Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola (born 6th August 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) better known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist who was a central figure in the movement known as Pop Art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, he became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, an avant-garde filmmaker, a record producer, an author, and a public figure known for his presence in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats.
Warhol showed an early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School Of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. During 1950, he became well-known mainly for his whimsical ink drawing of shoes for advertisements.
During 1960, Warhol began to make painting of famous American product such as “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and Coca-Cola. Besides, Warhol also painting of celebrities likes Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue and his famous Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. Warhol’s painted dollar bills, brand name product and images from newspaper clipping. His subjects were instantly recognize and often had a mass appeal. This aspect interested him most, and it unifies his painting from this period.
To Warhol, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by other artist thus he wanted a distinguished subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. As a result, for his first major exhibition, he painted his famous can of Campbell’s Soup, which he claimed to have for his lunch for most of his life. While later, his “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Coca-Cola Bottles” brought him instantaneous celebrity status and he was proclaimed the leader of the pop Art movement.
The Campbell’s Soup Can
Andrew Warhola (born 6th August 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) better known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist who was a central figure in the movement known as Pop Art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, he became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, an avant-garde filmmaker, a record producer, an author, and a public figure known for his presence in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats.
Warhol showed an early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School Of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. During 1950, he became well-known mainly for his whimsical ink drawing of shoes for advertisements.
During 1960, Warhol began to make painting of famous American product such as “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and Coca-Cola. Besides, Warhol also painting of celebrities likes Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue and his famous Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. Warhol’s painted dollar bills, brand name product and images from newspaper clipping. His subjects were instantly recognize and often had a mass appeal. This aspect interested him most, and it unifies his painting from this period.
To Warhol, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by other artist thus he wanted a distinguished subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. As a result, for his first major exhibition, he painted his famous can of Campbell’s Soup, which he claimed to have for his lunch for most of his life. While later, his “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and “Coca-Cola Bottles” brought him instantaneous celebrity status and he was proclaimed the leader of the pop Art movement.
The Campbell’s Soup Can
Andy Warhol used soup cans as subject matter at various stages of his career. In addition to the soup cans of the early 1960, he also produced portfolios of soup can print in 1968 and 1968 and 1969. During the mid 1970, soup can imagery was again used by Warhol for a series of small silkscreen.
According to Ted Carey (who was one of Andy Warhol’s commercial art assistant), it was Muriel Latow who suggested the idea for both the soup cans and Warhol’s early dollar paintings. Muriel was an interior decorator with higher aspirations that had an art gallery (the Latoe Gallery). She told Warhol he should paint something that he sees every day and something that everybody would recognize. Something likes a can of Campbell’s Soup. The following day, Warhol went to supermarket and bought a case of “all the soups”. When the art critic G.R. Swenson asked Warhol why he painted soup cans, the artist replied that he used to drink it, and used it to have the same lunch every day for 20 years.
Campbell’s’ Soup Can was one of each the canned soup varieties offered at the time. The individual paintings were produced with a semi-mechanized silkscreen process, using a non-painterly style. The Campbell’s Soup Cans’ reliance on themes from popular culture helped to usher in pop art as a major art movement.
Warhol subsequently produced a wide variety of art works depicting Campbell's Soup cans during three distinct phases of his career, and he produced other works using a variety of images from the world of commerce and mass media. Today, the Campbell's Soup cans theme is generally used in reference to the original set of paintings as well as the later Warhol drawings and paintings depicting Campbell's Soup cans. Because of the eventual popularity of the entire series of similarly themed works, Warhol's reputation grew to the point where he was not only the most-renowned American pop art artist, but also the highest-priced living American artist
Several stories mention that Warhol's choice of soup cans reflected his own avid devotion to Campbell's soup as a consumer. Robert Indiana once said: "I knew Andy very well. The reason he painted soup cans is that he liked soup. He was thought to have focused on them because they composed a daily dietary staple. Others observed that Warhol merely painted things he held close at heart. He enjoyed eating Campbell's soup, had a taste for Coca-Cola, loved money, and admired movie stars. Thus, they all became subjects of his work. Yet another account says that his daily lunches in his studio consisted of Campbell’s Soup and Coca-Cola, and thus, his inspiration came from seeing the empty cans and bottles accumulate on his desk
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