Andy Warhol Large Campbell's Soup Can, Pepper Pot

Richard Pettibone’s Andy Warhol Large Campbell’s Soup Can, Pepper Pot is a painting about another painting. The subject is Warhol’s famous soup can, already an image of mass production and advertising. Pettibone copies it at a much smaller scale, so you have to move closer and really look. What was once a bold billboard size icon becomes something almost toy like and private.

By repainting Warhol’s work by hand, Pettibone shifts the meaning. Warhol used mechanical methods to mimic consumer goods. Pettibone brings back the touch of the artist, brushstroke by brushstroke, inside an image that was supposed to be industrial. The piece asks who owns an image once it has become part of culture. Is this a tribute, a theft, or a new original based on a copy.

The work also hints at how the art market turns ideas into collectable objects. A tiny version of a mass produced can becomes rare and precious. Pettibone makes us aware of layers of reproduction and invites us to think about where value really come from.