Andy Warhol

Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 18 November 1998, Lot 305
Sale: Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 9 February 2005, Lot 54
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 16 May 2007, Lot 217
Private Collection, Norway
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. The catalogue illustration fails to fully convey the rich surface texture of the brushstrokes apparent in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

 

"Warhol turned Marilyn Monroe into an emblem for our age: by constant visual reiteration, he distanced her humanity... Marilyn – victimised in life – became a kind of two-dimensional slogan after Warhol had done with her."
(D. Keith Mano, 'Warhol – Andy Warhol', National Review, 22 January 1988)

 

As the golden legend of tinseltown, Marilyn Monroe held a particular fascination for Warhol. Shocked by her suicide in 1962, he began a commemorative series which isolated her against various brightly coloured backgrounds. The present work, executed in 1981, shows Warhol returning to this renowned subject, this time adapting his screen in the creation of an exhilarating 'reversal' image.

The dawning of the 1980s brought with it renewed conceptual vigour to Andy Warhol's art and found him returning to the kind of artistic form with which he had first found fame in the 1960s. Now, with the silkscreen process refined to perfection, he began to produce powerful post-modern canvases which were amongst the first artworks to use 'appropriation' as their direct theme. Buzzing with colour and vitality, these paintings differentiated themselves from those executed previously, through their subtle manipulation of pre-existing images from art history, among them his own paintings, which by the late 1970s had themselves entered the cultural ether.

The vibrant Day-Glo colours here recall the vibrant and shocking palette of Warhol's earliest Marilyns where he had deliberately chosen lurid, conflicting hues to transcend the humanity of the recently deceased star. Executed at the creative peak of his late career, the present work belongs to the artist's retrospective Reversal Series, so called because of the negative, ghostlike impressions created by reversing the silkscreen process. As David Bourdon explained: "Warhol's Reversals recapitulate his portraits of famous faces...but with the tonal values reversed.  As if the spectator were looking at photographic negatives, highlighted faces have gone dark while former shadows now rush forward in electric hues. The reversed Marilyns, especially, have a lurid otherworldly glow, as if illuminated by internal footlights." (David Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 378). 

Electrified hues of pink, green and blue articulate the familiar features of Marilyn Monroe, the most legendary of celebrities and a true icon of Pop. Warhol's composition depicts Marilyn in a double repetition, giving the silk screened image a filmic appearance, as though it were itself related to the strips of celluloid of her cinema career. Dazzling colours are pushed to the forefront of the picture plane among swathes of lavish black pigment. Marilyn's features seem to explode off the pictorial ground, lending the present work an extraordinary visual punch. Luxurious and painterly, the isolated pouting face is articulated with shocks of bursting colour which shoot out of the composition, while the black pigment envelopes the film star's features in a mysterious, nocturnal veil.

 

With the repetition of the image of the dead Marilyn, Warhol makes her appear more abstract and therefore deliberately dissipates the sense of tragedy, an effect which is heightened by the colours – pop bright to the point of being lurid. He recalled the subject of death in his works, stating, 'I was also painting the Marilyns. I realised that everything I was doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day holiday – and every time you turned on the radio they said something like '4 million are going to die'. That started it. But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect' (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, Andy Warhol Death and Disasters, 1988, p. 19).

 

The intense fascination with Marilyn and her iconic status in America owed much to her looks and her 'girl next door' background. Born Norma Jeane, Marilyn embodied the optimism of the American dream, with her ascent to stardom, her A-list marriages to sporting hero Joe di Maggio and cultural icon Arthur Miller, and her 'Happy Birthday' song for President Kennedy. The tragedy of her untimely death, haunting and mysterious, embodies the futility and heartbreak of the failed Utopian ideal.

Warhol, celebrated the world over, chose to make these images to enshrine celebrated faces for posterity. Obsessed with the imperfections he perceived in his own appearance, from the outset Warhol had plundered instantly recognisable, glamorous images from the pantheon of modern celebrity to challenge conventional notions of originality and beauty in art. These readily available, 'Low' art sources to which he was drawn owed nothing to the traditional artistic practice but rather originated from the utopia of consumerism and popular culture. In doing this, Warhol questioned the validity of 'high' art expectations, for after all, what was more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe? And why should a picture of her be considered any less worthy of appreciation or artistic merit than one of Isabella D'Este, Madame de Pompadour or an anonymous woman with an enigmatic smile? In elevating the seemingly banal – celebrity portraits, images of car crashes, dollar signs, soup cans – to the status of high art, Warhol celebrated the dichotomies of tragedy and beauty, high art and low life.

Two Multicoloured Marilyns (Reversal Series) exposes the natural evolution that underscored Warhol's Pop conquest and importantly shows him to be a tireless innovator. In the Reversal Series, he returns to the same questions raised in his original Marilyns with self-referential vigour. Here he is not just scrutinising issues of authorship, authenticity and artistic value but also the legitimacy his own artistic code. In recycling this 'signature' motif in a novel and unexplored context, the result is a striking combination of old and new that demonstrates that by the late 1970s Warhol's image of Marilyn had now become more famous than Marilyn herself.