Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato)
Artist
Andy Warhol
(American, 1928–1987)
Date1964
Mediumsynthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink screenprint on canvas with handcoloring
Dimensionscanvas: 91.4 x 61 cm (36 x 24 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund and Partial Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Terms
Object number1993.89
Label TextAndy Warhol both criticized and celebrated the values of American postwar consumer society. An experienced commercial illustrator, Warhol excluded from his paintings all conventional signs of the artist’s personality (most importantly brushwork) and favored painting techniques that gave his images a printed appearance, including the use of stencils and silkscreens. By 1964, Warhol’s paintings were executed with the help of assistants in a studio he called The Factory; he succeeded at removing his hand even more decisively from the canvas and consciously mimicking the look of mechanical reproduction and a system of factory-based production.
With his series of Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, Warhol declared a familiar brand of packaged food found in millions of American homes a legitimate subject for art, and in doing so subverted the idea of painting as a medium of invention and originality. Instantly recognizable, everywhere available, and always tasting the same, Campbell’s tomato soup, one of the company’s original and best selling varieties, was the quintessentially mass-produced American product. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) deepened a postwar erosion of the borders between the worlds of art and popular culture.ProvenanceEstate of Andy Warhol, New York; Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 22 East 33rd St., New York, NY 10016On View
On view
