artist pale in comparison to his contributions as a film-maker. [Sylvester, p. 388.] Others make it clear that he was not the most conventionally skilled artist of his day. [Lippard, p. 100.] Nonetheless, his techniques were emulated by other highly-respected artists [Lippard, p. 24.] and his works continue to command high prices.

Notes

References

* Angell, Callie, "Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raissonné, Abrams Books in Association With The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006, ISBN 0-810955393
* Archer, Michael, "Art Since 1960", Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1997, ISBN 0-500-20298-2
* Baal-Teshuva, Jacob (ed.), Andy Warhol: 1928–1987, Prutestel, 2004, ISBN 3-7913-1277-4
* Bourdon, David, "Warhol", Henry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishing, 1989. ISBN 0-810926342 (hardcover ISBN 0-8109-1761-0)
* Faerna, Jose Maria (ed.), "Warhol", Henry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, ISBN 0-8109-4655-6
* Frazier, Nancy, "The Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History", Penguin Group, 2000, ISBN 0-670-10015-3
* Harrison, Charles and Paul Wood (eds.), "Art Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas", Blackwell Publishers, 1993, ISBN 0-6311-6575-4
* Lippard, Lucy R., "Pop Art", Thames and Hudson, 1970 (1985 reprint), ISBN 0-500-20052-1
* Livingstone, Marco (ed.), "Pop Art: An International Perspective", The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1991, ISBN 0-8478-1475-0
* Lucie-Smith, Edward, "Artoday", Phaidon, ISBN 0-7148-3888-8
* Marcade, Bernard and Freddy De Vree, "Andy Warhol," Galerie Isy Brachot, 1989.
* Random House Library of Painting and Sculpture Volume 4, Dictionary of Artists and Art Terms, 1981, Random House, ISBN 0-39452131-5.
* Stokstad, Marilyn, "Art History", 1995, Prentice Hall, Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, ISBN 0-81091960-5
* Sylvester, David, "About Modern Art: Critical Essays 1948–1997", Henry Holt and Company, 1997, ISBN 0-8050-4441-8 (citing "Factory to Warhouse", May 22, 1994, "Independent on Sunday Review" as primary source)
* Vaughan, William (ed), "The Encyclopedia of Artists", Vol 5., Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000.
* Warin, Jean (ed), "The Dictionary of Art", Vol 32, Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1996 (2002 reprint).
* Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett, "Popism: The Warhol Sixties", Harcourt Books, 1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1
* Watson, Steven, "Factory Made:Warhol and the Sixties", Pantheon Books, 2003.

External links

* [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A6246&page_number=12&template_id=1&sort_order=1 Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962 - The Museum of Modern Art, New York]


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