San Francisco Artist Paints LaCroix Cans: 'Soup Cans for Millennials'
Whether or not you think those colorful cans of LaCroix sparkling water are boldly beautiful or an ultra-bright eyesore, someone thinks they’re pure art.
San Francisco-based street artist fnnch, as famous for his honey-bear spray art as anything else (his murals depicting flamingos, butterflies and lips are also very nice), has created an homage to both the ubiquitous beverage and the artist Andy Warhol with his new series of paintings.
The SUB, an art collective and private art gallery based in San Francisco’s Mission District, has put on display an exhibition called “9 Cans of LaCroix,” showcasing a series of vividly hued fnnch paintings depicting cans of the nine original LaCroix flavors — “pure,” coconut, berry, lime, orange, peach pear, lemon, cran-raspberry and pamplemousse. They’re painted on canvases the same size as Warhol’s 1962 paintings of Campbell soup cans.
The nod to the king of pop art is absolutely deliberate: The show has been billed as “soup cans for Millennials,” and the artist himself echoed those words in an interview with the Washington Post.
“I’m trying to just put my finger on the cultural zeitgeist,” fnnch told the paper, tongue at least partly in cheek.
The exhibit opening, which took place in July at a secret location and at which attendees were able to enjoy “a Thistle Juice & LaCroix cocktail bar serving drinks by donation,” sold out in a matter of hours.
Fear not, though, tickets are still available for the closing show, to be held on Friday, August 18. The cost of admission is $15 to $30, and while the opening show indicated that there was some wiggle room for those for whom the ticket price was too steep, no such flexibility is indicated on the event page for the closing show, alas. For those unable to make it but who happen to have $500 to spend on a spray-painted can of flavored seltzer, the artist is accepting commissions.
“People love LaCroix,” fnnch told the Washington Post, "so I’m happy to paint it."