Campbell's Soup Cans Analysis

632 Words2 Pages

Campbell's Soup Cans work suggests a mechanical uniformity that is repeated in the thousands of homes that have a similar object, a banal and common representation of the spirit of our time. Warhol continued to express his ideas about consumerism and kept using repetition in his work. He created several works that involved the same theme of Campbell’s Soup Cans throughout the years.Campbell’s Soup Cans is a work of art produced by pop artist Andy Warhol in 1962. It consists of thirty two canvases of the same size, each 20x16 inches, with a painting of one can of Campbell’s soup, each representing one of the flavors that the company offered in that time. Because of this, it is also known as 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans. The individual paintings were done with a semi mechanized process of serigraphy ("Campbell's Soup Cans").
Campbell’s Soup Cans was the first of several works created with this theme. The thirty two paintings are very similar, each one of them has a realistic image of the iconic red and white can of Campbell’s soup over a white background. The paintings have minor variations in the names that indicate the flavor of each soup. The majority of these are written with red letters; however, four varieties have additional black letters, like the “Clam Chowder” painting that says “Manhattan Style” in black letter under the name. The “Beef” flavor can also has black letters indicating that it is made “With Vegetables and Barley”, while the “Scotch Broth” has black letters that say “A Hearty Soup”, and the “Minestrone” can has “Italian-Style Vegetable Soup” also written in this color. In addition, there are two flavors that have words in parenthesis written in red letters under the type of soup. One of them is the “Beef Broth” tha...

... middle of paper ...

...Soup Cans).
Warhol also used repetition of images in his work, and Campbell’s Soup Cans is not the exception. By repeating the same object he was able to saturate the viewer, showing that if you see the same thing enough times it diminishes its meaning. A specific image can be very interesting, but many images that look alike become a bunch of the same thing. If you see many cans of soup at the same time, no matter how elaborated each one of them is, all you will see is a group of cans.
Campbell's Soup Cans work suggests a mechanical uniformity that is repeated in the thousands of homes that have a similar object, a banal and common representation of the spirit of our time. Warhol continued to express his ideas about consumerism and kept using repetition in his work. He created several works that involved the same theme of Campbell’s Soup Cans throughout the years.

Open Document