![]() ![]() To think of Warhol is to think of Marilyn – the bold colors, the instantly recognizable sultry eyes, the iconic simplification of forms. As we fix our face upon Monroe, the elusive nature of her life and death weighs heavy upon us, and we are ultimately forced to reckon with the somber link between stardom and exploitation. Like Marylin’s movies, Warhol fetishized and celebrated fame’s kitschy surface, freezing it in time. Reflecting philosophically on the meaning of reality and recognition, Warhol reiterated Monroe’s face compulsively, imitating how the relentless projectors of Hollywood’s Golden Age once had. Monroe epitomized the commodification of icons, a fame phenomenon sweeping through Western media in the 1960s. Her visage, imbued with unrivaled charisma and star appeal, amplified the artist’s own obsession with the notion of fame. Twenty years later, his favorite leading lady featured in Warhol’s Reversal series – the artist’s infatuation with Monroe never faded. In 1953 alone, he made over twenty paintings using the same image, and when he established Factory Additions in 1967, Monroe starred as his first published screenprint portfolio in Marilyn. Captivated by the power of her gaze and the alluring quality of her personal tragedy, the artist returned to her image time and again. Finding his muse in a movie still from her 1958 film Niagara, Warhol went about immortalizing Monroe in over fifty paintings. Shortly after hearing of Monroe’s untimely death in August of 1962, Warhol scoured movie memorabilia shops across New York City in search of the perfect image to commemorate the screen goddess. ![]() Instead, the artist-muse relationship became a force to drive the artistic process, with the role of both participants becoming equally important.Īndy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe are Pop Art’s acme. The trope of passive and powerless women being molded into an object of beauty by the male gaze became an outdated and futile endeavor. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, artists began to subvert this ancient tradition. Historically, the muse is a role reserved for women, characterized by a romanticized imbalance of power between male artist and female sitter. Often collaborating with artists in their most seminal works, the muse elevates their status and emboldens their practice. Over time, the word has come to refer to a person who is an artist’s source of inspiration, driving their creativity through the formation of an intuitive, visceral, and complex relationship. Evening & Day Editions London.įrom Beatrice and Dante to Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, to Gala and Salvador Dali, the artist-muse relationship dates back centuries millennia, even: the term muse itself channels Zeus’s daughters, the nine Muses, inspirational goddesses of the arts and sciences and the source of all knowledge emanating from poetry, songs, and myths.
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