“The bad artists imitate. The great artists steal.”
— ~~Pablo Picasso~~ Banksy

Banksy’s 4 Soup Cans (Gold on Cream) of 2006 is an extension of the artist’s notoriously sarcastic and ironic approach to art. Alike the street-art graffiti for which he is most commonly known, 4 Soup Cans (Gold on Cream) is consistent with Banksy’s anti-establishment, culture-critiquing style. The work is a pastiche of Andy Warhol’s 1960s Campbell’s Soup, an iconic emblem of twentieth-century American consumer culture, plucked from the supermarket shelf and placed on the pedestal of legitimised “high art”. Forty years later, Banksy appropriated the subject matter with a distinctly British twist, adopting Warhol’s democratic symbol and making it relevant to the contemporary moment. While Warhol’s works are instantly recognisible for their vibrant red branding, bold black outlines and enlarged compositions, Banksy replaces the stylised calligraphic “Campbell’s” branding with the “Tesco’s value” range. The pale blue palette and standardised writing add to the lack-luster appearance, and the cans are dwarfed by a bland beige background, uniform and small. Moreover, the label peels at the top right corner of each soup can, exposing the metal tin concealed underneath.

Andy Warhol, Vegetarian Vegetable, from Campbell’s Soup II, 1969, lot 102.

Having emerged from the very margins of the art world, Banksy’s radical unpicking of convention and provocative confrontation of institutionalised fine art is a driving force throughout his works. Whereas Warhol challenged the nature of fine art as a distinguished tradition by inserting modern memorabilia into the canon, Banksy’s more overt iconoclasm of inclusion and exclusion, high and low art, history within contemporary society, undercuts the art world’s inner sanctum. Warhol harnessed the mass-produced iconography of Campbell’s Soup to depart from the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism with the wry humour of Pop. Banksy’s Soup Cans, however, are recognisable for the wrong reasons: they are a part of pedestrian everyday life for a vast majority of the British population who do not have access to luxury. A stark contrast to the striking colour of Campbell’s classic design, Banky’s Soup Cans implicitly mock the corporations that drive wealth inequality and in turn criticises the result of consumerism that Warhol championed. A spirited symbol of post-war American affluence is therefore rendered as a pithy mockery, exposing the reality of twenty-first century cost-cutting.

Before being released in various printed colourways, a painted acrylic version of Soup Cans was exhibited in Banksy’s now-fabled Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-Mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin exhibition in October 2005. The 12-day show was conceived as a temporary pop-up exhibition in an abandoned Westbourne Grove shop and was populated by 200 live rats scurrying around the featured works. Soup Cans was a focal point, exhibited amongst traditional oil on canvas works and sculptures purchased second-hand at flea markets before being manipulated by the artist. A Renaissance-inspired Virgin and Child listened to an iPod, and a knock-off classical Venus sculpture wore a traffic cone over her head while sporting full-body tattoos. Through this appropriation, Banksy underpins his central belief that art should be for the people; by hiding it in museums, we smother its potential to “change the world”. Therefore, his tactful balancing of destruction with creation provides a futile ground for a sardonic commentary seeking to undermine the bourgeoise nature of many of history’s iconic works of art.

Banksy’s vandalising practice – whether on the streets, on paper, or on canvas – ultimately holds a rhetorical mirror on contemporary society; we are quick to condemn such disdainful acts yet fail to recognise the stifling nature of “high art” and the inequalities imposed by consumer culture. Perfectly encapsulating the artist’s trademark style infused with his anti-establishment, critical-minded flair, 4 Soup Cans (Gold on Cream) is a satirically contemptuous image and is in every way a Banksy masterpiece.
- Artist Biography
  Banksy
  British • 1975 - N/A
  Anonymous street artist Banksy first turned to graffiti as a miserable fourteen year old disillusioned with school. Inspired by the thriving graffiti community in his home city, Bristol, Banksy's works began appearing on trains and walls in 1993, and by 2001 his blocky, spray-painted works had cropped up all over the United Kingdom. Typically crafting his images with spray paint and cardboard stencils, Banksy is able to achieve a meticulous level of detail. His aesthetic is clean and instantly readable due to his knack for reducing complex political and social statements to simple visual elements.
  
  His graffiti, paintings and screenprints use whimsy and humour to satirically critique war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed — with not even the Royal family safe from his anti-establishment wit.
  View More Works

Property from a Private British Collection

162

Banksy

4 Soup Cans (Gold on Cream)

2006
Screenprint in colours, on wove paper, with full margins.
I. 41.7 x 26 cm (16 3/8 x 10 1/4 in.)
S. 69.8 x 49.9 cm (27 1/2 x 19 5/8 in.)
Signed, dated and numbered 27/54 in pencil, published by Pictures on Walls, London, with the accompanying Certificate of Authenticity issued by Pest Control, framed.

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