Focus on Campbell's Soup Cans and explain the Interpretation.
Warhol had a positive view of ordinary culture and felt that the abstract expressionists had taken great pains to ignore the splendor of modernity. The Campbell's Soup Can series, along with his other series, provided him with a chance to express his positive view of modern culture. However, his deadpan manner endeavored to be devoid of emotional and social commentary. The work was intended to be without personality or individual expression. Warhol's view is encapsulated in the Time magazine description of the 'Slice of Cake School', that "... a group of painters have come to the common conclusion that the most banal and even vulgar trappings of modern civilization can, when transposed to canvas, become Art."Warhol's pop-art work differed from serial works by artists such as Monet, who used series to represent discriminating perception and show that a painter could recreate shifts in time, light, season, and weather with hand and eye. Warhol is now understood to represent the modern era of commercialization and indiscriminate "sameness". When Warhol eventually showed variation, it was not "realistic". His later variations in color were almost a mockery of discriminating perception. His adoption of the pseudo-industrial silkscreen process spoke against the use of a series to demonstrate subtlety. Warhol sought to reject invention and nuance by creating the appearance that his work had been printed,  and he systematically recreated imperfections. His series work helped him escape Lichtenstein's lengthening shadow. Although his soup cans were not as shocking and vulgar as some of his other early pop art, they still offended the art world's sensibilities that had developed so as to partake in the artistic expression of intimate emotions.Contrasting against Caravaggio's sensual baskets of fruit, Chardin's plush peaches, or Cézanne's vibrant arrangements of apples, the mundane Campbell's Soup Cans gave the art world a chill. Furthermore, the idea of isolating eminently recognizable pop culture items was ridiculous enough to the art world that both the merits and ethics of the work were perfectly reasonably debatable topics, even for those who had not seen the piece. Warhol's pop art can be seen in relation to Minimal art, in the sense that it attempts to portray objects in their most simple, immediately recognizable form. Pop art eliminates overtones and undertones that would otherwise be associated with representations.Warhol clearly changed the concept of art appreciation. Instead of harmonious three-dimensional arrangements of objects, he chose mechanical derivatives of commercial illustration, with an emphasis on the packaging. His variations of multiple soup cans, for example, made the process of repetition an appreciated technique: "If you take a Campbell's Soup can and repeat it fifty times, you are not interested in the retinal image. According to Marcel Duchamp, what interests you is the concept that wants to put fifty Campbell's Soup cans on a canvas." The regimented, multiple-can depictions almost become an abstraction whose details are less important than the panorama. In a sense, the representation was more important than that which was represented. Warhol's interest in machinelike creation, during his early pop-art days, was misunderstood by those in the art world, whose value system was threatened by mechanization.In Europe, audiences had a very different take on Warhol's work. Many perceived it as a subversive and Marxist satire on American capitalism. If not subversive, it was at least considered a Marxist critique of pop culture. Given Warhol's apolitical outlook in general, this is not likely the intended message. According to writer David Bourdon, Warhol's pop art may have been nothing more than an attempt to attract attention to his work. Gopnik describes Warhol's presentation as objective and unblinking with no promotional intent.
canvas Marcel Duchamp modernity Chardin Minimal art table Cézanne pop art objects Campbell's Soup deadpan perception abstract expressionist Monet Pop art Caravaggio silkscreen Marxist Time