Campbell's Soup Cans

Thirty-two near-identical grocery soup cans, one per variety on the shelf, hand-painted to look machine-made and first propped on a ledge like a supermarket aisle, that put the brand itself on the wall where a Pollock used to hang.

1. 1
   Thirty-two near-identical cans in a grid

   The whole set at once, the even rank of canvases, before any single one

   The entire grid registers first, because the repetition is the subject, not any single can. The same can, the same scale, the same straight-on view, the same red-and-white label, set down thirty-two times. There is no climax and no “best” one; the rhythm of sameness across the wall is the point. Warhol called the picture out of the supermarket and then refused to rank it.
2. 2
   The only thing that changes is the name

   The lower band of each label, the script word naming the variety: Tomato, Beef, Onion, Pepper Pot

   Can to can, the sole variable is the variety name printed on the label’s lower band. There are thirty-two because that was the number of Campbell’s condensed-soup varieties the company then sold, so the product line, not the painter, decides what appears. Tomato, the oldest variety, is usually hung first.
3. 3
   The red-and-white label

   Each can, the flat split of the packaging: red lower half, white upper half

   The flat division (red bottom, white top, the script “Campbell’s” wordmark across the white, a gold medallion at the center) is the real Campbell’s packaging, copied deadpan. There is no painterly interpretation of it, no mood laid over it. The image is the label, reproduced as faithfully as an ad would reproduce it.
4. 4
   The gold fleur-de-lis band

   The ring of small gold ornaments running around each can near its base

   The ring of tiny gold fleur-de-lis (the stylized lily ornament) circles each can near its base. These were not painted freehand and they were not printed: Warhol pressed them on with a rubber hand stamp. It is the quiet tell that the “mechanical” look of the whole thing is, in fact, handwork.
5. 5
   Slight hand-painted irregularities

   Two or three cans compared closely, the lettering, the outline, the gold band, can to can

   Set two cans side by side and the small inconsistencies surface: a letter slightly off, an outline not quite matched, the gold band a hair different. These 1962 cans are individually hand-painted, traced from a projected image rather than silkscreened (the famous silkscreen process came slightly later). The human hand keeps peeking through the machine surface.
6. 6
   The grocery-shelf grid

   The way the set hangs, an even two-row rank, recalling the original Ferus ledge

   The even rank reads like a stretch of supermarket shelving, which is no accident: at the Ferus Gallery in 1962 the canvases were propped in a single row on a narrow ledge, like cans for sale on a grocery aisle. The retail display is imported bodily into the gallery. (The exact order is not fixed by Warhol; MoMA arranges the set by the date each soup variety reached the market.)