Campbell's Soup Cans

''Campbell's Soup Cans'' (sometimes referred to as ''32 Campbell's Soup Cans'') is a work of art produced between November 1961 and June 1962 by the American artist Andy Warhol. It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring in height × in width and each consisting of a painting of a Campbell's Soup can—one of each of the canned soup varieties the company offered at the time. The works were Warhol's hand-painted depictions of printed imagery deriving from commercial products and popular culture and belong to the pop art movement.

Warhol was a commercial illustrator before embarking on painting. ''Campbell's Soup Cans'' was shown on July 9, 1962, in Warhol's first one-man gallery exhibitionAngell, p. 38.Livingstone, p. 32. at the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles, California, curated by Irving Blum. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art.Lippard, p. 158. Blum owned and possessed the painting series until he loaned it to the National Gallery of Art for several years in 1987 and then sold it to the Museum of Modern Art in 1996. The subject matter initially caused offense, in part for its affront to the technique and philosophy of the earlier art movement of abstract expressionism. Warhol's motives as an artist were questioned. Warhol's association with the subject led to his name becoming synonymous with the ''Campbell's Soup Can'' paintings.

Warhol produced a wide variety of art works depicting Campbell's Soup cans during three distinct phases of his career, and he produced other works using a variety of images from the world of commerce and mass media. After considering litigation, the Campbell Soup Company embraced Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans theme. Today, the Campbell's Soup cans theme is generally used in reference to the original set of 32 canvases, but it also refers to other Warhol productions: approximately 20 similar Campbell's Soup painting variations also made in the early 1960s; 20 in height × in width, multi-colored canvases from 1965; related Campbell's Soup drawings, sketches, and stencils over the years; two different 250-count 10-element sets of screen prints produced in 1968 and 1969; and other inverted/reversed Campbell's Soup can painting variations in the 1970s. Because of the eventual popularity of the entire series of similarly themed works, Warhol's reputation grew to the point where he was not only the most-renowned American pop-art artist,Stokstad, p. 1130. but also the highest-priced living American artist.Bourdon p. 307.

There is some confusion because sometimes the later screen print sets are referred to as if they are the ''Campbell's Soup Can'' set, and sometimes the original set of painting canvases is referred to as if it is a set of screenprints. In addition, there is ongoing production and sale of unauthorized screen prints, of what is legally Warhol's intellectual property, as a result of a falling out with former employees. There are also varied explanations for this theme. The popular explanation of his choice of the Campbell's Soup cans theme is that one artistic acquaintance inspired the original series with a suggestion that brought him closer to his roots. There are other artists who are said to have also influenced the pursuit of this theme.

Early career

New York art scene

Warhol arrived in New York City in 1949, directly from the School of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology,Livingstone, p. 31. and he quickly achieved success as a commercial illustrator. His first published drawing appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of '' Glamour Magazine''. In 1952, he had his first art gallery show at the Bodley Gallery with a display of Truman Capote–inspired works. By 1955, with the hired assistance of Nathan Gluck, Warhol was tracing photographs borrowed from the New York Public Library's photo collection and reproducing them with a process he had developed earlier as a collegian at Carnegie Tech. His process, which foreshadowed his later work, involved pressing wet ink illustrations against adjoining paper. During the 1950s, he had regular showings of his drawings, and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (''Recent Drawings'', 1956).

Pop art

In 1960, Warhol began producing his first canvases, which he based on comic strip subjects. Although Warhol had produced silkscreens of comic strips and other pop art subjects, he supposedly confined himself at the time to soup cans as a subject in order to avoid competing with the more finished style of comics done by Roy Lichtenstein.Bourdon, p. 109. Warhol once said, "I've got to do something that really will have a lot of impacts that will be different enough from Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist, that will be very personal, that won't look like I'm doing exactly what they're doing."

In 1961, Warhol was wavering between the action painting of abstract expressionisms, with its use of drips and brushstrokes, and the more direct style of pop art. Most of his early soup-can work tended toward the latter. He experimented with hand painting and spray painting through a stencil cutout, as well as rubber stamping images. In January 1962, he began stamping with engraved art gum erasers onto canvas and paper, using acrylic paint.Scherman/Dalton, p. 89–90.

Some sources mistakenly claim that the original set of 32 Campbell's Soup cans was a set of silkscreen works. There is so much confusion on what the Campbell's Soup cans are that when the Art Gallery of Ontario acquired a ''Campbell's Soup I'' set, ''The Globe and Mail'' described it as "the entire, iconic series". The Museum of Modern Art, which now owns the 32 ''Campbell's Soup Cans'', as well as complete sets of ''Campbell's Soup I'' and ''Campbell's Soup Cans II'', describes the first as a set of paintings ("Acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas, 32 panels") and the latter two as sets of screenprints ("Portfolio of ten screenprints"). The original 32 soup-can works were produced by tracing projections of soup cans onto canvas, followed by hand brushstrokes. The process relied on stamps and stencils, which were Warhol's intermediate step from painterly techniques to silkscreening. They are regarded as one "of the works on which his fame as an artist rests", as well as a necessary part of "any true retrospective exhibition of his work".

Warhol was able to get exposure for his comic strip (and newspaper ad) paintings by using them as a backdrop for his Bonwit Teller window design in April 1961. Leo Castelli visited Warhol's gallery in 1961 and said that the work he saw there was too similar to Lichtenstein's, although Warhol's and Lichtenstein's comic artwork differed in subject matter and techniques (e.g., Warhol's comic-strip figures were humorous pop-culture caricatures, such as of Popeye

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