After serving as an icon for nearly 60 years as the inspiration behind Andy Warhol's famous pop art, the Campbell's soup can is getting a redesign - and is going up for sale as a 'non-fungible token' online.
Its 1960s mod style meets the world of bitcoin as the proceeds from the 'NFT,' which allows people to buy virtual shares of a piece of art, goes to a hunger for fighting charity.
Through the redesign the company said Tuesday it hopes to evoke, the 'same sense of comfort, goodness and Americana,' as the previous label did, with familiar flourishes such as the slanted 'O' in soup, and the cursive Campbell's font that came from the world's first ready-to-eat soup: Campbell's Beefsteak Tomato, in 1895.
That familiarity, as the story goes, was what brought Warhol to recreate the can in 32 paintings he produced from 1961 to 1962.
The form came from the artist's roots in the previous decade as a window dresser in New York City, where he designed commercial displays intended to draw shoppers in.
Campbell's announced the first redesign of its iconic soup can label in 50 years Tuesday, with the new design (left) appearing to hew fairly closely to the old one (right)
Pop artist Andy Warhol famously recreated the can logo in 32 paintings he made from 1961 to 1961. The story goes that he chose the design based off of its familiarity. He is pictured in 1971 with actress Jane Forth
The legend goes that New York art dealer Roberta Latow was the person who gave Warhol the idea for his Campbell's soup
In the advertising world, the standard was to recreate details from everyday life, as Warhol had done in his window dressings, according to a look into his pop-art beginnings by Smithsonian Magazine.
By the beginning of the 1960s Warhol was seeking to break into the high culture art world as opposed to the commercial one he had been making a living in, but was having trouble finding the proper inspiration.
His breakthrough would come from a conversation with Muriel Latow, a minor New York art dealer who went to a dinner party at Warhol's house in the fall of 1961, when he was lamenting being surpassed by other pop art pioneers Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein.
'I've got to do something that really will have a lot of impact, that will be different enough from Lichtenstein,' he is supposed to have told her, and asked his guests for ideas.
As the legend goes, Latow asked Warhol to hand over a check for $50 before telling him hers.
'You've got to find something that's recognizable to almost everybody,' she told him. 'Something you see every day that everybody would recognize. Something like a can of Campbell's Soup.'
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