Campbell's Soup
Marcel Broodthaers
Belgian, 1924–1976
1969
A real tin Campbell’s condensed consommé soup can repurposed as a sculpture by Marcel Broodthaers to make art from an everyday commercial object and to question language, authorship, and institutional meaning.
At first it reads as the familiar red-and-white Campbell’s label—bold script, stamped gold medal, and blocky 'CONSOMMÉ'—but small rust spots and the object’s plain presence in a gallery turn its banality into something deliberately staged and uncanny.
Broodthaers’s can builds on Pop Art’s use of commercial imagery but shifts toward a conceptual critique, showing how meaning and value are produced when mundane objects and brand language are placed inside the art world.
Medium
Soup can
Dimensions
4 x 2 5/8 x 2 5/8" (10.1 x 6.7 x 6.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Partial gift of the Daled Collection and partial purchase through the generosity of Maja Oeri and Hans Bodenmann, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Agnes Gund, Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, and Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley
Accession
611.2011
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
