Andy Warhol - Can of Soup

In Andy Warhol’s time, no serious painter would have thought to paint such an ordinary object as a can of soup. But Warhol did. And his fame came from his ability to turn everyday objects into intriguing works of art.

There are contradicting stories published as to who gave Warhol the idea to paint soup cans. The most commonly printed version goes like this. In 1960, his friend Muriel Latow came to visit. During that time Warhol was discouraged with his work. He discovered that he was doing the same kind of modern comic strip art as another local artist Roy Lichtenstein but Roy was more successful. So, he asked Latow, who happened to own an art gallery herself, for advice. She said, “You should paint something that everybody sees everyday…like a can of soup.”

He took her advice. He started making “portraits” of each of the 32 varieties of Campbell’s soups against a white background. “Tomato soup will never be just tomato soup again,” said critic Ivan Karp quoted in Warhol, By David Bourdon.

Over the next two years, he continued to paint a series of Campbell’s soup cans. Sometimes he used stencils and other times he used pencil, ink, crayons, acrylic and oil paints. He painted enormous still lifes or sad-looking soups with torn labels. Often times he multiplied the can image with the silkscreen method. One of the most famous pieces in the series is 100 Cans multiplying Beef Noodle soup 100 times.

His soup series appeared in an art gallery in the summer of 1962. But not everyone appreciated his new approach to modern art. According to Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter, by Susan Coldman Rubin, a supermarket stacked Campbell’s soup in the window with a sign that read, “the real thing for only 29 cents a can.” He used the public putdown as publicity. He took a photographer to the market and had his picture taken signing the cans of soup. The photo appeared in newspapers everywhere, according to Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, by Bob Colacello.

He went on to paint other inanimate objects in this artistic phase. He painted dollar bills, Brillo pads and Heinz ketchup boxes, and Coca-Cola bottles. “I just paint things I always thought were beautiful . . . things you use every day and never think about,” said Warhol, quoted in Victor Bockirs’ book The Life and Death of Andy Warhol. He had a way of choosing objects from American culture that have achieved a genuinely iconic status in contemporary civilization. Warhol often multiplied the images over and over on the same canvas creating the idea that his art like the objects themselves were made by a machine. Warhol even once said, “The reason I’m painting this was is that I want to be a machine.”

In 1980, Warhol declared that he wished to be remembered as a soup can, which may very well become the case. Now, his art is celebrated worldwide and shown continually in museums almost always showcasing his Campbell’s representations.

At the end of his career in 1983, The Campbell’s Soup Company hired him to create a new series of paintings of their dry soup mixes.

A reporter once asked him, “Did you ever image when you painted your first soup can, that it would become art?”

“No,” said Andy. “It’s like anything. You just work. If it happens, it happens.”

Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe

It was her fame, eroticism, and mysterious death that fascinated Warhol and inspired a “painted print” series honoring Marilyn Monroe. It was just after her mysterious suicide in 1962 that Warhol started the series. It ironically linked his previous work, which focused on images of death to his next phase: celebrity portraits.

Warhol’s portraits constitute a genuine gallery of the most influential and famous figures of his age. Politicians, movie stars, and art dealers are among the many named in this long list. They were emblems of beauty, glamour, and power.

It is fitting that Miss Beauty and Glamour Herself begins Warhol’s tribute to Hollywood’s celebrities. Like many of his star models, Warhol actually met Monroe in person. “She fascinated me as she did the rest of America,” Warhol was quoted saying in I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews by Kenneth Goldsmith.

The Marilyn series was a reproduction of the famous promotional image for the 1953 film “Niagara.” He made the photo into a silkscreen and screened a single image of her face onto small canvases. He then multiplied her image in Six Marilyns, Marilyn Twenty Times, and One Hundred Marilyns. In some pieces he just painted her ruby lips and blonde hair with contrasting skin colors. In another Marilyn, he took multiple images of her lips, one of her most sensual and familiar features, creating a sort of kissing machine. For the famous Gold Marilyn Monroe, he painted the entire canvas with gold paint with a single picture of her face in the silkscreen depicting her as a goddess of sensuality.

A turning point in Warhol’s career was when Architect Philip Johnson, director of the Architecture and Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased Gold Marilyn Monroe for the museum. This gave Warhol great credence in the art world especially when a panel of critics, curators, and art historians saw his Gold Marilyn in the museum. That day they named the new modern art movement “Pop Art” short for popular, with Warhol as a pioneer.

Through his career, he went on to do portraits of many other well-known figures such as Mao, Jackie Kennedy, Liz Taylor, and Dolly Parton. Even his self-portraits became famous for his unique imagery and conceptual style.

He created his usually larger-than-life portraits by first taking a snapshot of the subject, often with a simple Polaroid camera. He would then blow it up and transfer it in glue onto silk, and then toll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. Using this silkscreen method, you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was simple, quick, and chancy.

It was like an art assembly line, creating works with double or multiple portraits emphasizing the overwhelming presence of his models in popular culture. The multiple images created a sense of a manufactured celebrity made by Hollywood.

The more celebrity portraits he did increased his own fame and wealth. It not only increased the amount of celebrities he actually knew personally but the ease of replicating these portraits gave a boost to his success and profits. Warhol never concealed the fact that the genre had become an easy money-making tool for him.

Andy Warhol - Facts

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Andy Warhol, while famous for works like his iconic Campbell’s Soup Can print, will perhaps be remembered best for his now prescient quote regarding fame in modern society.

Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, and made a simple transition from producing work for ads to producing ads ironically as art, in what became known as Pop Art. This eventually led to making general observations on popular culture via art, which many critics at the time regarded as fraudulent and not real art.

Even while working as an ad artist, Warhol was known for shopping his work out to his peers, building a stable or artists that he would rely on. Some of the work that is most closely associated with him was, in fact, merely thought up by Warhol and produced by someone else under his guidance. Eventually, this evolved into Warhol’s famous Factory, where he surrounded himself with like-minded artists, most of whom were under his direction.

Warhol’s reliance on collaboration with others was regarded as controversial at the time, because he was technically taking full credit for work that was not all his own. It is worth noting, however, that many famous painters, such as Picasso and Rembrandt, surrounded themselves with students who became so talented at mimicking their teachers that the differences are still difficult to distinguish today. The gap between the practices of these older, accepted artists and Warhol’s own practices with the Factory seem negligible at best.

Warhol was fascinated by visual art in all its mediums, and embraced the new, cheaper availability of film technology to make avant garde cinema in addition to paintings, screen printings, and sculpture. Warhol’s Factory members, including musicians, artists, models, and bohemians often appeared in his cinematic work.

The openness of Warhol’s Factory came to a near-fatal halt on June 3, 1968 when he and Mario Amaya, a critic and curator, were both shot by radical feminist Valerie Solanas. Amaya escaped with only grazes, but Warhol was seriously wounded. He barely survived the attack and suffered physical repercussions from it for the rest of his life. Solanas said that she attacked Warhol because, “He had too much control over my life.” She had appeared in one of Warhol’s films.

During the seventies, Warhol became more of an entrepreneur, seeking out celebrities who would commission expensive portraits, including Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson. It was also during this period that he created his famous portrait of Mao Tse-Tung.

Warhol often chose specific artists that he would ‘adopt,’ notably the band The Velvet Underground, for which he created the famous ‘banana’ cover for the album The Velvet Underground and Nico.

During the seventies, Warhol became associated with the disco and club scenes in New York, where he would frequently be seen on the periphery, a quiet, pale man simply observing. Most notably he frequented iconic discos like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54.

In the eighties, Warhol became widely renowned again, this time as a discover of young artists, most notably Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as Julian Schnabel (who would later direct a film about Basquiat) and David Salle, leaders of the school called Neo-Expressionism.

It is telling that Warhol has appeared as a character in almost twenty films, portrayed by talents as diverse as Guy Pearce (Factory Girl), David Bowie (Basquiat), and Crispin Glover (The Doors). He has also appeared as a character in Austin Powers and an episode of The Simpsons, representing just how iconic a figure he is in American pop culture.

Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987, following complications after a gallbladder surgery in New York. He was buried in Pittsburgh next to his parents, in a black cashmere suit and wearing his trademark platinum wig. He was also buried with a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview t-shirt, a rose, a prayer book, and a bottle of Estee Lauder Beautiful perfume.

He had so many possessions at the time of his death that it took Sotheby’s nine days to sell it all off, generating more than 20 million dollars.

In 2007, on the 20th anniversary of Warhol’s death, the Gershwin Hotel in New York hosted a week-long event remembering Warhol’s work and influence. Attendees included the superstars of his Factory, his peers, his subjects, and his fans. Blondie performed, and The Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery in New York hosted an exhibit of work by Warhol and his students, as well as work of a younger generation inspired by Warhol.