ANDY WARHOL | YOU'RE IN

Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical (re)production, Pop artist Andy Warhol created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. His best known works include his silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans, Marilyn Diptych, Mao, Double Elvis, and Green Coca-Cola Bottles. The present work is reminiscent of a Duchampian readymade, albeit with Warhol flair. Here, he spray-paints twenty-four Coca-Cola bottles – both the color silver and the consumer good itself instantly recognizable motifs within his oeuvre – and presents them within an original carton.

Of this body of work, the Andy Warhol catalogue raisonné states: “Warhol’s contribution [to the Museum of Merchandise’s exhibition] was identified…as toilet water named You’re In. However, it had to be discontinued soon after, when the Coca-Cola Company learned that Warhol was using their bottles. He might have spray painted them with his signature silver color, but the design of the bottle that Warhol was using to merchandise another fluid was legally Coca-Cola’s brand. Worse, Warhol was packing the silver bottles in appropriated Coca-Cola crates. The obvious pun on the name, You’re In, has lent Warhol’s work an aura of notoriety. However, it is worth noting that the bottles’ fluid contents were not urine at all but the inexpensive scent ‘silver lining’ by Cassell.” (Georg Frei and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, Vol. 02B, 2004, p. 280)