Campbell's Soup Cans - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) was an American commercial illustrator that sparked artistic expression in the realm of pop art.  He used multiple art forms such as filmmaking, performance art, video installations, and various media types like photography, printmaking, sculpture, film, and music to critically push the boundaries of what is fine art and commercial illustration.  His first successful meager of fine art and illustration expression can be embraced in his "Campbell's Soup Cans" which was finished in 1962.  Each can is hand-painted using a synthetic polymer paint and thirty-two canvases. 

"Though Campbell’s Soup Cans resembles the mass-produced, printed advertisements by which Warhol was inspired, it is hand-painted, while the fleur de lys pattern ringing each can’s bottom edge is hand-stamped. In this work, he mimicked the repetition and uniformity of advertising by carefully reproducing the same image across each individual canvas. He varied only the label on the front of each can, distinguishing them by their variety. Warhol said of Campbell’s Soup, “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” (MoMA website)

     British artist Richard Hamilton described pop art as"popular, transient, expendable, low cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business." As Warhol himself put it, "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. (bio. website)