15 minutes…

A blogger in the city of Madison, capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin (population 236,9010), brought this to my attention - so I can’t claim to be unique in posting about this ‘happening’. In fact bloggers everywhere are probably posting about it. I don’t think Andy Warhol would have minded my un-uniqueness though, after all he ripped-off everyone, everything and variant repetition was what he made his money from.

Warhol was and is such a pop idol – Brillo, Monroe, Elvis, the electric chair, Velvet Underground, soup cans. Icons, that’s what he was all about - icons and celebrity and he became both. Personally he leaves me cold. Oh, I get where he’s coming from, the tongue in cheek making art from the ordinary, art being art because Warhol says so, everything being unique even though the next one is exactly or almost exactly the same. But I think Duchamp did it first, better, with more honesty and humour and just look where it has taken us… everything is art. Not that I give a splash in a ceramic urinal about that.

Anyway, the world’s biggest purveyor of soup, Campbell’s, recently released special-edition cans of its famous condensed tomato soup bearing labels giving a huge wink to Warhol’s soup can paintings. Yes, actual cans of Andy Warhol soup. Ironic really, The Campbell Soup Co.’s recognition of the Warhol images is a big change from its initial reaction – back then the company considered taking legal action but decided to see how the paintings went down with the public first. Of course, the art world and the public (at least some of them, the more ‘out there’ ones) embraced the cleverness of it all - just like they were supposed to do. Then in 1964, Campbell commissioned Warhol to do a painting of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup as a gift for its retiring board chairman, Oliver G. Willits. Warhol (as in holes) was paid $2,000 for the work.

We can’t get these cans in the UK and we don’t have Target stores - where they are being sold for just 75 cents a can. Originally Warhol sold his soup can prints for $100 (Dennis Hopper was one of the first to purchase one). In May 2006 his ‘Pepper Pot soup with torn label’ sold for $11.8 million.

I went to the Warhol exhibition in Edinburgh a few years ago and saw the soup can ‘originals’, but like I said, Warhol leaves me cold. You see I know that it isn’t the soup cans that fascinates, it’s the question behind them – “Just why would anyone want to do this in the first place?”

Warhol on Campbell’s soup cans, what a reversal and what a brilliant idea, I expect they were sold out before they'd had their 15 minutes. I wonder, if I could buy the special edition Campbell soup cans would I open and eat them, or hang them from my living room wall?