Saturday, October 21, 2023

Andy Warhol and Campbell's Soup

Campbell soup is really, really bad! It's disgusting!

Good soup, the first spoonful is amazing, and it carries you away with pleasure, and after a while the clouds part and you gently, luxuriously return to Earth, and you realize that THAT WAS JUST THE FIRST SPOONFUL. Dozens more await you in the bowl. And I don't just mean fancy expensive soup. Soup in a can or a box from Pacific Foods -- or, for that matter, some of the more upscale options from Campbell's itself, such as some of the varieties of their Slow Kettle Style -- can sometimes be that good. Real gourmet soup in a fancy restaurant can be even better.

Andy Warhol was weird. Not only did he make many many large and small pictures of Campbell's soup cans --
 
 

 
pictures which long been considered artistic masterpieces, and I still don't understand why --- not only did he make picture of Campbell's soup cans, he continued to eat absolute crap like Campbell's chicken noodle soup with Nabisco soda crackers for lunch several times a week after he had become very rich. In the evenings he would go to the fanciest restaurants in NYC, and I have no idea what his breakfasts were like.

Maybe those lunches had something to do with keeping a connection to his childhood. Or reminding himself to stay humble. He grew up in a blue-collar family in Pittsburgh. His dad died in 1942, when Andy was 14. His mom didn't remarry. In the 1950's he brought his mom to live with him in NYC, and she would make his lunch of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and Nabisco crackers, just like when he was a a kid -- just like my family ate when I was a kid.

Also, every week, he would go and work in a soup kitchen. Where the soup was, possibly, some weeks, much better than Campbell's.
 
All the evidence seems to indicate that he was a good guy. But he was weird.

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