“I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch everyday for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.”
—Andy WarholAnecdotal, autobiographical, abundant and appreciable, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can is a twentieth century icon. Born out of American consumerism of the 1960s, its various iterations have attained an unparalleled degree of recognition, having been produced millions of times in media, supermarkets, and in art. Radically unembellished, the soup cans demonstrate the virtuosity, wit and irreverence that characterises Warhol’s artistic vision and the essence of Pop.
In the spring of 1962, after seeing Roy Lichtenstein’s exhibition of comic-strip paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery, Warhol solicited advice from friends for new subjects to paint. Campbell’s soup was suggested as something that everybody recognises and, in a flash of inspiration, Warhol bought cans of soup and began tracing projections of them. The stencil that would go on to form his iconic Soup Can compositions was made by projecting a photograph taken by Warhol’s close companion, the photographer Edward Wallowitch. Taking the directness of photography and melding it with fine art, Warhol harnessed the straight-edge, undeviating nature of mechanical photo-reproduction to make his Soup Cans appear as plain and impersonal as possible.
In creating his Soup Can works, the medium of screenprint enabled Warhol to use repetitive forms more quickly and effectively – a method coincidentally used in the production of food packaging. The process completely refrains from spontaneity and removes artistic intervention, abandoning the role of artist as author. Warhol built on the radical principles of Marcel Duchamp, who in turn challenged the critical apparatus of “high art” with his readymades. Elevating the inconspicuous every day to something as worthy as other post-war American subjects, Warhol presented his Soup Cans hundreds at a time. Their uninterrupted uniformity, lined-up together like soldiers, battled the ideology of Abstract Expressionists who leant into pre-lingual gesturalism channeled directly from the artist’s psyche. As Warhol stated, “Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognise in a split second – comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles – all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.”
“If you take a Campbell Soup can and repeat it fifty times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put fifty Campbell Soup cans on a canvas.”
—Marcel DuchampThrough his soup can subject matter Warhol radically altered fine art, challenging its fundamental nature and status. He departed from the seriousness of his recent artistic predecessors, transforming something trivial into an emblem of American consumerism. Whether an appropriator, a genius, a copyist or simply a label maker, Warhol delved into the trenches of pop culture and emerged not only as a cult figure himself, but also having created an icon whose recognisable form continues to permeate twenty-first century culture.
