Once the screens are manufactured and the colors are chosen, the artist simply spreads inks evenly over the screens using a wide squeegee. The work has received praise from writers such as American academic and cultural critic Camille Paglia, who wrote in 2012's Glittering Images lauding how it shows the "multiplicity of meanings" in Monroe's life and legacy. For example, in this painting, we can identify the hallmarks of Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.As in the work of these older artists, the monumental scale of Warhol takes as the subject of his painting an impersonal image. These references to mechanical forms of reproduction further prove that for Warhol, painting is no longer an elevated medium distinct from popular culture.Aside from radically changing our notion of painting, Warhol’s choices create a symmetry between the artist and his subject, who each seem to be less than fully human: the artist becomes a machine, just as the actress becomes a mask or a shell. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Monroe's life combined themes that Warhol was fascinated by; death and celebrity. It is an invitation to consider the consequences of the increasing role of mass media images in our everyday lives. Though there are differences from one face to the next, these appear to be the accidental byproducts of a quasi-mechanical process, rather than the product of the artist’s judgment. The silkscreen process allowed Warhol (or his assistants) to reproduce the same image over and over again, using multiple colors. At first glance, the work—which explicitly references a form of Christian painting (see below) in its title—invites us to worship the legendary icon, whose image Warhol plucked from popular culture and immortalized as art.But as in all of Warhol’s early paintings, this image is also a carefully crafted critique of both modern art and contemporary life.With sustained looking, Warhol’s works reveal that he was influenced not only by pop culture, but also by art history—and especially by the art that was then popular in New York.
The painting is more than a mere celebration of Monroe’s iconic status.
In other words, Warhol’s “cool,” detached composition is the opposite of the intimate, soulful encounter with the canvas associated with Abstract Expressionism. Though he was an award-winning illustrator, instead of making his own drawing of Monroe, he appropriates an image that already exists. Even if we don’t recognize the source (a publicity photo for Monroe’s 1953 film True to form, the actress looks at us seductively from under heavy-lidded eyes and with parted lips; but her expression is also a bit inscrutable, and the repetition remakes her face into an eerie, inanimate mask. In this way, the painting suggests that “Marilyn Monroe,” a manufactured star with a made-up name, is merely a one-dimensional (sex) symbol—perhaps not the most appropriate object of our almost religious devotion.While Warhol’s silkscreened repetitions flatten Monroe’s identity, they also complicate his own identity as the artist of this work. The repetition of her face reflects the public interest in Monroe's life, and her constant presence in the media. With sustained looking, Warhol’s works reveal that he was influenced not only by pop culture, but also by art history—and especially by the art that was then popular in New York. Warhol’s use of the silkscreen technique further “flattens” the star’s face. Warhol made his first paintings of Marilyn Monroe soon after the actor died of a drug overdose in 1962. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Then again, by making her face so strange and unfamiliar, he might also be trying to re-sensitize us to her image, so that we remember she isn’t just a symbol, but a person whom we might pity. By screening broad planes of unmodulated color, the artist removes the gradual shading that creates a sense of three-dimensional volume, and suspends the actress in an abstract void.
Cite this page as: Tina Rivers Ryan, "Andy Warhol, An Introduction to photography in the early 20th centuryRepresentation and abstraction: looking at Millais and NewmanGeorges Braque and Pablo Picasso: Two Cubist MusiciansThe Cubist City – Robert Delaunay and Fernand LégerRussian Neo-Primitivism: Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail LarionovDe Stijl, Part II: Near-Abstraction and Pure AbstractionThe origins of modern art in São Paulo, an introductionInternational Style architecture in Mexico and BrazilWhen the department store was new: Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, Joseph Stella, The Voice of the City of New York InterpretedThe lure of the American Southwest: E. Martin Hennings, Representation and abstraction: looking at Millais and NewmanA Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYCGordon Bunshaft for Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Lever HouseLudwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York CityBreuer, The Whitney Museum of American Art (now The Met Breuer)Robert Venturi, House in New Castle County, DelawareZaha Hadid, MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century ArtsReceive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.
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