The first Campbell’s Soup Can paintings were shown at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962. The exhibition of 32 paintings met with such ridicule and derision that a neighboring gallery put actual soup cans in its window and labeled them “the real thing,” sold for twenty-nine cents.
The original Soup Can paintings were meant to depict objects so common and everyday that no one would even notice them, but what Warhol ended up making were infamous images with which he would become synonymous.
The banality of hundreds of soup cans on a grocer’s shelf is magnified in these silkscreens, which are blown up larger than life. Silver and gold metallic inks embellish the straight-on portrayals of popular flavors, such as Pepper Pot, Black Bean and Tomato. The images’ clean, crisp lines are indicative of the silkscreen method, and the use of this mass-reproduction process parallels the mass marketing, production and consumption of the food items themselves.
Details
- Artist Name: Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
- Title: Campbell's Soup I: Beef
- Date: 1968
- Medium: Silkscreen on paper
- Edition: Edition of 250, No. 76
- Dimensions: 35 1/2 x 23 1/8 in. (90.2 x 58.7 cm)
- Publisher: Factory Additions, New York
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Museum Purchase, 1969
- Accession Number: P.1969.062.02
- Copyright: © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Pop Culture!
- Norton Simon Museum, 2001-11-16 to 2002-02-11
Graphics of the Sixties
- Williamsport, The Greater Williamsport Community Arts Council, 1972-04-15 to 1972-04-30
R. A. Herold Wing Dedication Exhibition
- Sacramento, E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1969-11-19 to 1969-12-31
Printmaking in the Sixties: Interpretations of Common Objects
- Norton Simon Museum, 1988-05-26 to 1988-08-14
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
Additional Artwork by Artist
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