If the amazing pop artist Andy Warhol was alive, today (august 6, 2013) would be his 85.th

birthday and maybe he would celebrate it not with cake but eating some Campbell's Soup Cans

:-)

I am a huge fan of Andy's work and his vibrant colors and themes have inspired my life as a

graphic designer, and sometimes just had some color to my grey days.

So, choosing an artwork from him to do this assignment was a natural choice for me, almost as

natural as breathe or drink water.

Unfortunately, I never had the chance to visit the MOMA to see his great artworks (I am from

Portugal and I never went to the USA, but I'm planning to).

But I felt very lucky when I visited München 2 years ago and I had the chance to see live some

of his great artworks at the Museum Brandhorst.

1 - So what drew my attention to this work of art is the fact that the Campbell's Soup Cans are,

maybe side by side with Marilyn Monroe silkscreen portraits, the best known Andy Warhol

works around the world.

And of course I love the pop art idea of elevating objects of the ordinary life to the status of art

works.

2 - I already knew a lot about this particular work, because as I said, I am a huge fan of Warhol

since high school. Despite I never had the chance to see this particular work live, I had the

chance to see other works. I also possess a huge collection of books about him and his work, as

well as documentaries and films.

So the most relevant information I found about the Campbell's Soup Cans series was:

- from 1962

- a series of 32 canvas paintings (each one represents one of the varieties of soup sold by the

Campbell Soup Company at that time)

- each canvas measures 50.8 x 40.6 cm

- in the first exhibition of these works, each canvas costed $100 and only half a dozen was sold

and they were later bought again to remain the set of 32 canvas intact

- Warhol was himself and avid consumer of this soups

- during his life, Warhol painted many variations of the original series

3 - If I was going to teach my students using the observation of this artwork, I would definitely

start by giving them a little context about pop art and would also showed them other Andy

Warhol works, previous to this one so the students could know better the essence of the pop

art itself and also the tastes, motivations and skills that lead Warhol to paint an ordinary

object, elevated it to the status of work of art.

Then I would make them notice the differences and similarities between each one of the 32

canvases and also would ask them to paint their own version of a Campbell's Soup Can.