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Campbell's Soup Can Shopping Bag

Artist Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)

Date1964

MediumScreenprint on paper shopping bag with handles

DimensionsOverall: 19 x 17 x 6 in. (48.3 x 43.2 x 15.2 cm)
Overall, Image: 6 1/8 x 3 1/4 in. (15.6 x 8.3 cm)

ClassificationsModern art

Credit LineJean Outland Chrysler or Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Object number0.3246

Terms

Campbell
Food
Black
Red
Yellow
Pop art

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a silk screen on a paper shopping bag of the Campbell's condensed Tomato Soup image. The bag is cream colored, and the soup can is outlined in black with red as the primary color. Yellow, red, and black lettering is on the lower half with the words Tomato Soup; the upper half is red with the negative space, cream-colored, spelling out Campbell's Condensed. A yellow circle with black decoration connects the upper and lower half of the soup can image.

Label TextAndy Warhol American (1928-1987) Campbell's Soup Can Shopping Bag, 1964 Roy Lichtenstein American (1923-1997) Turkey Shopping Bag, 1964 Screenprints on paper shopping bags with handles Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.3246-.3247, respectively The ultimate Pop artists, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein made liberal use of the "throw-away" imagery of urban mass culture-as encountered in newspapers, comics, magazines, movies, and television-to transform the American art world of the 1960s. Warhol presented his revolutionary depictions of soup cans and film stars in a flat, machine-like style that seemed to obliterate all signs of his own hand and personality. Lichtenstein found inspiration in the Pop aesthetic of comic strips, elevating their flat colors, strong graphics, and dot screens to the realm of high art. Warhol's Campbell Soup Can Shopping Bag and Lichtenstein's Turkey Shopping Bag were made in connection with a remarkable Pop exhibition, American Supermarket, mounted in 1964 at the Bianchini Gallery in New York. The exhibition was installed to look like an actual supermarket, with aisles, stocked shelves, and a checkout counter where the art on view could be purchased. (Items on display mixed actual food with food-related Pop paintings and sculptures for sale.) The shopping bags were intended as posters for the show, though many visitors, caught up in the witty concept of art as mass consumer experience, used them as actual shopping bags to carry out their art purchases. Unused bags like the two here are quite rare. More than likely, the Museum's pair were picked up from the exhibition by Walter or Jean Chrysler and carefully saved for posterity. Warhol's bag was his first editioned version of his famous Campbell Soup can image. It was issued in an edition of approximately 200 and sold, like Lichtenstein's bag, for $12 apiece.