“I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.”
—Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol engaged with art in a radically unembellished way, whilst simultaneously endowing modern art history with a newfound complexity. This surprising simplicity, unburdened by traditional understandings of ‘high art’ and instead informed directly by the pedestrian everyday, is perhaps best exemplified in the Campbell’s Soup screenprints. As the most recognizable piece of Andy Warhol’s exploration of collective consciousness, they are the template through which an entire tradition of Pop Art is derived.
Since its art world debut, the series has been enshrined with myth and intrigue. While its origin-story is disputed, one famous account narrates how Warhol, feeling rejected from the art world, enlisted the help of his confidant and aspiring art dealer, Muriel Latow (1931 - 2003). Eager to help her distressed friend, Lutow suggested that he should paint “something you see every day and that everybody would recognize. Something like a can of Campbell’s Soup.” The following day, Warhol (or in other versions his mother), headed to the Finast Supermarket to purchase the product — one for each flavor. Whether this account may be taken as fact or fiction remains a mystery; however, it is revelatory of the work’s sheer power in creating and directing pivotal dialogues within mass culture.
Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup continue to inspire and direct our collective tastes. In 2012, the Warhol Foundation partnered with the Campbell Soup Company to celebrate fifty years since the series’ debut. In line with the artist’s belief that “art shouldn’t be for the select few” but for “the mass of the American people,” limited-edition cans of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup were sold at $.75 in Target supermarkets across the United States. In all their simplicity, Warhol’s Soup Cans are a wonderful contradiction. Their medium and theme subverts the idea of the artist as an original creator. At the same time, they also served to construct the cult image of Andy Warhol, who, as it so happens, ate soup for lunch every day.
