LA CIENEGA AREA

Twenty-five years ago Andy Warhol shook the foundations of the art world with his paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans. Never one to turn his back on an easy buck, the graying granddaddy of Pop is back to beat a horse so dead it requires exhuming, with 69 paintings of (brace yourself) Campbell’s Soup boxes. The paintings are virtually identical but for minor variations in size, color, and, of course, soup flavor.

Critics have made much of Warhol’s iconization of advertising imagery and the fact that he produces an endless supply of paintings of products of which there is an inexhaustible supply. Warhol himself dismisses such highfallutin justification for his work. In explaining his intentions, the maestro deadpans that he began painting soup cans because he “used to drink it.” The little scamp.

The one interesting twist this new work offers is that whereas the Campbell’s people threatened a lawsuit when Warhol’s can first appeared in 1962, they hired Warhol to design the packaging when they decided to launch a line of boxed soups in 1985. Campbell’s change in attitude toward Warhol says a lot about how Warhol’s position in society has shifted.

He started out as a bona fide enfant terrible out to shake things up, then degenerated into a court painter making art for wealthy people who fancy themselves hip but are, in fact, threatened by the change that a genuinely new idea represents. Rich people don’t usually cotton to change (the reasons are obvious) and they relate well to Warhol’s Campbell’s icon, which represents nothing more than money. (Michael Kohn Gallery, 313 N. Robertson Blvd., to Saturday.)