A brief history of the Campbell’s Soup Can
Image: Campbell’s Soup Company
Campbell’s first created condensed soup in a tin can in 1897. Just one year later, in 1898 the iconic red and white label was designed – and little has changed of the design in the last 125 years.
Image: historicfootballposters.com
The red and white colour palette was suggested by the company’s treasurer and GM, Herberton L. Williams, who had been to a university football game and was impressed by the dynamic and easily identifiable red and white uniform of the Cornell University team.
The centre medallion remained the same since 1900, when Campbell’s modelled it after a medal they received at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.
The Campbell’s script was apparently chosen to appeal to housewives.
64 years after the red and white can was designed, Andy Warhol was asking for ideas on what he should paint next. A friend suggested he paint something that everyone knows “like the Campbell’s Soup Can”.
Image: Sotherby’s
Warhol certainly knew it well as he apparently ate it every day for lunch for 20 years.
The original series was hand-painted, but purposely mimicked a mechanical method of production. Warhol used the same can image, projected onto each canvas to create uniformity and a mass-produced effect, with only the label changing. He painted 32 cans for all 32 flavours.
Image: Sotherby’s
Art dealer Irving Blum first exhibited the collection. The set of 32 paintings was displayed on supermarket shelves at his gallery in LA.
The public didn’t get it at first but Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans series was a revolution in art, from subject matter to medium, and consumer culture.
It wasn’t long after he’d finished the series that he started to explore the photo-silkscreen process. The technique was originally meant only for commercial use, but it soon became Warhol’s signature medium as he wanted to make art for the masses – not just the few who could afford it.
Image: Halcyon Gallery
Irving Blum paid Warhol $1000 for the set at the time and about 50 years later (post Warhol’s death), sold it for over $15 million to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
However, the series was surely a turning point in Warhol’s career. After selling the entire set of hand-painted cans for $1000 in 1962, he was selling individual Soup Cans for $1500 a pop just two years later.
Warhol has said the Campbell’s Soup Cans were his favourite work.
Image: Duane Michals, Galerie Clara Maria Sels
Don’t think Campbell’s itself hasn’t come to the Pop Art party. They released their own pop art collectable cans, first in 2004 and then in collaboration with Target (US) in 2012.
Image: Campbell’s Soup Company