Warhol Influence On Marilyn Monroe

With the rise of celebrity icons, we can begin to notice that Pop Art’s interest in these people created an extra layer of publicity and attention. The movement drowned itself in the cultural obsession of glamour and fortune and showed how easily the media could manipulate dictate fame. Warhol was a unique man and harboured a life-long excitement for fame, that of others probably more so than his own, believed that “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” FOOTNOTE. He began creating silkscreens in the early sixties, a method that he would practice for his entire career. Using images of car crashes, sports games, newspapers and film icons; his arguably most notable work was that of Marilyn Monroe and although he was enamoured with Hollywood during the fifties, using Marilyn as the subject for his art did not come about until the autumn of 1962. Marilyn died on August 5th earlier that year, Warhol used a publicity photograph from the peak of her career to crop, drawing the viewer’s main attention toward her face, and print on a series of canvases. The chosen image depicted Marilyn within the perfect time and expression. He repeated this image obsessively in Marilyn Diptych (FIG ME), on the left panel he used bright colours yet on the right he used monochromatic shades which convey a similarity to that of a heated printing press that is running out of ink.