In 1962, when he painted Campbell’s Soup Cans, Andy Warhol was not yet a household name, and Pop art, the movement with which he is now identified, was still on the cusp of becoming a phenomenon. With the Soup Cans – thirty-two nearly identical canvases, each one featuring a different variety of Campbell’s soup – Warhol hit upon a combination of subject, style, and strategy that he would carry forward as his trademark. In this volume of the MoMA One on One series, curator Starr Figura examines the ways in which the Soup Cans mark a pivotal moment in the artist’s career, and Warhol’s profound impact on art-making.
