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Lot # 143: Andy Warhol Campbell's Tomato Soup Bag

Category: Fine Art

Starting Bid: $500.00

Bids: 1 (Bid History)

Time Left: Auction closed

Lot / Auction Closed




This lot is closed. Bidding is not allowed.

Item was in Auction "June 2005",
which ran from 5/30/2005 12:00 AM to
6/26/2005 9:00 PM



Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans paintings may all seem alike, yet to the trained Warholian eye they have many subtle variations that make each one discrete (Warhol's very point being that faceless regimintation cannot obscure the nuances of individuality). Ironically, then, by the mid-'60s Warhol had become "branded" by the brand he had used so metaphorically as a protest against "sameness." It was as if the Pop Art master had become a pop star who had to sing the same song over and over on stage. Even so, Warhol always kept the theme fresh, such as by transmuting the image of a Campbell's Soup can onto other venues than canvas. The most logical venue may have been on a shopping bag, for a series of limited edition bags created for and given out at a Warhol exhibition held at the Andy Warhol Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from Oct. 1 to Nov. 6, 1966. The bag has a neon-bright image of a Tomato soup can screened in orange and red with purple accents and a blue outline. (Warholian scholars know that Andy actually created a work called "Soup Can Bag" in 1964.) Few of these precious bags are around today, fewer in acceptable condition. Bag is 17 x 21" with some mild wrinkling, bunching and folding in the white areas surrounding the soup can. The image itself is technically EX with some smudging of the "P" in "Soup" and some nearly invisible cracks in other spots but presents much nicer. A Warhol treat, definitely not for Halloween usage.

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