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Lot Essay
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching the TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too." - Andy Warhol
Hand drawn and depicting that quintessential 20th century American consumer product the classic, curvaceous glass Coca-Cola bottle, this 1962 work by Andy Warhol signals the beginning of the Pop Art master’s entry into superstar art status.
Using pencil and ink, the tools of his earlier career as a commercial artist, Warhol drew this study for what would become Coca-Cola 4, the last of his single Coke bottle paintings, painted during the summer of 1962. The iconic power of the solitary image determines the composition, with its extraordinary focus on a trademark American consumer-culture icon that would launch Warhol in the direction that came to define his entire career.
Organized across a modest-sized sheet of paper, Warhol sets off the instantly recognizable curvilinear forms of the iconic Coca-Cola bottle in the top left quarter of the picture frame. The bottle floats across the pictorial space as a single image, dramatically stripped of extraneous flourish or distracting context. The swirling calligraphic script of the Coca-Cola brand name drifts across the picture plane above and to the top right of the famous pop bottle form, with the sinuous shapes of the letters registering as image as much as they do text, to be looked at, not just read.
The expertly hand-worked aspects of the present drawing, with the varying intensity of the graphite and ink—darker in some areas, lighter in others—evidence Warhol’s process of drawing across the paper support, as do the pencil-work shadings that define the iconic bottle’s contours. Here, Warhol leaves out all unnecessary details of context or scene, to focus entirely on the image of the famous bottle and the elegant script. Beyond the pencil and ink medium, what stands out most significantly here is Warhol’s depiction of his subject. The artist’s single, stand-alone portrayals of Coke bottles were the first clean and straightforward, hard-edged images of iconic consumer products in what would become a distinctive and recognized parade of famous brands and packages, set off by Warhol’s unique approach.
In concept, Warhol employs an impersonal objectivity combined with a direct gaze that would so boldly and dramatically set his later work apart from the other art of this era. He renders the world-famous bottle and its celebrated logo as sign and symbol in a smooth, impartial manner, less a depiction of an actual object than as an image of an image. Yet the work is also highly figurative, and, along with that of other Pop artists, this approach offered a counterpoint to the then-dominant abstract style of painting, asserting that realistic portrayal of the figure could once again be a vital art practice.
The rendering of Coca-Cola in monochromatic black and white links the drawing with the commercial art predecessors that inspired it, the inexpensive and ubiquitous monochrome newspaper advertisements that typically depicted household items like television sets, refrigerators and consumer staples for the kitchen cupboard. These advertisements portrayed in simple lines and contours, a single item removed from any context, focusing attention purely on its form.
Warhol's decision to depict the Coca-Cola bottle linked the product forever with the artist and with the Pop Art genre. It became only the first of what were to be an ongoing exploration of classic American consumer product icons in his work, from Campbell's Soup to Brillo soap pads, to Kellogg's, and more. The choice of subject may have been motivated by the artist’s own nostalgia for the simple comforts of items like Campbell’s soup that his mother made for him when he was a child. This nostalgia, bringing together personal memory and commercial product, taps into a larger cultural feeling that resonates with many people, making his work all the more affecting.
What fascinates about this work, and about Andy Warhol’s entire oeuvre, is that the artist leaves its meaning entirely for us alone to answer the question as to whether it is intended as cultural criticism or as an unselfconscious embrace of the banality of consumer culture. Said Warhol, "I feel I represent the U.S. in my art, but I'm not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those are the things I know best” (A. Warhol, quoted in K. Goldsmith, et al, I'll be Your Mirror, The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, 1962-1987, New York, 2004, p. 88). To this day, over fifty years after it was created, this image resonates through its openness to interpretation and through its radically direct form.
Hand drawn and depicting that quintessential 20th century American consumer product the classic, curvaceous glass Coca-Cola bottle, this 1962 work by Andy Warhol signals the beginning of the Pop Art master’s entry into superstar art status.
Using pencil and ink, the tools of his earlier career as a commercial artist, Warhol drew this study for what would become Coca-Cola 4, the last of his single Coke bottle paintings, painted during the summer of 1962. The iconic power of the solitary image determines the composition, with its extraordinary focus on a trademark American consumer-culture icon that would launch Warhol in the direction that came to define his entire career.
Organized across a modest-sized sheet of paper, Warhol sets off the instantly recognizable curvilinear forms of the iconic Coca-Cola bottle in the top left quarter of the picture frame. The bottle floats across the pictorial space as a single image, dramatically stripped of extraneous flourish or distracting context. The swirling calligraphic script of the Coca-Cola brand name drifts across the picture plane above and to the top right of the famous pop bottle form, with the sinuous shapes of the letters registering as image as much as they do text, to be looked at, not just read.
The expertly hand-worked aspects of the present drawing, with the varying intensity of the graphite and ink—darker in some areas, lighter in others—evidence Warhol’s process of drawing across the paper support, as do the pencil-work shadings that define the iconic bottle’s contours. Here, Warhol leaves out all unnecessary details of context or scene, to focus entirely on the image of the famous bottle and the elegant script. Beyond the pencil and ink medium, what stands out most significantly here is Warhol’s depiction of his subject. The artist’s single, stand-alone portrayals of Coke bottles were the first clean and straightforward, hard-edged images of iconic consumer products in what would become a distinctive and recognized parade of famous brands and packages, set off by Warhol’s unique approach.
In concept, Warhol employs an impersonal objectivity combined with a direct gaze that would so boldly and dramatically set his later work apart from the other art of this era. He renders the world-famous bottle and its celebrated logo as sign and symbol in a smooth, impartial manner, less a depiction of an actual object than as an image of an image. Yet the work is also highly figurative, and, along with that of other Pop artists, this approach offered a counterpoint to the then-dominant abstract style of painting, asserting that realistic portrayal of the figure could once again be a vital art practice.
The rendering of Coca-Cola in monochromatic black and white links the drawing with the commercial art predecessors that inspired it, the inexpensive and ubiquitous monochrome newspaper advertisements that typically depicted household items like television sets, refrigerators and consumer staples for the kitchen cupboard. These advertisements portrayed in simple lines and contours, a single item removed from any context, focusing attention purely on its form.
Warhol's decision to depict the Coca-Cola bottle linked the product forever with the artist and with the Pop Art genre. It became only the first of what were to be an ongoing exploration of classic American consumer product icons in his work, from Campbell's Soup to Brillo soap pads, to Kellogg's, and more. The choice of subject may have been motivated by the artist’s own nostalgia for the simple comforts of items like Campbell’s soup that his mother made for him when he was a child. This nostalgia, bringing together personal memory and commercial product, taps into a larger cultural feeling that resonates with many people, making his work all the more affecting.
What fascinates about this work, and about Andy Warhol’s entire oeuvre, is that the artist leaves its meaning entirely for us alone to answer the question as to whether it is intended as cultural criticism or as an unselfconscious embrace of the banality of consumer culture. Said Warhol, "I feel I represent the U.S. in my art, but I'm not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those are the things I know best” (A. Warhol, quoted in K. Goldsmith, et al, I'll be Your Mirror, The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, 1962-1987, New York, 2004, p. 88). To this day, over fifty years after it was created, this image resonates through its openness to interpretation and through its radically direct form.