Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans

Andy Warhol was raised in the Roman Catholic church, and to a certain extent his major silkscreens of the 1960s like the legendary "Campbell's Soup Cans" partake (somewhat paradoxically) of the nature of Catholic religious or devotional art. This does not mean Warhol's "Campbell's Soup Cans" are meant to be compared to (say) Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel: instead, the pattern they follow is that of the repeated imagery of icons. Catholic religious art has always had this running tendency, in which mass-produced religious art could be made available to believers to assist their prayers -- to the extent that Warhol was mimicking the tendency of sacred art, it was because he was imitating the anonymous but predictable craftsmen who sell statues of little Bernadette at Lourdes, or who sculpt the Virgin Mary in plaster of paris for people to place on their front lawns, or who illustrate...
[ View Full Essay]