Sold for: $43,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellman, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962 - 1987, Fourth Edition, 2003, reproduced page 74, catalogue #II.57
MoMALearning, Campbell's Soup Cans, https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/#_blank, accessed March 30, 2020
Phaidon, The fascinating story behind Andy Warhol's soup cans, https://ca.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2013/february/22/the-fascinating-story-behind-andy-warhols-soup-cans/, accessed March 30, 2020

By his own admission, Andy Warhol was a person of habit. He had the same lunch every day - Campbell’s soup. It is easy to imagine his kitchen cabinet much like a grocery shelf containing all the different varieties of soup, each with an almost identical label. Would he buy one of each or just one flavour in bulk?

His art process slowly went through a transformation where the evidence of his hand was gradually removed, and replaced by print machines. In fact, he wanted to be a machine. His first Campbell’s Soup work was a series of 32 canvases, each hand-painted. He traced each can’s projection onto the canvas and hand-stamped each one’s bottom edge. When this series was exhibited for the first time at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, the individual works were placed on three inch wide shelves, as if they were appearing in the aisle of a grocery store. Previously, where there were imperfections and dripping paint, for this work he attempted a machine-like precision. This series became iconic and synonymous with his name. Soon after completing the 1962 series, Warhol began producing silkscreens, a printmaking technique which uses a photographic stencilling process to transfer an image onto a substrate. In 1968 he created a series of ten prints of Campbell’s soup images and in 1969 he created another ten - entitled Campbell’s Soup Cans II. The second series presented some of the more unusual flavours of soups.

Warhol was fascinated with consumer culture, mass production and the repetitive aspect of advertisements. He wanted to make work for the masses, using imagery of celebrities and everyday commodities. The silkscreen technique, which was itself developed for commercial use and wide circulation, gave him the opportunity to create such work. Each print presents the can in the same position, virtually identical colouring and scale. Campbell's Soup II, New England Clam Chowder (F.&S. II.57) is an edition of 250. The image is centered, clean and crisp, with no marks or splatters, no trace of Warhol’s hand. The can seems to almost glow - it is exactly like a can, yet in this context, it seems to be more - something that you desire, that you want to buy, an ideal consumer product and the perfect artwork. Not surprisingly, this silkscreen, closely resembling an advertisement, achieves Warhol’s ultimate goal: to question what a work of art is.

The catalogue raisonné states that this print was published in an edition of 250 signed in ball-point pen and numbered with a rubber stamp on verso by Factory Additions, New York and printed by Salvatore Silkscreens Co., Inc., New York. There are also 26 AP signed and lettered A - Z in ball-point pen on verso.

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