Andy Warhol

Coca-Cola [3]

Coca-Cola [3] was considered by Warhol to be the beginning of his Pop Art style. It exhibits, for the first time, Warhol’s defining penchant for rendering iconically American subjects with machine-like precision.

The artist’s choice of a Coca-Cola bottle was perhaps attached to notions of nostalgia or American identity, but the true subject here is the artificial veneer of American advertisement. Warhol has not painted a Coca-Cola bottle, but an image of a Coca-Cola bottle from a newspaper. His subject is not the object itself, but a visual presentation of it that has been manipulated for optimum desirability.

The monumental scale reinforces Warhol’s observation that American advertising has a power that trumps political clout and celebrity.

“You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola,” the artist said, “and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too ... All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it ... and you know it."