Campbell’s Soup Cans

Imagine walking into a big, quiet room with bright white walls. It’s an art gallery. Hanging in a perfect line, you see something that makes you giggle. You know us. You’ve seen us in your kitchen pantry. We are bright red and clean white, with a shiny gold circle in the middle. We look just like we’re waiting for a can opener. But what are we doing here, on a wall, like fancy paintings of kings and queens? It was a big surprise for everyone when we first showed up. We waited for people to get closer and read our labels. Then they would know. We are the Campbell’s Soup Cans.

The man who put us on the wall was named Andy Warhol. He was a quiet man with puffy white hair that looked like a cloud. Andy saw art everywhere, even in his lunch. And guess what he ate for lunch almost every single day for 20 years? Soup. Our soup. One day in 1962, he had a big idea. He thought, 'Why can’t my lunch be a masterpiece?' A masterpiece is a super special piece of art, and he wanted us to be one. So he got to work. He used a special way of painting called silkscreening. It’s like using a very fancy stencil. He would push paint through a screen to print our picture onto a canvas. Swish. He’d make a Tomato soup can. Swish. Then a Chicken Noodle. He did this over and over until he had made one of every single flavor that Campbell's made that year. There were 32 of us in all. We looked like a team of superheroes lined up on the wall, each one a little different but all part of the same yummy family.

When people first saw us hanging in the gallery, they scratched their heads. 'Wait a minute,' they said. 'Is a soup can really art?' Some people laughed. But lots of other people thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen. We helped start a new kind of art called Pop Art. Pop Art was all about celebrating normal, everyday things that you might see in comic books or grocery stores. Before us, most famous paintings were of serious people or pretty flowers. We showed the world that art can be fun and surprising. It can be a can of soup. Our job is to remind you that art isn't just in museums. It’s in the colorful cereal box on your breakfast table or the fun shape of your favorite toy. So look around. You might find a masterpiece hiding right in your own home.