Art: Boxing Match

Andy Warhol, 32, is the Pop artist who won fame painting pictures of Campbell’s Soup cans, and then topped that by making reproductions of shipping cartons for them. This accomplishment did not entirely satisfy him. Somehow, says he, “they didn’t look real enough.” Then one day, in a supermarket, he saw a stack of boxes used for shipping Brillo steel-wool pads. He was overcome with envy and a sense of beauty. So he had a carpenter make 120 Brillo-size boxes, and ordered a silk-screen stencil of the Brillo design. He stenciled it on all the boxes, just in time for his current show at Manhattan’s Stable Gallery, where they are selling for $300 each.

James Harvey, 35, is also an artist, but he draws his inspiration from religion and landscapes rather than supermarkets. At nights, he works hard on muscular abstract paintings that show in Manhattan’s Graham Gallery. But eight hours a day, to make a living, he labors as a commercial artist. Harvey likes to keep up with the newest in art, and when he heard that Warhol was having a show, he dropped in. What he saw made him choke back an impulse to start a paternity suit. For it was Harvey who a few years ago designed the original Brillo box.