SOUL FOOD

“A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting” - Abraham Maslow

Magpie Tales inspires today with soup. Bob Adelman’s 1965 photo of PopArt king, Andy Warhol shopping for some Campbell’s soup. In 1962, artist Andy Warhol took the familiar look of the Campbell’s soup can and integrated it into a series of pop art silkscreens, a theme he would return to off and on through the 1960s and 1970s. The first batch in 1962 was a series of 32 canvases. At first, the cans were accurate representations of actual Campbell’s cans, but as his series progressed, they became more surrealistic, with Warhol experimenting with negative-reversed color schemes and other varied techniques (many of these which would be used on other Warhol paintings of the period, such as his celebrity silkscreens of the 1960s).

The silkscreens themselves have become iconic pieces of pop art, with one in particular, Small Torn Campbell Soup Can (Pepper Pot - 1962), commanding a price of $11.8 million at auction in 2006. In 2004, Campbell’s themselves recognised Warhol’s art by releasing in the eastern United States a limited-edition series of cans that were inspired by the coloring and silkscreen effects of Warhol’s pieces. This marked one of the few times in the company’s history that they would change the trade dress for their main canned-soup line in any substantial manner…

Soul Food

My soul, she crieth for sustenance

Bereft as she sitteth: Still, weak and starvéd.

My heart, she holdeth back nourishment

And my mind weakeneth, my soul wilteth.

Willst thou, Love, furnish me with the means

To stop my soul’s demise, and my mind’s wanderings

In the distant land of utter folly?

Willst thou, Love, bestow upon me my salvation?

Givest thou the tonic nouriture,

And once my heart eateth and hath surfeit

And make willeth of its life-blood, pottage,

To give my soul the food she lacketh.

My soul diminisheth as my heart feeleth hunger:

For lack of love, my Love, will cause

My soul’s demise and my heart’s decease,

And my living body, though corpulent, will die.