If Andy Warhol had just painted fruit instead of tomato soup, pop culture might have never embraced advertising as art.

Now, with the likes of Calvin Klein and Sony in its arsenal, Beyond the Wall has started a new chapter in corporate marketing with its collegiate-geared catalog of posters recreating popular ads.

The brainchild of two former Proctor & Gamble Co. employees, Beyond the Wall has transformed popular advertisements into wall decorations aimed at college students.

Co-founder Dennis Roche said college memories of a stagnant poster market prompted him and co-founder Brian Gordon to go into business, running poster art from the Coca-Cola polar bears to Valvoline race cars in their premiere catalog, which was inserted in The Daily Collegian yesterday.

And it is an ideal situation for companies, Roche said. After giving permission for their ads to be reproduced, companies merely had to hand over their negatives and let Roche and Gordon take over.

"If a college student puts your poster on the wall, that means the ultimate in hip as far as the advertiser is concerned," he said.

The two-man operation worked with a Fairfield University marketing class in a study that determined that 70 percent of college students rip out ads to hang on their walls.

"They move so often, they need to put up new stuff," Roche said. "We knew from being in college that this stuff made great wall art."

Browsing through the poster racks at The Apple Tree, 136 E. College Ave., Gina Perez (junior-life sciences) said she likes quality and originality in her posters.

"I look for something that's slightly artistic -- something that nobody has," Perez said. "I'd probably be more apt to buy something with clothing on it."

Trial runs of Beyond the Wall's catalog were successful at several colleges, including Michigan and Indiana universities, Roche said. Eighty schools are targeted nationwide, despite the absence of popular alcoholic product advertisments due to liquor laws, he said.

But Apple Tree's owner Earl Harner said that although he occasionally sees ads that may make a good poster, he is skeptical of Beyond the Wall's success.

"It really has to be something that will capture their imagination," Harner said. "It's really going to be a hit-or-miss thing."

Questioning the viability of selling ads as posters, Apple Tree employee Bob Dorsey said the posters' subjects might be the deciding factor.

"I think it would depend on if you were really a supporter of the company you were advertising," Dorsey said.

Darin Markford (senior-industrial engineering) also poster shops at The Apple Tree. He said he wasn't impressed by Beyond the Wall's 24-page catalog.

"Some advertisements are intersting or a little artistic or catch the eye, but I don't see anything interesting here," Markford said. "I don't see anything here I'd waste my money on."