Marilyn Monroe: the tragic glamour of Andy Warhol’s greatest muse

In this video, we turn our attention to leading Pop Art proponent Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn Monroe’ series, which, dating from 1967, is a complete portfolio of 10 screen prints, each produced in a different combination of intense, flat colours.

Like his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, Warhol responded to mass-media culture of the 1960s. His silkscreens of cultural and consumer icons – including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and Brillo Boxes – would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation.

Warhol created his first painting of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, in the wake of the American movie star’s sudden death at the age of 36. Tragedy, and its portrayal in modern mass media, fascinated him. At the time of Monroe’s death, the artist was enmeshed in his ‘Death and Disaster’ series, an exploration of gruesome images found in newspapers and magazines.

Monroe’s death pushed the narrative of tragedy and celebrity one step further and, in it, Warhol found inspiration for arguably the most important suite in his oeuvre.

View the original video here.

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