Campbell's Soup Cans
Pop art

In 1960, Warhol began producing his first canvases, which he based on comic strip subjects. Although Warhol had produced silkscreens of comic strips and other pop art subjects, he supposedly confined himself at the time to soup cans as a subject in order to avoid competing with the more finished style of comics done by Roy Lichtenstein. Warhol once said, "I've got to do something that really will have a lot of impacts that will be different enough from Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist, that will be very personal, that won't look like I'm doing exactly what they're doing."

In 1961, Warhol was wavering between the action painting of abstract expressionisms, with its use of drips and brushstrokes, and the more direct style of pop art. Most of his early soup-can work tended toward the latter. He experimented with hand painting and spray painting through a stencil cutout, as well as rubber stamping images. In January 1962, he began stamping with engraved art gum erasers onto canvas and paper, using acrylic paint.

Some sources mistakenly claim that the original set of 32 Campbell's Soup cans was a set of silkscreen works. There is so much confusion on what the Campbell's Soup cans are that when the Art Gallery of Ontario acquired a Campbell's Soup I set, The Globe and Mail described it as "the entire, iconic series". The Museum of Modern Art, which now owns the 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, as well as complete sets of Campbell's Soup I and Campbell's Soup Cans II, describes the first as a set of paintings ("Acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas, 32 panels") and the latter two as sets of screenprints ("Portfolio of ten screenprints"). The original 32 soup-can works were produced by tracing projections of soup cans onto canvas, followed by hand brushstrokes. The process relied on stamps and stencils, which were Warhol's intermediate step from painterly techniques to silkscreening. They are regarded as one "of the works on which his fame as an artist rests", as well as a necessary part of "any true retrospective exhibition of his work".

Warhol was able to get exposure for his comic strip (and newspaper ad) paintings by using them as a backdrop for his Bonwit Teller window design in April 1961. Leo Castelli visited Warhol's gallery in 1961 and said that the work he saw there was too similar to Lichtenstein's, although Warhol's and Lichtenstein's comic artwork differed in subject matter and techniques (e.g., Warhol's comic-strip figures were humorous pop-culture caricatures, such as of Popeye, while Lichtenstein's were generally of stereotypical hero and heroines and were inspired by comic strips devoted to adventure and romance). Castelli chose not to represent both artists at that time. (He would, in November 1964, be exhibiting Warhol, his Flower Paintings, and then Warhol again in 1966.) In February 1962, Lichtenstein displayed at a sold-out exhibition of cartoon pictures at Castelli's eponymous Leo Castelli Gallery, ending the possibility of Warhol exhibiting his own cartoon paintings. Lichtenstein's 1962 show was quickly followed by Wayne Thiebaud 's April 17, 1962, one-man show at the Allan Stone Gallery, featuring all-American foods, which irritated Warhol, who felt it jeopardized his own food-related works. Warhol was considering returning to the Bodley gallery, but Bodley's director did not like his pop artworks. In 1961, Warhol was offered a three-man show, by Allan Stone at his 18 East 82nd Street Gallery, with Rosenquist and Robert Indiana; but all three were insulted by this proposition.

By March 1962, art critic David Bourdon had seen some of Warhol's soup cans illustrated in a newsletter visited his social space/studio. Irving Blum was the first dealer to show Warhol's soup can paintings. In December 1961, he happened to be visiting Warhol at his 1342 Lexington Avenue apartment/art studio and then, in May 1962, at a time when Warhol was being featured in a May 11, 1962, Time magazine article "The Slice-of-Cake School", along with Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, and Thiebaud. That article included an April 1962 photo of Warhol eating Campbell's Soup straight out of an upside down can while standing next to a human-sized canvas of a Campbell's Soup Can painting. Warhol, who was interviewed on April 24, was the only artist whose photograph actually appeared in the article, which is indicative of his knack for manipulating the mass media. He was also a bit of a surprise choice over Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann, and George Segal, who had already presented pop art shows that had been reviewed. Blum saw dozens of Campbell's Soup can variations, including a grid of One-Hundred Soup Cans that day. By the time of Blum's May 1962 visit, Warhol was working on his 16th individual realistic soup can portrait of the 32-can series; and the May Time article noted that he was "currently occupied with a series of 'portraits' of Camplell's soup cans in living colour", with Warhol quoted as saying, "I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about...I'm working on soup...I just do it because I like it." Three of the Campbell's Soup Can paintings were laid out on Warhol's parquet floor. Blum, who knew that some of Warhol's larger Campbell's Soup can works were already being marketed by New York City art dealers, was shocked that Warhol had no gallery arrangement and offered him a July show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. This would be Warhol's first one-man show of his pop art. Warhol was assured by Blum that the newly founded Artforum magazine, which had an office above the gallery, would cover the show. Not only was the show Warhol's first solo gallery exhibit, but it was considered to be the West Coast premiere of pop art. Blum also used the lure of Hollywood celebrity to entice Warhol to exhibit out west, despite Warhol's interest in the New York fine arts scene. Warhol's fans Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward (Hopper's wife at the time) held a welcoming party for the event to help Warhol meet West Coast artists and celebrities. A letter from Blum to Warhol dated June 9, 1962, set the exhibition opening for July 9.
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