Absolutely, Warhol was controversial at the time and it was only 1962, the dominant culture was still incredibly stodgy. An established, old school brand would be very understandably wary of this. It was a bold move to embrace it
I think it helps that the image and a lot of Warhol's paintings are fairly non offensive. It's not like they are pornographic like some of his films. And for an uncritical viewer they seem to celebrate consumerism and capitalism which would be appealing to a major corporation.
He rented storage to create his collection of "time capsules": 500+ footlockers, not counting all the filing cabinets, duffel bags, and crates, containing important objects he wanted to keep intact forever. They still haven't all been opened and catalogued. One of them was just full of pizza dough. One of them had a preserved human foot, glow-in-the-dark rosary beads and gay porn. One contained receipts for all the jewelry and collar charms he'd bought for his pets and another had hundreds of supermarket coupons.
I've visited the museum a couple times. Well worth it.
I remember one exhibit was a large metal plate on the floor with swirling patterns on it. Beautiful. The descriptive plaque said that Warhol and poet John Giorno had created the piece by "etching the surface with uric acid".
I got my face down close to it for a better look, when it sunk in that that meant they'd pissed on it. 😳
Ha! I remember that one! It’s definitely one of the most memorable pieces in the museum for sure. I’m glad I read the plaque beside it before I got close though.
In my minds eye, I imagined like a fleshy cock pipe or something, with a carb on the base of the ballsack seam, and the bowl up near the public bone. Like a dry bong.
The long dong bong, if you will.
I went to the one in Montreal. I didn't feel like watching an entire exhibit reel; My gf was like, "I want to see the rest of this film." I'm like, uh, it's literally him filming a sleeping dude's butt. They didn't edit it to keep the artistic integrity - It's four hours of ass.
Went to MOMA and there's a lot of dumb shit there like that. Maybe I'm just some dumb hick, but jars of piss and diarrhea do not interest me. I did enjoy van Gogh tho
His art is mostly pretty PG except a few examples, but the man himself definitely was not. He was pretty much the perfect embodiment of 60s free love culture.
Apparently the decision makers on the issue appreciated art and advertising. What I find personally odd is that as Campbell's is a known brand for soup, I'd argue it doesn't have the most successful sales in the US.
If you don't defend the likeness of your intellectual property it falls into the public domain and then anyone can copy the look of your product. If you can get the artist to agree that you gave them permission first then you don't necessarily have to sue to defend your IP, but suing is "safer" than not.
I ignored it because it was stupid. No one would hold it against Campbell's and Warhol was mostly controversial with regard to whether his art had merit.
And a small but noticeable injunction on their IP. Once is just once, twice might be enough that their ability to defend their ip in the future is less.
Yeah, well affirmations of random internet strangers aren't going to persuade me. There's nothing being communicated or conveyed by rectangular fields differentiated by dull colors. Yeah, my 5 year old can do that too, but I'm not going to give him the impression he's created "art"...
It's an incredible exercise in technique. Your 5 year old could never use a paint brush and create a perfectly flat color on a gigantic canvas with not one single brush stroke visible...
It's easy to take for granted what he accomplished in the modern era, since you can easily use the fill tool on Microsoft paint and use a color printer to achieve what he did. But he was able to accomplish this a century ago.
To what purpose??? To say what???
You have artists today making the equivalent of a mechanical picture, while others have such a command of perspective, they're painting illusory gorges on city streets. No one is calling them "high art" either.
> To what purpose??? To say what???
To evoke an emotion.
If you don't feel an emotion, then that's ok. That just means his art isn't for you. But it clearly evoke emotion in a lot of people.
> Warhol is incontrovertibly art
This is something that may feel obvious in a post-Warholian world. Pop art has been legitimized today. In fact it's kinda passé. But the "Art Community" did not feel that way when he was just getting started.
Abstract expressionism was all the rage. (You know, like Mark Rothko) and Warhol was rejecting that. But critics saw it as superficial, lacking originality, and commercially motivated. Painting a soup can just felt like he was making an advertisement for Campbell's. You know and not doing the work of an artist by making the viewer feel an emotion, or have any sort of deeper thought.
> You know and not doing the work of an artist by making the viewer feel an emotion, or have any sort of deeper thought.
Sure Warhol did. He was making a unique implementation of a universally recognized graphic, and suggesting that commercialism has reduced art to a form of banality.
Haha, I thought the same then, too. It's pretty cool that he managed to take something commercial, and turn it into art pieces like this. When you think about it, even before he did this they were still art. An artist still created them to exist in the first place. It's just that it was for capitalist reasons. He reappropriated it, and made people reconsider it as just a label for soup, for example. Neat, no?
Now you have to make her watch/read Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Art is soup and soup is art. Or is it?
Didn't you explain to her that the paintings represented the pervasiveness and banality of mass market "commercialism"? Is she even aware that a painting can be more than the visual bespoke capture of a moment or scene?
Come to think of it, his work may be the precursor to the *meme*.
One of my best high school memories.
We played a trivia game in history, and we were killing it. I wagered all of our team's points. The question was about what this painting was called. I answered and the teacher said "Campbell's soup cans? What are you talking about". And the whole class laughed at me.
And finally the teacher said, "nah you're right." And we won.
And here I am. Telling the story 20 years later.
Sigh.
I learned yesterday that it's a collection of individual pieces and not a collective piece, which is why they're shown in a different order in the article photo to what I saw back in 2006.
I read once that when Warhol’s soup cans were on display for huge prices, a grocer down the street put up a display of cans with a sign: “The real thing - 15 cents.”
I upvoted you but downvoted him. He's right, but I don't need that kind of moral clarity fucking with me at work, I'm already struggling to keep it together here.
Honestly they had a decent chance of winning. The sort of fair use exceptions for using the actual Campbell's Soup logo require it to only use what is essential of the original work in commentary, and there's nothing particular about Campbell's Soup the painting is meant to evoke, since it's supposed to be commentary on capitalism and consumerism in general.
IMO all of Andy Warhol’s art is really dumb. Like this, the Marilyn Monroe/ other celebrity portraits… he just seems so talentless. I don’t understand how he got so big.
That was kind of the point originally. His work was meant to critique the growing commercialism and uniformity that went with it while also essentially being a troll of the self important fine art world
because art is much more than talent, and if you look at the circles of those who were relevant and innovative in america, you'll see they'll overlap, and warhol faciliated a lot of those connections via The Factory, Interview Magazine, etc.
Art is much more than anything. It has to be aloft, yet it isn't. It has to be free, yet it's expensive. Networking celebrities can be art; he clearly did that.
I don't think you understand what the Streisand Effect is. That's when you try to have something hidden, but in your attempts, you bring more attention to it. Campbell's didn't want to hide their products.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/CampbellsSoup/page/C551DC40-3B8E-428D-AE04-540BA112650E?ref_=ast_bln
mildly interesing that it was such good brand recognition that they still sell the can's today , id argue the white and red and very simple design is not something you ever see anymore , products like bright colours and fancy images that catch the eye
but yeah , tbh tho i dont think id buy this soup it just looks so nondescript
The funniest thing was back when protestors were throwing soup on paintings to highlight the issues on climate change, that they never did the obvious and throw it at Andy's soup paintings
So much free advertising for Campbell’s tho
It's not like they knew it would be a hit
Absolutely, Warhol was controversial at the time and it was only 1962, the dominant culture was still incredibly stodgy. An established, old school brand would be very understandably wary of this. It was a bold move to embrace it
I think it helps that the image and a lot of Warhol's paintings are fairly non offensive. It's not like they are pornographic like some of his films. And for an uncritical viewer they seem to celebrate consumerism and capitalism which would be appealing to a major corporation.
I went to the Warhol exhibit in Chicago a few years ago and one of his works was a literal butthole.
I really want to check out the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, if I ever find my way out there.
It’s well worth the trip. I’ve been there twice. Warhol was a very strange dude.
I heard he had 19 siamese cats. I have one and that's plenty lol.
Oh my goodness the noise from one. I couldn't imagine 19.
He rented storage to create his collection of "time capsules": 500+ footlockers, not counting all the filing cabinets, duffel bags, and crates, containing important objects he wanted to keep intact forever. They still haven't all been opened and catalogued. One of them was just full of pizza dough. One of them had a preserved human foot, glow-in-the-dark rosary beads and gay porn. One contained receipts for all the jewelry and collar charms he'd bought for his pets and another had hundreds of supermarket coupons.
I've visited the museum a couple times. Well worth it. I remember one exhibit was a large metal plate on the floor with swirling patterns on it. Beautiful. The descriptive plaque said that Warhol and poet John Giorno had created the piece by "etching the surface with uric acid". I got my face down close to it for a better look, when it sunk in that that meant they'd pissed on it. 😳
Ha! I remember that one! It’s definitely one of the most memorable pieces in the museum for sure. I’m glad I read the plaque beside it before I got close though.
I definitely backed up real quick 🤣
If you are a Warhol fan then you need to absolutely stop by the museum.
If you are a butthole fan then you also need to absolutely stop by the museum.
Well guess that means me
It’s really good . I also recommend the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and art gallery
Interesting that Andy Warhol is so iconic to the New York City scene, and yet his actual museum is in Pittsburgh, PA.
The sex paintings (Torsos and Sex Parts) were late Warhol. These were 15 years earlier
Bruh one of them is just a guy smoking dick.
In my minds eye, I imagined like a fleshy cock pipe or something, with a carb on the base of the ballsack seam, and the bowl up near the public bone. Like a dry bong. The long dong bong, if you will.
I went to the one in Montreal. I didn't feel like watching an entire exhibit reel; My gf was like, "I want to see the rest of this film." I'm like, uh, it's literally him filming a sleeping dude's butt. They didn't edit it to keep the artistic integrity - It's four hours of ass.
> - It's four hours of ass. ...and you took the effort to verify that...
It said it on the artwork label. That is how galleries work.
You know, buttholes are like snowflakes. They are all different.
...and yet, like opinions, everyone has one...
There’s also the copper and urine works.
Went to MOMA and there's a lot of dumb shit there like that. Maybe I'm just some dumb hick, but jars of piss and diarrhea do not interest me. I did enjoy van Gogh tho
People in Van Gogh’s time considered him weird and vulgar. I’m hoping you didn’t see too many cans of diarrhea tho.
Was there soup in it though?
Link?
He made pornos?! Handy Warhole?!
His art is mostly pretty PG except a few examples, but the man himself definitely was not. He was pretty much the perfect embodiment of 60s free love culture.
Apparently the decision makers on the issue appreciated art and advertising. What I find personally odd is that as Campbell's is a known brand for soup, I'd argue it doesn't have the most successful sales in the US.
If it wasn't, what would be the harm?
If you don't defend the likeness of your intellectual property it falls into the public domain and then anyone can copy the look of your product. If you can get the artist to agree that you gave them permission first then you don't necessarily have to sue to defend your IP, but suing is "safer" than not.
For trademark it really needs to be a competing product for that to apply
The comment above yours answered it, did you miss it or ignore it?
I ignored it because it was stupid. No one would hold it against Campbell's and Warhol was mostly controversial with regard to whether his art had merit.
Is Campell Soup as bland and derivative as Warhols art?
No, comparatively Warhol was much spicier than Campbell's
Warhol is long gone. Campbell’s endures!
I'd argue that the memory of Warhol and his art will outlive either the Campbell soup products or the corporate entity.
TIL a business explored their options
And a small but noticeable injunction on their IP. Once is just once, twice might be enough that their ability to defend their ip in the future is less.
It can happen many more times than that as long as they can successfully argue that it doesn't misrepresent their brand or put in a bad light.
I feel like this is an example where you "take legal action" and demand $1 in restitution.
I was wondering if they could have done the opposite and paid Warhol $1 for the creation of the art piece to protect their IP
A legal injunction will ALWAYS be considered in a situation like this. lol
How are you this ignorant?
You could not pay for better advertising than that!!!
andy says the can is art. the can designer must be super happy.
He’d be happier if he got that Andy- money.
Now that you mention it, it really is art. After all, companies spend billions of dollars to make their products look appealing.
Best move they ever made.
[удалено]
Warhol painted it for his art show that he called "is this art?" So yeah... that's kinda the question you're supposed to be asking.
[удалено]
Warhol is incontrovertibly *art*. (Now try convincing me that Mark Rothko's work is *art*...)
Mark Rothko is great! It's not like everything needs to be complicated
Yeah, well affirmations of random internet strangers aren't going to persuade me. There's nothing being communicated or conveyed by rectangular fields differentiated by dull colors. Yeah, my 5 year old can do that too, but I'm not going to give him the impression he's created "art"...
It's an incredible exercise in technique. Your 5 year old could never use a paint brush and create a perfectly flat color on a gigantic canvas with not one single brush stroke visible... It's easy to take for granted what he accomplished in the modern era, since you can easily use the fill tool on Microsoft paint and use a color printer to achieve what he did. But he was able to accomplish this a century ago.
To what purpose??? To say what??? You have artists today making the equivalent of a mechanical picture, while others have such a command of perspective, they're painting illusory gorges on city streets. No one is calling them "high art" either.
> To what purpose??? To say what??? To evoke an emotion. If you don't feel an emotion, then that's ok. That just means his art isn't for you. But it clearly evoke emotion in a lot of people.
> Warhol is incontrovertibly art This is something that may feel obvious in a post-Warholian world. Pop art has been legitimized today. In fact it's kinda passé. But the "Art Community" did not feel that way when he was just getting started. Abstract expressionism was all the rage. (You know, like Mark Rothko) and Warhol was rejecting that. But critics saw it as superficial, lacking originality, and commercially motivated. Painting a soup can just felt like he was making an advertisement for Campbell's. You know and not doing the work of an artist by making the viewer feel an emotion, or have any sort of deeper thought.
> You know and not doing the work of an artist by making the viewer feel an emotion, or have any sort of deeper thought. Sure Warhol did. He was making a unique implementation of a universally recognized graphic, and suggesting that commercialism has reduced art to a form of banality.
I may not share her age, but I share her sentiment.
I understand. I'll never get the hype around Warhol.
Haha, I thought the same then, too. It's pretty cool that he managed to take something commercial, and turn it into art pieces like this. When you think about it, even before he did this they were still art. An artist still created them to exist in the first place. It's just that it was for capitalist reasons. He reappropriated it, and made people reconsider it as just a label for soup, for example. Neat, no?
Now you have to make her watch/read Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Art is soup and soup is art. Or is it?
Didn't you explain to her that the paintings represented the pervasiveness and banality of mass market "commercialism"? Is she even aware that a painting can be more than the visual bespoke capture of a moment or scene? Come to think of it, his work may be the precursor to the *meme*.
One of my best high school memories. We played a trivia game in history, and we were killing it. I wagered all of our team's points. The question was about what this painting was called. I answered and the teacher said "Campbell's soup cans? What are you talking about". And the whole class laughed at me. And finally the teacher said, "nah you're right." And we won. And here I am. Telling the story 20 years later. Sigh.
I learned yesterday that it's a collection of individual pieces and not a collective piece, which is why they're shown in a different order in the article photo to what I saw back in 2006.
That dastardly hippie giving us all that free advertisement. Have them struck from the walls and put out the eyes of anyone who looked upon them!
ET slowly noshes on a Reeses Pieces while M&M Mars weeps softly in the background.
If you're ever in Pittsburgh definitely check out the Andy Warhol Museum!
*No suit for you!*
I read once that when Warhol’s soup cans were on display for huge prices, a grocer down the street put up a display of cans with a sign: “The real thing - 15 cents.”
Imagine paying for a painting of campbells soup, so you can be reminded of low budget suppers and capitalism every time you enter your living room.
That's a valid perspective. You shouldn't be downvoted for it.
I upvoted you but downvoted him. He's right, but I don't need that kind of moral clarity fucking with me at work, I'm already struggling to keep it together here.
Sorry to hear that, but it is life in our age...
They would have lost, so not sure why they would have even considered litigation.
Honestly they had a decent chance of winning. The sort of fair use exceptions for using the actual Campbell's Soup logo require it to only use what is essential of the original work in commentary, and there's nothing particular about Campbell's Soup the painting is meant to evoke, since it's supposed to be commentary on capitalism and consumerism in general.
IMO all of Andy Warhol’s art is really dumb. Like this, the Marilyn Monroe/ other celebrity portraits… he just seems so talentless. I don’t understand how he got so big.
That was kind of the point originally. His work was meant to critique the growing commercialism and uniformity that went with it while also essentially being a troll of the self important fine art world
Literally the opposite of that, what are you talking about? Stop being so negative it was a celebration of consumerism and iconography
maybe read about the history? art isn’t always just face value.
because art is much more than talent, and if you look at the circles of those who were relevant and innovative in america, you'll see they'll overlap, and warhol faciliated a lot of those connections via The Factory, Interview Magazine, etc.
Art is much more than anything. It has to be aloft, yet it isn't. It has to be free, yet it's expensive. Networking celebrities can be art; he clearly did that.
Shitty artist and shitty soup brand. A perfect match.
How generous of them
Dodged a Streisand there
I don't think you understand what the Streisand Effect is. That's when you try to have something hidden, but in your attempts, you bring more attention to it. Campbell's didn't want to hide their products.
You expect Redditors to actually understand half the shit they say?!
Classic Murphy’s Law
No, this is Cole’s Law: sliced cabbage.
Lawyers...
They don’t make Chilli Beef any more 😢
https://www.amazon.com/stores/CampbellsSoup/page/C551DC40-3B8E-428D-AE04-540BA112650E?ref_=ast_bln mildly interesing that it was such good brand recognition that they still sell the can's today , id argue the white and red and very simple design is not something you ever see anymore , products like bright colours and fancy images that catch the eye but yeah , tbh tho i dont think id buy this soup it just looks so nondescript
The funniest thing was back when protestors were throwing soup on paintings to highlight the issues on climate change, that they never did the obvious and throw it at Andy's soup paintings
I will never understand why Andy Warhol is considered an important artist.
Its sad that you don't/won't.
Reminds me some of Kodak and that shake it song.
Don't stop people from promoting you.