Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
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Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol

Oyster Stew

35 x 23 inches
Andy Warhol

Campbell's Soup II:
Oyster Stew
(F&S II 60), 1969

color screenprint on smooth wove paper
35 x 23 inches
edition of 250, this impression aside from regular numbered edition
Hand signed "Andy Warhol" in black ball-point pen on verso
With the 'Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc.’ ink stamp and Unique ID Number in pencil on verso
printed by Salvatore Silkscreen Co., Inc.
published by Factory Additions, New York
Unframed, museum quality condition, never hinged, framed or matted

Provenance
David Whitney, New York
Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York

Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne: 1962-1987, Fourth Edition, D.A.P., New York, 2003, Catalogue Reference F&S II. 60, another impression reproduced page 75, in color.

Price on Request

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Oyster Stew) (F&S II 60), 1969 color screenprint is a captivating example of one of the most iconic and recognizable Pop symbols of 20th Century American art. Boasting museum quality condition, the outstanding Andy Warhol Oyster Stew (F&S II 60),1969 impression offered for sale by Joseph K. Levene Fine Art, Ltd. was stored in archival materials for over 50 years and has never been framed, hinged or matted. Accordingly the colors are particularly fresh and vibrant; the red screenprinted color is bright red, not light red or pink as usually seen on most Soup Can prints. The metallic areas are particularly vibrant, not dull or laden with creases, nicks and cracks The surrounding white area is a vivid bright white, not off-white like the majority of Soup Can impressions that have been sitting in a frame for five decades.

ANDY WARHOL CAMPBELL’S SOUP CAN

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Oyster Stew) (F&S II 60), 1969 color screenprint is a captivating example of one of the most iconic and recognizable Pop symbols of 20th Century American art. Boasting museum quality condition, the outstanding Andy Warhol Oyster Stew (F&S II 60),1969 impression offered for sale by Joseph K. Levene Fine Art, Ltd. was stored in archival materials for over 50 years and has never been framed, hinged or matted. Accordingly the colors are particularly fresh and vibrant; the red screenprinted color is bright red, not light red or pink as usually seen on most Soup Can prints. The metallic areas are particularly vibrant, not dull or laden with creases, nicks and cracks The surrounding white area is a vivid bright white, not off-white like the majority of Soup Can impressions that have been sitting in a frame for five decades.

Significantly, this Andy Warhol Oyster Stew Soup Can impression is Authenticated on the verso by The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc., along with a unique ID Number. Given the alarming number of counterfeit Soup Cans on the market, purchasing an Authenticated impression adds incremental security. Previously in the collection of galleries and museum director David Whitney, this museum quality Andy Warhol Oyster Stew color screenprint is hand signed by Andy Warhol in ballpoint pen on the verso. A long-time friend of Andy Warhol, David Whitney also organized numerous exhibitions at The Whiney Museum of American Art for Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Franz Kline, Willem deKooning and Andy Warhol. An opportunity to buy an Authenticated impression of this highly desirable 1969 Andy Warhol Soup Can in museum quality condition; put another way, this rare Campbell's Soup impression is in the same condition today it was when Andy Warhol hand signed this impression 55 years ago!

Few images so clearly evoke the modernity of post-war America, as consumerism exploded and the commercial image of the American Dream swept the nation. Print and television advertising, industrial production and the burgeoning middle class transformed America into a public ripe for consumption of material goods, art and culture. As the trajectory of painting broke drastically away from the fetishism of artistic gesture that had defined Abstract Expressionism, Andy Warhol pioneered his own brand of Pop art that incisively challenged the visual culture of a society saturated with images and driven by consumerism.

Andy Warhol was obsessed with creating mechanized means of mass-production. The universal appeal of the present work, however, is met with a suggestion of personal significance; some shred of childhood memory: "Many an afternoon at lunchtime", Warhol recalled,"Mom would open a can of Campbell’s for me, because that’s all we could afford, I love it to this day" (Andy Warhol cited in: Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, London 1998, p. 144). Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Can (Oyster Stew) (F&S II 60), 1969 color screenprint exemplifies the quasi-religious status that would come to define Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can series.

Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans 1962
Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Andy Warhol was obsessed with creating mechanized means of mass-production. The universal appeal of the present work, however, is met with a suggestion of personal significance; some shred of childhood memory: "Many an afternoon at lunchtime", Warhol recalled,"Mom would open a can of Campbell’s for me, because that’s all we could afford, I love it to this day" (Andy Warhol cited in: Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, London 1998, p. 144). Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Can (Oyster Stew) (F&S II 60), 1969 color screenprint exemplifies the quasi-religious status that would come to define Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can series.

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup paintings were first displayed in Los Angeles at the Ferus Gallery in July 1962. The Ferus Gallery was co-founded by Walter Hopps and artist Edward Kienholz; Irving Blum joined the Gallery 1958. Warhol exhibited thirty-two canvases in his Ferrus Gallery exhibition, each measuring 20 x 16 inches; each of the canvases represented each of the Campbell Soup flavors manufactured by the food conglomerate at that time. The revolutionary paintings were displayed on small white shelves that ran along the perimeter of the gallery in a manner that seemed to emulate the shelves of a grocery store.

While this first show was met with little commercial success, Warhol’s haute treatment of the consumerist mundane sparked lively debate in critical circles and set the groundwork for the dominance of Pop Art. Indeed, the entire show is now housed as a collective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Appropriated, re-contextualized and re-purposed, the Cambell’s Soup Can motif would become the world famous, quintessential icon of Warholian Pop. As Henry Geldzahler recalls, "The Campbell’s Soup Can was the Nude Descending a Staircase of pop art. Here was an image that became an overnight rallying point for the sympathetic and the bane of the hostile. Warhol captured the imagination of the media and the public as had no other artist of his generation. Andy was pop and pop was Andy" (Henry Geldzahler cited in: Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, London, 1998, pp. 159-60).

Opening up a dialogue between the viewer and the composition, Warhol’s series of Campbell’s Soup Cans heroically engaged in a loaded semiotic game that would forever blur the boundary between art and commerce. In this subversion, the notion of authorship becomes obscured and the work of art begins to exist beyond the limits of its canvas. Artworks such as the present embodied the perfect subject matter for an artist whose entire craft was built on an innate understanding of American post-war consumerism; indeed Warhol sought to re-present objects and icons that would be instantly recognizable to any observer of the work. In Warhol’s America, these soup cans were so ubiquitous as to be entirely unremarkable, displayed on shelves in every grocery store and supermarket across the country. To paint and exhibit them, then, was to elevate them into a grand new context, to ennoble them and to demand that they experience renewed aesthetic consideration. Of course, having originally trained as a commercial artist, there is no doubt that Warhol would have held special appreciation for the effective logo. They were the everyday icons of his overtly consumerist world view and have since become that motif most synonymous with his oeuvre.

 

 

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