just as we've done with jazz

On the subject of Yahoo! News: Warhol's 'Mao' sells for $17.4 million and the conversation we been having about the curse of the derivative life. A revealing quote from McLuhan:

we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as we've done with jazz, and as we're now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art.

Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh at the height of the industrial era. His art could be understood as an animation of the industrial repetition, the printing process that is the model of the industrial era. Tony Montana is correct that the soup cans are reflection of the self expressions. Indeed the soup cans and other Warhol prints represent the faceless cloned industrial worker hobbling to work every day in lifeless monotonous stroll. The multiplied iconic images negate the individuality to show mass produced colored faces, "garbage of the mechanical environment" indeed.

Worth noting that most of Andy's print art came on the cusp of the electronic era. To his credit Warhol also understood that the painting art expression is obsolete as he embraced the electronic media when he turned to filming the Velvet Underground.