Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is a group of paintings called CAMPBELL'S SOUP CANS (or 32 CAMPBELL'S SOUP CANS) by Andy Warhol (1962, synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm).

When Warhol first exhibited these thirty–two canvases in 1962, each one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a shelf like groceries in a store. The number of canvases corresponds to the varieties of soup then sold by the Campbell Soup Company. Warhol assigned a different flavor to each painting, referring to a product list supplied by Campbell's. There is no evidence that Warhol envisioned the canvases in a particular sequence. Here, they are arranged in rows that reflect the chronological order in which they were introduced, beginning with "Tomato" in the upper left, which debuted in 1897 (from MOMA website).

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