Stock (2025)
150
Edition
Six
Systems
$28.02
Quote
Warhol painted the soup can. Sixty years later, you don’t eat the soup — you trade the company. Same brand, same screen, new product: Campbell’s Co, quoted at $28.02.
The can became the chart.
In 1962 Warhol screenprinted the Campbell’s soup can — a mass-produced consumer object, hung as art. The work was about consumerism, repetition, and the commodification of image-making itself.
Campbell’s is still here. But the thing we consume now isn’t the soup — it’s the equity. CPB trades on the NASDAQ, and the symbol of consumerism has moved from the shelf to the ticker. Stock keeps Warhol’s exact subject and swaps the object: the can becomes the price chart, the brand becomes a quote, $28.02.
Same gesture, sixty years on. The repetition across color is the screenprint; the speculation is the consumerism; the financial abstraction is the product.
Contemporary by influence, not by date.
A piece is contemporary by who it answers to. Stock answers to three.
AI
The first version took five seconds in GPT. Warhol had the Factory and the screen; this has the model — mechanical reproduction, updated.
Warhol
"Contemporary" as a measure of who you still answer to, not when you were born. Here the answer is Warhol, the Factory, the screenprint.
Financial abstraction
The soup can stood for consumerism in 1962. Today the product isn’t on the shelf — it’s the ticker. Speculation as the thing itself.
