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Lot Essay
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn (Reversal), depicts an intimate rendering of one of the 20th century’s most iconic visage—that of Marilyn Monroe. Executed between 1979 and 1986, the present lot belongs to Warhol’s exemplary and retrospective Reversal series in which he took his already-acclaimed Marilyn iconography and inverted her image. For Marilyn (Reversal), the switch in appearance is minimal, yet its affect haunts the viewer. The shadows of Marilyn’s face are eponymously reversed, glowing against the pitch-black canvas. This absence of color and presence of a shining, gray ink evokes photographic negatives and the silver screen—essential parts of Marilyn’s cosmic rise to stardom.
More than any other of Warhol’s reversal subjects—Mao, Mona Lisa, Warhol himself—Marilyn was his epochal muse. Exceedingly glamorous, yet simultaneously tragic, Marilyn was his perfect subject and he regarded her as a kindred spirit. He sympathized with the idea of a fellow artist whose talents were underappreciated, and whose very being was misunderstood. The beginnings of Monroe’s life were tumultuous; she spent much of her childhood between foster homes, but her luck finally began to change once she began her breakthrough modeling career. In 1946, she signed a film contract with Twentieth Century Fox and began appearing in films such as The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve which garnered her critical acclaim, and in 1953 Marilyn appeared as the lead actress in film Niagra, a melodramatic noir that exploited her sensuality. It was in this movie’s promotional images that Warhol found one of his most enduring images—a headshot of the actress which would become the source and inspiration for his Marilyn screenprints following the actresses’ death in 1962. Warhol augmented her fame by focusing an entire series around her. Since then, Warhol’s immortalization of the actress has surpassed her very own celebrity and become emblematic of Warhol and the themes pervasive in his oeuvre—tragedy, glamour, death, and artificiality.
Early screen print paintings such as Gold Marilyn (1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Marilyn Diptych (1967, Tate, London) celebrate the star’s vitality in their positive renderings. These glittering and colorful iterations highlight the dazzling allure of Hollywood, something Warhol daydreamed about in his youth. Once the artist began to consider his own artwork retrospectively in the late 1970s, he returned to his most famous imagery. David Bourdon writes of the Reversal series, “Warhol’s Reversals recapitulate his portraits of famous faces but with the tonal values reversed. As if the spectator was looking at photographic negatives, highlighted faces have gone dark while former shadows now rush forward. The reversed Marilyns, especially, have a lurid otherworldly glow, as if illuminated by internal footlights” (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 19898, p. 378). Paintings such as Nine Marilyns (Reversal) (1979 – 1986, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) multiply and invert Marilyn’s appearance, yet the present lot provides a more profound relationship between Warhol and Marilyn, the viewer and the artwork. Gone are the flashy distractions and initial allure of pop culture, in its stead remain a candid warning against the consequences of glitz and glamour.
Whereas other works from the Reversal series employ bold, psychedelic colors—whether blue, pink, green, red—Warhol deconstructs the movie star by focusing closely on an intimate portrait of her face in the most neutral of reversed tones, essentially distilling the lingering trace of Marilyn. This monochromatic version presents a singular icon juxtaposed against a dark canvas that illustrates a more somber and poignant side of both the artist and subject. At once nostalgic and verging on the abstract, Marilyn (Reversal) presents the starlet as an almost otherworldly apparition. This mythical presence brings to mind the haziness of memory in reverential fashion. The reversal technique, darkening negative space while bringing forward the actress’s main features in a lighter grey, accentuates what are her most recalled features: wavy light hair, thick eyelashes, and bold lips. These haunting characteristics reference the legend and aura of Marilyn who had tragically passed away the decade prior to this work’s creation.
In this visual cycle, Warhol tells an ongoing story in which the only constant is the essence of the source image, and whether you look at the original film still, the 1962 version, or this more recent one, the woman is the same, but the symbol has evolved. This painting is particularly significant in that these essential themes culminate in this singular portrait wherein Warhol appropriates his own, earlier images of the star. Marilyn (Reversal) carries with it a double layer of association: an appropriation of an appropriated image. As Isabella Geist has said of Warhol’s Marilyn series, “The irony of Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon” (I. Geist, “Warhol’s Marilyn,” via www.forbes.com).
More than any other of Warhol’s reversal subjects—Mao, Mona Lisa, Warhol himself—Marilyn was his epochal muse. Exceedingly glamorous, yet simultaneously tragic, Marilyn was his perfect subject and he regarded her as a kindred spirit. He sympathized with the idea of a fellow artist whose talents were underappreciated, and whose very being was misunderstood. The beginnings of Monroe’s life were tumultuous; she spent much of her childhood between foster homes, but her luck finally began to change once she began her breakthrough modeling career. In 1946, she signed a film contract with Twentieth Century Fox and began appearing in films such as The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve which garnered her critical acclaim, and in 1953 Marilyn appeared as the lead actress in film Niagra, a melodramatic noir that exploited her sensuality. It was in this movie’s promotional images that Warhol found one of his most enduring images—a headshot of the actress which would become the source and inspiration for his Marilyn screenprints following the actresses’ death in 1962. Warhol augmented her fame by focusing an entire series around her. Since then, Warhol’s immortalization of the actress has surpassed her very own celebrity and become emblematic of Warhol and the themes pervasive in his oeuvre—tragedy, glamour, death, and artificiality.
Early screen print paintings such as Gold Marilyn (1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Marilyn Diptych (1967, Tate, London) celebrate the star’s vitality in their positive renderings. These glittering and colorful iterations highlight the dazzling allure of Hollywood, something Warhol daydreamed about in his youth. Once the artist began to consider his own artwork retrospectively in the late 1970s, he returned to his most famous imagery. David Bourdon writes of the Reversal series, “Warhol’s Reversals recapitulate his portraits of famous faces but with the tonal values reversed. As if the spectator was looking at photographic negatives, highlighted faces have gone dark while former shadows now rush forward. The reversed Marilyns, especially, have a lurid otherworldly glow, as if illuminated by internal footlights” (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 19898, p. 378). Paintings such as Nine Marilyns (Reversal) (1979 – 1986, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) multiply and invert Marilyn’s appearance, yet the present lot provides a more profound relationship between Warhol and Marilyn, the viewer and the artwork. Gone are the flashy distractions and initial allure of pop culture, in its stead remain a candid warning against the consequences of glitz and glamour.
Whereas other works from the Reversal series employ bold, psychedelic colors—whether blue, pink, green, red—Warhol deconstructs the movie star by focusing closely on an intimate portrait of her face in the most neutral of reversed tones, essentially distilling the lingering trace of Marilyn. This monochromatic version presents a singular icon juxtaposed against a dark canvas that illustrates a more somber and poignant side of both the artist and subject. At once nostalgic and verging on the abstract, Marilyn (Reversal) presents the starlet as an almost otherworldly apparition. This mythical presence brings to mind the haziness of memory in reverential fashion. The reversal technique, darkening negative space while bringing forward the actress’s main features in a lighter grey, accentuates what are her most recalled features: wavy light hair, thick eyelashes, and bold lips. These haunting characteristics reference the legend and aura of Marilyn who had tragically passed away the decade prior to this work’s creation.
In this visual cycle, Warhol tells an ongoing story in which the only constant is the essence of the source image, and whether you look at the original film still, the 1962 version, or this more recent one, the woman is the same, but the symbol has evolved. This painting is particularly significant in that these essential themes culminate in this singular portrait wherein Warhol appropriates his own, earlier images of the star. Marilyn (Reversal) carries with it a double layer of association: an appropriation of an appropriated image. As Isabella Geist has said of Warhol’s Marilyn series, “The irony of Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon” (I. Geist, “Warhol’s Marilyn,” via www.forbes.com).