Designer of the Month: Andy Warhol

Week 2: Pop

The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second - comics, picnic tables, Coke bottles - all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.[1]

Andy Warhol, Brillo Soap Pads Box, 1964. Silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood, 17 x 17 x 14 in. (43.2 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm.). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.  

In 1960, Andy Warhol was at the forefront of Pop art, a movement that would forever change the face of the New York art scene. His approach to art making was novel in that no one was quite sure, at first what, what to think of it, with it described as variously as irreverent, commercial, essential nihilist, aggressively passive, advocating visual emptiness, and opportunistic.[2] Nevertheless, Warhol became one of the central figures in a movement that seemed to completely blindside the contemporary art world. Prior to Pop, art was seen as a strictly intellectual pursuit for the wealthy. Pop changed all of that with art that appealed to the American, post-war, consumer-driven sensibility. But what was so compelling about Warhol's work was not that he championed the Pop movement, but rather that his output was so prodigious. In addition to working in the more traditionally artistic modes of painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, screenprinting, and printmaking, Warhol also developed and realized projects in publishing, music, installation, recording, film, and television, all with resoundingly successful results.[3]

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964. Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, 80 7/8 x 81 in. (205.4 x 205.7 cm.). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

One of the phenomenal things about Pop painters is that they were already painting alike when they met. My friend Henry Geldzahler, curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum before he was appointed official culture czar of New York, once described the beginnings of Pop this way: 'It was like a science fiction movie - you Pop artists in different parts of the city, unknown to each other, rising up out of the muck and staggering forward with your paintings in front of you.'[4]

At the same time that Warhol was creating art, he was also working hard to commoditize it. "For what is the status of a work of art that explores the logic of the commodity while itself remaining a commodity?," art historian Rex Butler asks, asserting that "The work would appear not entirely able to distinguish itself from what it is about."[5] This is particularly true for a piece such as Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), one of his most well-known works from the early years of Pop. When Warhol first exhibited the series of thirty-two canvases - one for every variety of soup then sold by Campbell's - each one was both hung on the wall, like a painting, and stood on a shelf, like groceries in a store.[6]

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Partial gift of Irving Blum. Additional funding provided by Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, gift of Nina and Gordon Bunshaft in honor of Henry Moore, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, Philip Johnson Fund, Frances R. Keech Bequest, gift of Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, and Florence B. Wesley Bequest (all by exchange). © 2012 Andy Warhol Foundation / ARS, NY / TM Licensed by Campbell's Soup Co. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The art world sure was different in those days. I tried to imagine myself in a bar striding over to, say, Roy Lichtenstein and asking him to 'step outside' because I'd heard he'd insulted my soup cans. I mean, how corny. I was glad those slug-it-out routines had been retired - they weren't my style, let alone my capability.[7]

Warhol was fascinated by advertising, actively seeking to blur the boundaries between fine art, commercialism and commodification. By representing such a universally recognizable image on the canvas - thirty-two of them, no less, in the case of his Campbell's cans - Warhol presents his art as a work of both boldness and banality, more like an advertisement than anything that anyone at the time would have associated with fine art - although that was soon to change. As described by the Museum of Modern Art, "Visual repetition of this kind had long been used by advertisers to drum product names into the public consciousness; here, though, it implies not energetic competition but a complacent abundance. Outside an art gallery, the Campbell's label, which had not changed in over fifty years, was not an attention-grabber but a banality."[8] It was a daring decision, but one that Warhol would choose to make over and over again throughout his career as he continually refined and redefined his role as an artist, celebrity and entrepreneur.


[1] Andy Warhol, "1960-1963," POPism: The Warhol '60s, ed. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 3.

[2] Suhanya Raffel, "Pop As Attitude, " from Andy Warhol, published in conjunction with the Queensland Art Gallery and The Andy Warhol Museum, (Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Art Gallery, 2007), 23.

[3] Ibid., 24.

[4] Andy Warhol, "1960-1963," POPism: The Warhol '60s, ed. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 3.

[5] Rex Butler,"Two Warhols, from Andy Warhol, published in conjunction with the Queensland Art Gallery and The Andy Warhol Museum, (Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Art Gallery, 2007), 63.

[6] The Museum of Modern Art online, "The Collection," excerpt from MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 260, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79809 (accessed August 8, 2012).

[7] Andy Warhol, "1960-1963," POPism: The Warhol '60s, ed. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 15.

[9] The Museum of Modern Art online, "The Collection," excerpt from MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 260, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79809 (accessed August 8, 2012).