Brother Peter is a book dealer, and since he regularly visits London to participate in a Gamelin orchestra, and since his book dealing often yields little clutches of books that he can't sell for anything worth getting, but which are of interest to me, he visits from time to time, with goodies. He did this yesterday. I am now finding art books especially useful, because I can browse through them and whistle up the pictures in them on the Internet, because the art books supply titles, and with a title I can search.

However, the two pictures here are my own. One of Peter, which I was able to take quickly (thanks to my new photographic superpowers) and show him on my computer screen within about half a minute. The other is also by me and is called 18 Nescafé Gold Blend Jars 2004.

This was inspired a picture in one of the books Peter brought, Pop Art by David McCarthy, one of the Movements in Modern Art series published by Tate Gallery Publishing. That picture is called 200 Campbell's Soup Cans 1962, and is by Andy Warhol. However, Warhol's picture involved rather more work than mine, because if you scrutinise it you disover that the soup cans are not identical, the way my coffee jars are (is). On the contrary, twenty different soup flavours are involved: onion, consomme, tomato, mushroom, green pea, cream of asparagus, scotch broth, cream of celery, chicken gumbo, vegetable, beef noodle, clam chowder, vegetarian vegetable (how that differs from vegetable vegetable I cannot say), pepperpot, cream of chicken, black bean, bean with bacon, cream of mushroom (evidently different from mere mushroom), chicken with rice, and beef.

As it says here:

When Andy Warhol started painting Campbell's soup cans in 1962, the company sent lawyers along to investigate. Little did they know, then, what an effect the paintings would have on their sales, as a new movement in art, Pop Art, was born; and all the experts could do was watch with bemusement and astonishment, as Andy signed soup cans and sold them as souvenirs.

For the early paintings Andy used the red and white of the original cans - but later he incorporated a wide variety of arbitrary colours.

200gm Gold Blend jars signed by me are available on request, price £500 each.