Pope of Pop Art, who turned commodities into art
The leading figure of Pop Art. He took the most ordinary consumer goods — Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles — and the most dazzling celebrity faces — Marilyn Monroe, Elvis — and mass-reproduced them by silkscreen into brilliant works. He erased the line between "high art" and commercial imagery, declaring that "everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." His studio, "the Factory," was itself a machine endlessly producing stars and images.
In 1962 Warhol exhibited thirty-two Campbell’s soup cans — each painting a single flavor, lined up neat as a supermarket shelf. Viewers were stunned: how did this cheapest, most industrial of commercial images earn a place in a museum? But that was exactly Warhol’s manifesto: in an age surrounded by advertising and consumption, the commodity is the icon of our time.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.