Description

Marilyn (F. & S. II.29)
Silkscreen lithograph on paper
Signed in the plate, numbered 911, edition of 2400
Stamped on verso by the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA)

“The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.” — Andy Warhol

Vivid, confrontational, and unapologetically modern, this silkscreen portrait of Marilyn Monroe distills the essence of Warhol’s Pop vision: the blurring of icon and individual, of glamour and artifice.

The viewer is met with a searing contrast of electric vermilion and cool cyan, as Monroe’s face emerges like a beacon of mid-century celebrity culture. Her features are rendered in a flattened palette: a ghostly pale visage juxtaposed against smoldering orange hair and haunting turquoise eyeshadow, all punctuated by Warhol’s distinctive use of metallic grey.

This print is part of a limited edition series produced under the auspices of the Carnegie Museum of Art, identifiable by the stamped authentication on the verso. Warhol himself gave permission to Carnegie Museum to print these 2400 copies before to destroy the matrix.

With its misaligned layers and painterly silkscreen overlays, the print embraces imperfection as form, the very hallmark of Warhol’s method. It is both mechanical and deeply intimate, embodying his fascination with repetition and the mass reproduction of beauty.

Curator’s Note:

The Marilyn series began in 1962, shortly after the untimely death of Marilyn Monroe. Warhol sourced the image from a publicity still from the 1953 film Niagara, and used it as the photographic foundation for a silkscreen, the mechanical matrix through which he reanimated her likeness in bold, often lurid colors.

This choice was no accident. Warhol was fascinated by the commodification of beauty and the myth of the celebrity. In Monroe, he found the perfect muse and martyr: iconic, idealized, and tragically human.

This image is an artifact of a cultural moment, Warhol’s dialogue with mortality and fame, and his transformation of Monroe from tragic figure to eternal icon. It invites reflection on the commercialization of identity, the fetishization of celebrity, and the transient nature of cultural memory.

Whether viewed as critique, celebration, or elegy, Warhol’s Marilyn remains timeless, as relevant in today’s media-saturated world as it was the moment it was conceived.