Year: 1968
Medium: screenprint
Dimensions: sheet: 89.1 x 58.6 cm (35 1/16 x 23 1/16 in.) image: 81.3 x 47.5 cm (31 7/8 x 18 7/8 in.)
Edition: No. 49 of 250
Acquired from ACC Japan(Charity Auction), 2023
This work is one of the most widely known works among Warhol’s oeuvres. The 1960s, also known as a “golden age” for the United States, was a period in which the country celebrated economic and cultural growth and saw a surge in social movements such as the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-war Movement. The “Campbell’s Soup Cans” series was a symbolic representation of the era itself, in which mass production and consumption had become staples of everyday life alongside cultural, social, and economic development. Campbell’s soup cans were also a part of Warhol’s daily life, the artist having mentioned that he consistently had them for lunch. It is well-known that when 32 works from the series were first exhibited in 1962, they became a subject of ridicule. They were overlooked as of low artistic value, seemingly just the presentation, a mass-produced design that anyone could find on any supermarket shelves by the hundred at any given moment. But Warhol had fully anticipated just such a reaction. Screen printing is a technique that allows mass production of identical copies and, in this new consumer society, it is Warhol who pioneered the use of reproduction technology to create a new type of artwork that did not depend on “uniqueness” as a quality. This work was given to Toshio Hara (Hara Museum ARC; chairman of the Foundation Arc-en-Ciel), who participated in the project to install a giant soup can at the time of Warhol’s 1981 solo exhibition at Colorado State University, as a token of friendship by renowned pop art collector John Powers. It was then donated by Mr. Hara as a tribute to the activities of the Asian Cultural Council Japan (ACC Japan) and has been inherited by the Ueshima Collection.
