Name: Campbell's Soup II, Hot Dog Bean (F. & S. II.59)
Brand: Andy Warhol
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Andy Warhol’s Campbell's Soup II, Hot Dog Bean (F. & S. II.59) is estimated to be worth between £23,000 and £35,000. This signed screenprint, created in 1969, has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 9%. This work has an auction history of 26 total sales since its entry to the market in May 1999. In the past 12 months, the average selling price was £21,433 across one total sale. In the last five years, the hammer price has varied from £14,112 in September 2017 to £38,000 in June 2022. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 250.

Meaning & Analysis

One of Andy Warhol’s most iconic motifs is featured in this screen print Campbell’s Soup II, Hot Dog Bean (F. & S. II.59) from the Campbell’s Soup II series (1967). Throughout the 1960s Warhol had produced images of familiar consumer items such as Coca-Cola bottles and soup cans, one of the earliest examples being a series of paintings entitled Campbell’s Soup Cans appearing at the Fergus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962. Pursued to the point of obsession, the Campbell’s Soup Cans were Warhol’s archetypal subject.

The Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings were first shown together in uniform rows, displayed as though they were products on the supermarket shelf. Each work represents every flavour of soup sold by Campbell’s Soup and the image itself precisely mimics the red and white labels of the brand. This print corresponds with the hot dog bean flavour sold by the brand and shows a gold circular logo in the middle with an added detail of two figures in traditional British royal guard uniform holding up a sign that says “Stout Hearted Soup’.

This series was one of the first portfolios to be published through Factory Additions, New York, a company the artist created to produce and distribute his prints. The prints were created by the machine-like screen print process, erasing the artist’s touch altogether and producing a precisely rendered image that exactly mimics the design of the soup can. Elevated to the realm of fine art and presenting these consumer products as objects for observation, Warhol poses a challenge to the value of art and the way art is consumed.