Campbell's Soup Cans

So, you're staring at a bunch of soup cans. Thirty-two of them, to be exact, each meticulously hand-painted to look like it came straight off a factory line. It’s a brilliant send-up of the whole idea of art being some unique, emotional outpouring. Instead, we get a lineup of consumer goods, a commentary on mass production where the only difference between "artworks" is the flavor of the soup. Talk about elevating the everyday; this is taking your lunch and calling it a masterpiece. Each of the 32 canvases, one for every variety Campbell's sold at the time, is a deadpan copy of the real thing. The artist projected the image onto the canvas to trace it, then painted it by hand, and even used a rubber stamp for the little gold fleur-de-lis pattern at the bottom. When first shown in 1962, they weren't even hung on the wall like precious paintings—they were lined up on a shelf, just like in a grocery store. The critics, of course, were not amused. But the joke was on them. By presenting something so mundane and mass-produced, the work cheekily questions what art is supposed to be. This artwork can be found at Museum of Modern Art.