Andy Warhol’s Artwork Campbell’s Soup

Andy Warhol was known as the most influential figures of his time. He was successful at including commercials and daily used objects to the world of fine art. Warhol started as an illustrator for Glamour Magazine to become in the 1950s a leading figure in the Pop Art Movement. His style was unique. He used fine art mediums like photography and painting to present mass commercial elements. One year after announcing the creation of pop art, in 1962, he revealed his iconic paintings of Campbell’s soup and other popular commercial products and celebrities. (Brown.E, 2018). In these artworks, Warhol used repetition in order to indicate significance: “I like things to be exactly the same over and over again”(55). This shows that he was trying to symbolize his work as the work of a machine due to the presence of the age of industrialization. His aim was to shape the modern world through his creation of awareness of images and values. ( Jackson, K.Dec 2010). To frame Warhol as a consumer researcher, this discussion will be focusing on 3 famous artworks. The thesis statement for this essay is about the importance of repetition, it shed lights on its use as consumerism. The repetition is used as a decorative device which will create unity, balance, and rhythm in the compositions such 32 Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo Box and many more.

As for the formal analysis of the painting “Campbell’s Soup”. As a brief background to Warhol’s idea about the painting .He mentioned that he sent Julia to the supermarket to buy every variety of Campbell’s soup she could find. Warhol told her that he loved Campbell’s tomato soup as a child. He remembered it was the only food his family could afford. In fact, those red and white labels are really recognizable that was his reason behind this artwork. After that, he projected each can on a canvas and copied them in different sizes. (Warhol.A,1942). The medium used is acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas with 32 panels. The dimension of the painting of each canvas is 50.8 by 40.6 cm. The overall installation with 3 inches between each panel is 97 inch high and 63 inch wide. The Campbell’s soup can pictures are painted by hand in a large scale. The paint was applied with a brush. The 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans are pictures of pictures. They are used to promote visual signs in which it was turned into a trade-name product. They are considered as simulacrum. However, It is not the reproduction that made Warhol be unique but his desire of becoming a machine like artist. (Swenson, 1963: p. 748) which will lead to eliminate his individuality and rejecting the fact that he is a human being. In addition to that,

This work consists of 32 separate canvases. In fact, Andy Warhol made 32 kinds of Campbell's Soup that you could find on the shelf in the supermarket. Warhol became interested in it in the early 1960s . It was the idea of thinking about painting in terms of repetition rather than in terms of uniqueness. He used new processes including silk screening, rubber stamping as well as painted by hand. He would project a drawing of the soup can into the canvas in order to make sure that each one was done exactly like there's nothing here at all that's trumpeting the originality of the artist, the self-expression of the artist. The Campbell's Soup cans represent the beginning moment of pop art. The pop artists in many cases and certainly in Warhol came from working class backgrounds bringing normal American topics ,values ,habits into the world of fine art. It was very important to them .I think both artistically and ethically and daring to say that in a rich art leader it's subject so ordinary and typical of working class, American life as 18 can of soup these works are such icons now it's impossible almost to go back and realize how they are absolutely irreverent and even shocking these Campbell's Soup cans would have been in 1962.

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