Andy Warhol

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In the 1980s Warhol began to accept commissions for advertising work from a range of sources. Many critics noted that he had essentially gone full-circle, returning to where he had started in the 1950s as a commercial illustrator. Yet Warhol maintained that he “was always a commercial artist”. Due to “his overwhelming identification with the can” in 1985 he was commissioned by Campbell’s Soup to create a series of paintings of their dry-mix soups. This work displays a chicken noodle package, created by combining a photographic print with hand-drawn printed con tours. When Warhol produced the original Campbell’s paintings in the 1960s they were considered outrageous – twenty years later they appear almost as ordinary as the product they represent.

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