Brillo Boxes, 1964

This is a photograph of Warhol's packing box exhibition held in the Stable Gallery, New York, in 1964.

Over 400 wooden boxes were silkscreened  to resemble the cheap packing cartons of various products.  As you might imagine, most critics were outraged attacking the boxes as an act of cultural terrorism.

Henry Geldzhaler, art critic and friend of Warhol, saw something interesting in the apparently nihilistic act, however:

 The boxes, three-dimensional sculpture, are, if anything, flatter and more dead pan, less present as image or object than the paintings. . .being wooden and completely closed, they are useless. . . .  And it is possible, and it happens, that we walk by them and ask where the sculpture is.
 

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