Campbell Soup Company

Campbell Soup Company appears in Andy Warhol’s diary as a corporate client whose commissioned soup-box painting moved from a disputed first attempt to approval and public promotion. The episode records not only the negotiation over what the painting should show, but also Warhol’s unease about the fee and the way the company used his image at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Commission and Its First Rejection

Campbell Soup Company wanted a painting of its new box. Warhol had tried to make the commission more than a straightforward depiction of the packaging, but the company disliked the result and required him to do it again. The disagreement turned on the brief itself: the company wanted the box as specified, while Warhol had attempted to add something to it.

The commission also involved a difficult conversation about payment. After Warhol called Sandy Gallin’s office about the portraits, Gallin’s secretary relayed that the pictures did not look like his art and asked for the money back. Warhol agreed to return it, while wishing the client had asked him to try again instead. He later described the process as a lesson in managing commissions: he would ask clients to review the work at each stage rather than hurry through a job and learn only at the end that they were dissatisfied.

A Revised Design Wins Approval

On September 19, 1985, Rupert Smith proposed stretching canvas over a box for the Campbell Soup Company project. Five days later, Warhol recorded that the company loved the pink painting of the soup box. The contrast with the first rejection gives the approval its significance: the commission succeeded when the result met the client’s expectations, rather than when Warhol’s initial attempt departed from them.

Promotion at the Whitney

On October 3, Warhol went to the Whitney Museum of American Art to promote the painting. Looking back on the work and publicity involved, he thought he should have charged Campbell Soup Company $250,000, given its size, instead of accepting only the cost of a portrait. Standing beside a Campbell soup image again, twenty years after his earlier association with the subject, struck him as almost cartoonishly circular.

The event also rearranged the usual roles in Warhol’s experience of publicity. Rita Moreno, a spokesperson for Campbell Soup Company, said she had been asked by Warhol to be in the photograph, but the company wanted a photograph of him alone. Warhol noted that this was a different category from his experience with portraits of prominent baseball players, when the subject would be photographed and he would be pushed aside.

The Company as Client and Promoter

Across the commission and the Whitney appearance, Campbell Soup Company shaped both the image it wanted and the terms on which the image entered public view. Its initial dissatisfaction prompted a new version; its later approval turned the pink painting into a promotional object. Warhol’s account holds that success alongside dissatisfaction: the work was accepted and he was singled out for publicity, yet he believed the company’s scale warranted a far larger fee.