Campbell's Soup Cans
Andy Warhol's grid of 32 nearly-identical canvases, each showing one variety of Campbell's soup โ the painting that launched pop art into the mainstream.
Origin
Andy Warhol exhibited the work in 1962 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Each of the 32 canvases is the same size (51 ร 41 cm) and depicts a single can of soup; the only variation is the printed flavor label. Warhol said he had eaten Campbell's soup nearly every day for twenty years. The works were initially mocked โ a rival gallery stacked actual cans of Campbell's in its window with a sign saying 'get the real thing.' Now at MoMA, the whole set hangs together.
Modern usage
The grid of repeated commercial images is the visual template for pop art and for any 'mass-produced is the new sublime' argument. 'Very Warhol' means deadpan, replicated, brand-as-art. The Marilyn Diptych is the sibling reference. Every limited-edition merch drop is conceptually downstream of this work.
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