Say “Pepsi please”

Pepsi - Andy Warhol "Close Cover Before Striking" 1962

Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola paintings

“Everybody owns a piece of Coke. What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”

Andy Warhol made art available to the everyday man and everybody understood it. Coca-Cola paintings represented democratic equality.

Coca-Cola 3 bottles by Andy Warhol 1962

Coca-Cola 5 bottles by Andy Warhol 1962

Coca-Cola green bottles by Andy Warhol 1962

Andy Warhol painting titled “Large Coca Cola” sold for $35.3 million

9 November 2010
An Andy Warhol painting titled “Large Coca Cola” put the fizz into Sotheby’s New York contemporary art auction when it beat expectations and sold for $35.3 million.

The black and white Warhol, originally estimated to go for $20 million to $25 million.

Large Coca Cola at the Sotheby's art auction

Large Coca-Cola painting by Andy Warhol

An image of a single Coca-Cola bottle that Andy Warhol painted in 1962

An icon of Pop Art, Large Coca-Cola is the last of four paintings of individual Coca-Cola bottles executed by Warhol in 1961 and 1962, and the largest of the group.
“Large Coca-Cola is a perfect example of the artist’s homage to advertising, highlighting the relationship between big business and the public through an enlarged icon of consumerism.”

Andy Warhol’s Large Coca-Cola will be auctioned in New York on 9 November 2010. The current estimate for the painting is about $25 million.