.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A variation of Andy Warhol’s iconic paintings of cans of tomato soup, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup Box shows an everyday, readily available object as a work of high art. Depicting a rectangular box rather than the usual tin cans, the painting introduces an element of surprise, thus drawing attention to both its product type and variety name. The visible change in packaging reflects the cultural fascination with marketing and branding in the 1960s. The symbolic red and white combination as well as the use of font and lettering easily remind the consumers of the Campbell’s brand. Variations in box design, moreover, help to distinguish one product from the other: chicken noodle looks and tastes differently from tomato soup.
The development of Pop Art in the 60s coincided with a new phase of consumerism that mostly involved cheaply produced products for the masses. Immersed in this rapid transformation of class and culture, Warhol succeeded in turning these everyday objects into art. His innovative use of silkscreen blurs the lines between painting and printing. By creating seemingly uniform and mechanically produced images, Warhol’s hand produced paintings highlight the performative character of the Campbell soup images.
Warhol’s appropriation of images from consumer culture also serves as a kind of self-fashioning, given that popular culture was heavily transmitted by the media in the 60s. American clichés and stereotypes were celebrated and even fetishized both in the United States and abroad. Although his work was a celebration, it was also a critique. For by the time Warhol began to appropriate the products of the Campbell’s Soup company, they were already regarded as something of a throwback to an idealized America of the 1950s, when the postwar economic boom was at its height. By the time Warhol chose to immortalize them, and even more so by the time the present work was produced in the 1980s, the social and political climate had become more dark and complex. Pop Art’s rendering of the American dream has become one of its most enduring means of expression, and also one of its most potent cultural exports.
The development of Pop Art in the 60s coincided with a new phase of consumerism that mostly involved cheaply produced products for the masses. Immersed in this rapid transformation of class and culture, Warhol succeeded in turning these everyday objects into art. His innovative use of silkscreen blurs the lines between painting and printing. By creating seemingly uniform and mechanically produced images, Warhol’s hand produced paintings highlight the performative character of the Campbell soup images.
Warhol’s appropriation of images from consumer culture also serves as a kind of self-fashioning, given that popular culture was heavily transmitted by the media in the 60s. American clichés and stereotypes were celebrated and even fetishized both in the United States and abroad. Although his work was a celebration, it was also a critique. For by the time Warhol began to appropriate the products of the Campbell’s Soup company, they were already regarded as something of a throwback to an idealized America of the 1950s, when the postwar economic boom was at its height. By the time Warhol chose to immortalize them, and even more so by the time the present work was produced in the 1980s, the social and political climate had become more dark and complex. Pop Art’s rendering of the American dream has become one of its most enduring means of expression, and also one of its most potent cultural exports.