In Campbell's Soup Cans, how is the Inspiration discussed?
Campbell's Soup Cans is considered Warhol's signature work. For about a year, he made paintings from photographs, by his one-time love interest Edward Wallowitch, taken of soup cans in every condition and from every angle. During this time, he mixed his media (oil- and water-based paints) and cut stencils to help pursue realism. Wallowitch's photographs served as the models for the tracing and copying that resulted in many of his 1961 and 1962 Campbell's Soup cans and dollar bill paintings and drawings. In total, Warhol painted about 50 Campbell's Soup canvases from November 1961 to 1962. The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné (edited by Georg Frei and Neil Printz) lists the 32-canvas main set, 3 large grid-style paintings (1 of 200 cans and 2 of 100 cans), and about a dozen-and-a-half still lifes. Although Warhol had been trained in art school to paint still-life fruit bowls on a table, he longed to paint his favorite variety of Campbell's Soup (Tomato), remembered from the pantry of his childhood home. Warhol is quoted as saying "Many an afternoon at lunchtime Mom would open a can of Campbell's for me, because that's all we could afford, I love it to this day."Several anecdotal stories supposedly explain why Warhol chose Campbell's Soup cans as the focal point of his pop art. One reason is that he needed a new subject after he abandoned comic strips, a move taken in part due to his respect for the refined work of Roy Lichtenstein. According to Ted Carey—one of Warhol's commercial art assistants in the late 1950s—it was Muriel Latow who suggested the idea for both the soup cans and Warhol's early U.S. dollar paintings. Although Gopnik notes that a variety of incompatible versions of events are told, he presents a version crafted from Latow's recollections, saying that Latow and Carey were visiting Warhol to console him in his predicament of being upstaged in comics. Warhol begged them for ideas and even paid Latow for making her thoughts available. Although Tony Scherman and David Dalton tell a similar origin story, they note that John Mann (Carey's boyfriend) had a different version, where Latow influenced Warhol by asking about what Warhol disliked, which turned out to be grocery shopping, which in turn made him imagine getting Campbell's Soup cans from A&P. Another account of Latow's influence on Warhol holds that she asked him what he loved most, and because he replied "money" she suggested that he paint U.S. dollar bills. Latow was then an aspiring interior decorator, and owner of the Latow Art Gallery in the East 60s in Manhattan. She also told Warhol that he should paint "Something you see every day and something that everybody would recognize. Something like a can of Campbell's Soup." Carey said that Warhol responded by exclaiming: "Oh that sounds fabulous." A $50 ($489.64 in 2022) check dated November 23, 1961, in the archive of the Andy Warhol Museum, confirms the story that she charged him for giving him ideas.By one account, according to Carey, Warhol went to a supermarket the following day and bought a case of "all the soups", which Carey said he saw when he stopped by Warhol's apartment the next day. When the art critic G. R. Swenson asked Warhol in 1963 why he painted soup cans, the artist replied, "I used to drink it, I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years." Another account holds that Warhol instructed his mother to buy a can of each of the 32 varieties of Campbell's Soup from the local A&P. He began with a series of drawings and then made color slides of each, to be projected onto a screen. He tinkered with dimensions and how best to combine the varieties. However, rather than combine them, as was common with supermarket food imagery of the time, he decided to create, with as much realism as he could, individual portraits against a white background.The soup is said to have reminded Warhol of his mother, Julia, who served it to him regularly while raising him during the Great Depression, as Czech immigrants in a Pennsylvania coal mine town. At times, the family could not even afford to splurge on Campbell's Soup and ate soup made from ketchup. It is regarded as doubtful that the Warhols had Campbell's Soup often, since it was marketed as an upscale item, and Julia was a soupmaker who could cook from scratch. It wasn't until the late 1950s that canned soup was targeted toward the working class.In an interview for London's The Face in 1985, David Yarritu asked Warhol about flowers that Warhol's mother made from tin cans. In his response, Warhol talked about them as one of the reasons behind his first tin can paintings:David Yarritu: I heard that your mother used to make these little tin flowers and sell them to help support you in the early days.
Andy Warhol: Oh God, yes, it's true, the tin flowers were made out of those fruit cans, that's the reason why I did my first tin-can paintings ... You take a tin-can, the bigger the tin-can the better, like the family size ones that peach halves come in, and I think you cut them with scissors. It's very easy and you just make flowers out of them. My mother always had lots of cans around, including the soup cans.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 to his 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.
Warhol did not choose the cans because of any business relationship with the Campbell Soup Company. Even though the company at the time sold four out of every five cans of prepared soup in the United States, Warhol preferred that the company not be involved, "because the whole point would be lost with any kind of commercial tie-in." However, by 1965, the company knew him well enough that he was able to coax actual can labels from them to use as invitations for an exhibit. They even commissioned a canvas.In 1961, Warhol painted a single "Campbell's Soup Can" on a 20-by-15-inch (51 cm × 38 cm) canvas and gave it to his brother Paul to celebrate the birth of Paul's son Marty. Each of Paul's children was able to exhibit the painting at school. Eventually, the family decided to auction off the work, on November 13, 2002, at Christie's in New York. This work is regarded as one of the inspirations for the later, well-known set.
canvas Roy Lichtenstein Coca-Cola U.S. dollar bills tin can ketchup coal mine David Dalton stencil A&P Muriel Latow interior decorator Manhattan Christie's table still life dollar bill tie-in Andy Warhol pop art label Campbell's Soup Great Depression Campbell Soup Company anecdotal East 60s canned soup collection studio Edward Wallowitch New York comic strips Tony Scherman Robert Indiana The Face auction