Andy Warhol, "Colored Campbell's Soup Cans"

Warhol truly launched his career in 1962, with a series of Campbell's soup can images at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Three years later, he revisited the theme with another group—the one on view here—in which the familiar staple of the American pantry was depicted in deep shades of posterized color, giving it a distinctly hallucinogenic glow. These works mark the point when Kennedy-era Pop Art began to merge with the countercultural upheaval of the mid- to late ’60s.