Andy Warhol was one of the founding members of the new art movement that began in the mid to late fifties, which was most commonly referred to as "Pop Art," which was short for "Popular Culture." "Pop Art" takes its subject matter from popular culture such as comic strips, motion pictures, and advertising, as well as ordinary everyday objects, which are portrayed by using various artistic technologies. Warhol's art didn"t lack in meaning, but is, rather, full with it. It is correct that Andy's paintings focused on the representations of recognizable subjects usually based on pictures from existing imagery. Andy Warhol's artwork epitomized the prevailing cultural and moral spirit of the time. Through the examination of paintings such as Elvis I and II, this becomes clear. Also, he himself often said that he felt apart from life, yet he reflected and influenced it by being at its center. .
The subject matter of Andy Warhol's earliest artwork reflected numerous aspects of American Culture. Warhol did not only display his dollar bill paintings, composed of rows and rows of dollar bills, at his first show, but also displayed his famous Campbell's Soup can paintings. Everyone was familiar with the recognizable can of Campbell's Soup, but Warhol was the first artist to have the idea of making a painting of a soup can and call it art. When Warhol was asked what prompted him to paint money and soup he responded: "I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use everyday and never think about I just do it because I like it" (David Bourdon, Warhol, p.90.). Warhol would paint his pictures of soup can generally filling the entire surface of the canvas, creating a sea of labels that resembled a fully stocked aisle in a supermarket. Among his other first paintings were his 210 Coca-Cola Bottles and Green Coca-Cola Bottles were he painted rows on rows of Coke Bottles using the silk-screen method.