Campbell’s Soup Cans

Campbell’s Soup Cans are more than a recurring image in these diary entries: they become a measure of the distance between an artist’s once-fresh inventions and the public’s persistent appetite for his signature imagery. The cans remain adaptable and recognizable, but their omnipresence leaves Andy Warhol wondering whether he can make anything clever again.

Returning to an old image

Looking through a book of his earlier paintings, Warhol remembers the clever things he used to do but cannot think of a new one. He considers doing Soup Cans again, a tentative return to an image already associated with his past work. The idea is followed by a more particular possibility: Chris Makos offers to bring him a can of Campbell’s Won Ton soup, distinguished by its oriental lettering. The proposed can hints at a change within the familiar format, even as Warhol’s uncertainty makes clear that simply returning to it does not guarantee a new direction.

The cans as a public spectacle

In Colorado, the image has escaped the scale of a printed picture. Outside the museum, three hand-painted Campbell’s Tomato Soup Cans stand about thirty feet high, resembling large sculptures by Oldenburg; Warhol guesses that one of the students made them. Inside the motel, cans filled with flowers appear in every room. The motif is not confined to the exhibition: it surrounds the visiting artist before he even reaches the show.

The exhibition itself is small, occupying one room and consisting entirely of prints. Yet the cans extend its presence into the museum forecourt, the motel, and the public visit. The next day, Warhol poses with a cow in front of the Soup Cans before doing four television appearances. The image thus becomes a ready-made backdrop for publicity as well as an artwork motif: it frames a staged encounter with an agricultural animal and the questions of television interviewers.

Recognition and repetition

Warhol finds the Colorado show cute, but the abundance of cans has exhausted him. The contrast is sharp: what remains legible and appealing to viewers has become difficult for its maker to bear. At the opening, a crowd pushes and shoves, and he spends his time signing. The cans help make the artist instantly recognizable, while the public attention surrounding them turns his appearance into a repeated performance.

That tension returns when Warhol grows nervous about another show built around old Pop images. The Rolling Stones have received glowing reviews for repeating an earlier album, but their success does not reassure him; instead, it sharpens his worry that his own repetition may be a liability. Campbell’s Soup Cans therefore carry two opposed meanings in these entries: they are durable enough to be monumentalized and reproduced throughout a public event, yet familiar enough to make their creator fear that he has run out of new ideas.