Pop goes the Easel

As if following on from my post earlier this month which featured a Pop-art inspired artwork seen in Birmingham, this was the front cover of last week's edition of Time Out:

The reason they've chosen that particular image for this edition, with its special features on London's art scene, is no doubt due to the opening of a major new exhibition at Tate Modern entitled The World Goes Pop. It's a bit of a misnomer on Time Out's part though, as the show itself doesn't actually feature Warhol's familiar soup cans at all, with Tate's marketing bumpf quick to stress that "This is pop art, but not as you know it". While famous images like these, the Marilyn and Elvis prints and Roy Liechtenstein's comic strip-style paintings have come to symbolise Pop Art in general, the exhibition sets out to show how the movement was much wider-reaching and influential than this - "never just a celebration of western consumer culture, but...often a subversive international language of protest – a language that is more relevant today than ever."

It wouldn't surprise me however if merchandise depicting the more familiar Pop Art works still gets quite a prominent display in Tate's gift shops. It's amazing just how iconic these images have become, almost perversely becoming a part of the consumer culture that Warhol was commenting on with his work. Earlier this year, Converse launched a new range of its famous Chuck Taylor Hi-Top sneakers in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Foundation, with designs featuring the famous cans.

I have to admit that being both a Converse-wearer for many years (long before everyone was wearing them, I always point out) and a Tin Cannoisseur, I was very tempted to buy these, but at around £50 a pair I felt it was probably worth hanging on until the sales for them. Despite the popularity of the images, I can't really imagine these will be flying off the shelves, so hopefully the shops will be flogging them off more cheaply soon to get rid of old stock.




In the meantime, I'll just have to make do with this t-shirt that I found on eBay a while back. I won't wear it when I go and see the exhibition of course, as that would feel a bit like going to a gig wearing a t-shirt featuring the band who were playing, which I am informed is simply not the done thing (or in other words, completely and utterly lame).

Anyway, all this is just an elaborate introduction to the fact that after seeing them on offer a while back, I had the whole range of  Campbell's condensed soups available in the UK in my stash of tins (a vastly smaller product selection than those for sale in the US and Canada), and have been slowly but surely working my way through them.

You can of course just enjoy them as plain old soup, diluting them down with water or milk, but having been condensed they also make for an excellent ingredient for cooking with in other dishes.


There are a wealth of recipes out there using condensed soups for things like pasta bakes, sauces for meat dishes, pie fillings and so on, which tasty as they may be, all tend to merge into one after a while. I have made it my mission therefore to seek out some of the more original, unusual and yes, at times somewhat unpleasant-sounding recipes that they feature in, which I will be writing about, again slowly but surely, over a series of posts. Don't worry, I will be blogging about other things in between as well; while Andy Warhol originally decided on the Campbell's tins as that was what he used to have for lunch every day, I wouldn't dream of subjecting you to soup, soup and more soup for the next six posts. Like an overpacked art exhibition, there's only so much of the stuff that most of us can take all in one go.