Dive Brief:
- The black and white painting is recognized as one of the greatest works in pop art history.
- Warhol painted the image by hand. It is not a silkscreen, like much of his other work.
- The painting is expected to fetch between $40 million and $60 million when it is auctioned by Christie's in New York City on No. 12.
Dive Insight:
It's popular among a certain class of person -- let's call them uncultured, poorly educated, Philistines -- to belittle Warhol's work as too simple, too easy. But such characters miss the point. Warhol celebrated the accessibility of everyday American culture as symbolic of our core values. The Coke bottle painting, man-sized and bold, is about democracy. Coke, for better or worse, is how the world sees America. Warhol's work suggested that we see the beauty in that, and in ourselves.
Or, as Warhol himself said in what may be the most succinct description in history of American life and the U.S. food and beverage industry: "All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good."