Andy Warhol was one of the most prolific and popular artists of his time, utilizing both avant-garde and highly commercial sensibilities.
In the late 1950s, Warhol began to devote more attention to painting and, in 1961, debuted the concept of “pop art,” that is, paintings focused on mass-produced commercial products. In 1962, he exhibited the now iconic paintings of Campbell’s soup cans. These small canvases of everyday consumer products caused quite a stir in the art world, and brought Warhol and pop art into the spotlight of art connoisseurs for the first time. Warhol’s other famous pop paintings depicted Coca-Cola bottles, vacuum cleaners and hamburgers.
In this article we are going to show you his 10 most recognizable and popular works of art
1- Campbell’s Soup Cans
Campbell’s Soup Cans (sometimes referred to as 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans) is an artwork made between November 1961 and March or April 1962.
It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring 51 cm high and 41 cm wide, each consisting of a painting of a Campbell’s soup can, one of each of the varieties of canned soup offered by the company at the time.
Warhol was a commercial illustrator before turning to painting. The Campbell’s soup cans were presented on July 9, 1962 in Warhol’s first solo gallery exhibition, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, California, curated by Irving Blum. The exhibition marked the debut of pop art on the West Coast
The subject matter initially caused offense, in part because of its affront to the technique and philosophy of the earlier art movement, Abstract Expressionism. Warhol’s motives as an artist were questioned. Warhol’s association with the subject matter caused his name to become synonymous with Campbell’s soup can paintings.
Warhol produced a wide variety of artworks depicting Campbell’s soup cans during three distinct phases of his career, and produced other works using a variety of images from the world of commerce and media
Today, the subject of Campbell’s soup cans is generally used in reference to the original set of paintings, as well as Warhol’s later drawings and paintings depicting Campbell’s soup cans. Due to the popularity of the entire series of similarly themed works, Warhol’s reputation grew to the point where he became not only the best-known American pop art artist, but also the most sought-after living American artist.
2- Marilyn Diptych
Marilyn’s Diptych (1962) is a silkscreen painting depicting Marilyn and her mother Marilyn Monroe.
The monumental work is one of the artist’s best-known works about the movie star.
The painting consists of 50 images. Each image of the actress is taken from the only publicity photograph of the film Niagara (1953). The underlying publicity photograph that Warhol used as the basis for his numerous paintings and prints of Marilyn, and the Marilyn Diptych, was owned and distributed by his film studio. The Marilyn Diptych was completed a few weeks after Marilyn Monroe’s death in August 1962.
Silkscreen printing was the technique used to create this painting. The twenty-five images on the left are painted in color, the right side is in black and white.
The Marilyn Diptych is in the collection of the Tate Gallery.
3- Dollar Symbol
That Warhol loved money was no surprise to anyone, he himself said that he loved money and also liked to paint it in his works.
In the 1960s he depicted dollar bills in one of his works and in 1981 he returned to a series of works around the dollar sign
The technique used in this painting is silkscreen on canvas, a technique often used by Warhol, but it is based on a marker drawing made by Warhol himself
4- Mao
Warhol’s idea to create the Mao portraits was inspired and announced by his former art dealer and collaborator Bruno Bischofberger. Bruno suggested that Andy return to the medium of painting with portraits of the most public and important figures of the 20th century
At the time, Mao had already become the most famous man in the world. His images were available throughout China, and since most of them resembled a silkscreen, Warhol was immediately fascinated by the idea of reproducing them
Since Mao was a public figure whose face and appearance were recognized and respected by the public as a protagonist of public interest and since his cold war movement had also become a subject of public interest, Mao easily became the subject of Andy’s work.
Andy Warhol’s interpretation of Mao resulted in a portfolio containing ten brightly coloredportraits that illustrated Warhol’s deep fascination with the clash of images between Communist publicity stunts and American kitsch
By creating a glamorous version of Mao, Warhol was able to transform an intimidating and mysterious image of a powerful political figure into a glamorous pop icon of the 1970s, reminiscent of Warhol’s earlier works.
5- Cow Wallpaper
Andy Warhol’s“Cow Wallpaper” wallpaper was the first in a series of wallpaper designs he created from the 1960s through the 1980s.
According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow image came from art dealer Ivan Karp:
“On another occasion he said to me, “Why don’t you paint some cows? They are so wonderfully pastoral and such an enduring image in the history of art.” (Ivan talked like this.) I don’t know to what extent he expected me to make them “pastoral,” but when he saw the huge cow heads – deep pink on a bright yellow background – that he was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with, “They’re super pastoral! They’re ridiculous! They’re super pastoral and vulgar.” He loved those cows and for my next exhibition we papered all the gallery walls with them.
The exhibition Warhol refers to is the one he did in April 1966 at Leo Castelli Gallery, which consisted solely of the cow wallpaper in one room, and a second room with Warhol’s helium-filled silver Clouds.
6- Coca Cola 3
Coca-Cola 3 is a painting by Andy Warhol. He completed the painting in 1962 as part of a larger series of Coca-Cola paintings, which also included Green Coke Bottles and Coca-Cola . This painting and others in the series are considered founding paintings of the Pop Art movement.
The painting is a 6-foot-tall black and white painting of a vintage Coca-Cola bottle.
Campbell’s soup cans share the idea of the commercial culture of Warhol’s Coca-Cola series. Warhol began working with Coke bottles in the early 1950s, when he used images of Coke bottles from magazines to create collages.
Warhol had a unique perspective and interest in Coke bottles. Warhol claimed that“a Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke,” alluding to the idea of economic and political equality
Some of his most famous works focus on mass-produced items, such as soup cans and Coke bottles, products that were still of the same quality no matter what you paid for them. Warhol was attracted to the idea that, whoever you are, you can’t buy a better Coke or can of soup than the person next door. In short, Warhol admired the uniformity of objects like soup cans and coke bottles.
Warhol’s first exhibition at Stable featured three well-known serial works of one hundred soup cans, one hundred dollar bills and one hundred coke bottles. Between 1960 and 1960 Warhol created two versions of Coca-Cola (3). They were very similar to each other, however, one featured a large dark spot in the upper right corner of the canvas. In his career, Warhol created 15 works associated with Coca-Cola.
7- Gun
Death emerged as a distinctive theme in Warhol’s work in the 1960s, with his portraits of Marilyn Monroe and the “Death and Disaster” series. His fear of dying was heightened in 1968, when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously wounded him
The pistol depicted here is similar to the small-barreled .22 pistol she used. At the same time that he was painting guns, Warhol was also making a series of photographs of knives. In fact, the first idea was to exhibit them together, along with some dollar sign paintings, at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in January 1982.
8- Green Coca-Cola Bottles
Green Coca-Cola Bottles is a 1962 painting by Andy Warhol that depicts one hundred and twelve nearly identical Coca-Cola bottles.
Andy Warhol produced at least four notable Coca-Cola paintings in the 1960s, Green Coca-Cola Bottles being one of them. As part of the same series, Warhol created Coca-Cola (3), among others.
This period is often referred to as Warhol’s earliest work.
Apparently, in his early days as an artist, Warhol experimented with the Coca-Cola bottle beginning in the 1950s. Warhol’s earliest known work was an ink drawing in gouache of a Coca-Cola bottle with a pair of legs. In the early 1960s, before the creation of Campbell’s soup cans, he used to tear images of Coke bottles out of magazines to use in collages.
This inspiration and early use of the Coke bottle led him to create Green Coca-Cola Bottles in 1962.
Green Coca-Cola Bottles took an ordinary item and turned it into a work of art. Warhol’s work used a silkscreen technique that mechanized some aspects of the painting, but featured individualized “unevenness” in the painting
The painting engenders an optimistic message for the American public, described in Warhol’s own words
“The great thing about this country is that America started the tradition that the richest consumers buy essentially the same thing as the poorest consumers…you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke and, think about it, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke….”.
Do you know other works by Andy Warhol? Leave us a comment
If you like Andy Warhol and you think there is one of his works that should be on this list, leave us a comment and tell us which Warhol’s work we should include
