The Premiere
Warhol sent Blum thirty-two 20-inch (510 mm) x 16-inch (410 mm) canvases of Campbell's Soup can portraits, each representing a particular variety of the Campbell's Soup flavors available at the time. The thirty-two canvases are very similar: each is a realistic depiction of the iconic, mostly red and white Campbell's Soup can silkscreened onto a white background. The canvases have minor variation in the lettering of the variety names. Most of the letterings are painted in red letters. Four varieties have black lettering: Clam Chowder has parenthetical black lettering below the variety name that said (Manhattan Style), which means that the soup is tomato- and broth-based instead of the cream-based New England style; Beef has parenthetical black lettering below the variety name that says (With Vegetables and Barley); Scotch Broth has parenthetical black lettering below the variety name that said (A Hearty Soup); and Minestrone had black parenthetical lettering saying (Italian-Style Vegetable Soup). There are two varieties with red lettered parenthetical labels: Beef Broth (Bouillon) and Consommé (Beef). The font sizes only vary slightly in the variety names. However, there are a few notable stylistic font differences. Old-fashioned Tomato Rice is the only variety with lower case script. This lower case script appears to be from a slightly different font than the other variety name letters. There are other stylistic differences. Old-fashioned Tomato Rice has the word Soup depicted lower on the can, in place of a portion of ornamental starlike symbols at the bottom that the other 31 varieties have. Also, Cheddar Cheese has two banner-like addenda. In the middle-left, a small golden banner says New!, and a middle center golden banner says Great As A Sauce Too!.
The exhibition opened July 9, 1962 with Warhol in absentia. The thirty-two single soup can canvases were placed in a single line, much like products on shelves, each displayed on narrow individual ledges. The contemporary impact was uneventful, but the historical impact is considered today to have been a watershed. The gallery audience was unsure what to make of the exhibit. A John Coplans Artform article, which was in part spurred on by the responding display of dozens of soup cans by a nearby gallery with a display advertising them at three for 60 cents, encouraged people to take a stand on Warhol. Few actually saw the paintings at the Los Angeles exhibit or at Warhol's studio, but word spread in the form of controversy and scandal due to the work's seeming attempt to replicate the appearance of manufactured objects. Extended debate on the merits and ethics of focusing one's efforts on such a mundane commercial inanimate model kept Warhol's work in art world conversations. The pundits could not believe an artist would reduce the art form to the equivalent of a trip to the local grocery store. Talk did not translate into monetary success for Warhol. Dennis Hopper was the first of only a half dozen to pay $100 for a canvas. Blum decided to try to keep the thirty-two canvases as an intact set and bought back the few sales. This pleased Warhol who had conceived of them as a set, and he agreed to sell the set for ten monthly $100 installments to Blum. Warhol had passed the milestone of his first serious art show. While this exhibition was on view in Los Angeles, Martha Jackson canceled another planned December 1962 New York exhibition.
The Ferus show closed on August 4, 1962, the day before Marilyn Monroe's death. Warhol went on to purchase a Monroe publicity still from the film Niagara, which he later cropped and used to create one of his most well-known works: his painting of Marilyn. Although Warhol continued painting other pop art, including Martinson's coffee cans, Coca-Cola bottles, S&H Green Stamps, and Campbell's Soup cans, he soon became known to many as the artist who painted celebrities. He returned to Blum's gallery to exhibit Elvis and Liz in October 1963. His fans Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward (Hopper's wife at the time) held a welcoming party for the event.
Since Warhol gave no indication of a definitive ordering of the collection, the sequence chosen by MoMA (in the picture at the upper right of this article) in the display from their permanent collection reflects the chronological order in which the varieties were introduced by the Campbell Soup Company, beginning with Tomato in the upper left, which debuted in 1897. By April 2011, the curators at the MoMA had reordered the varieties, moving Clam Chowder to the upper left and tomato to the bottom of the four rows.
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