Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn Monroe) - Andy Warhol

 

Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn Monroe) - Andy Warhol
Coleção privada
Serigrafia - 91x91 - 1967


The complete set of ten screenprints in colors, 1967, each signed on the verso in pencil and stamp-numbered 100/250, on wove paper, printed by Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc., published by Factory Additions, New York.
Shortly after Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death, Warhol purchased a publicity still of the actress from the 1953 film, Niagara. Over the following four months, Warhol created more than twenty screenprinted canvases incorporating the found image. Warhol cropped the image, bringing Marilyn’s face into greater focus and transforming a formerly banal stock photograph into one of the most recognizable and enduring motifs of twentieth-century art. Or, as Isabella Geist puts it: “The irony of Andy Warhol's ‘Marilyn’ is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon” (Isabella Geist, "Warhol's 'Marilyn'," Forbes Magazine, 24 April 2002).
With the image of Marilyn, Warhol found the perfect confluence of celebrity and disaster – two themes that fascinated the artist throughout his career. Marilyn Monroe personified the cult of celebrity, beauty and Hollywood glamor – but after her untimely demise, she epitomized loneliness, tragedy and the unfulfilled promise of the American dream.
In 1966, together with the art dealer David Whitney, Warhol began publishing print portfolios under the name Factory Additions, utilizing some of his most famous subjects, including Marilyn, Campbell’s Soup and Flowers. The artist's impetus here extended beyond the commercial—as Donna de Salvo explains, the concept of printing carried with it other ramifications: “Printing, or being ‘in print,’ represented a change in condition, a shift from a private, or inner world, to one that was external and public. It suggested desirability, that something was wanted by more than one person; or, as Warhol once proclaimed, ‘repetition adds up to reputation’” (Donna de Salvo, "God is in the Details: The Prints of Andy Warhol," in: Freyda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1967, New York 2003, p. 19).
Published in 1967, Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) was the first of the Factory Additions projects and it has since remained among the most celebrated of all of Warhol’s graphic productions. The Marilyn prints were the first technically complex prints the artist made. Using the same publicity image as his earlier paintings, the set of ten works were printed in a wide variety of color combinations, from strikingly muted blacks, silvers and greys, to brilliant—at times neon—pinks, greens and yellows. The divergent hues have the effect of transforming the image of Marilyn, from “dazzling or sedate, frazzled or assured, glamorous or gaudy” (Roberta Bernstein, "Warhol as Printmaker," in: ibid., p. 16).
Upon close examination of the full set together, one notices slight differences in registration– at times the subject’s features are coherent and properly aligned; while in other instances they are fragmented and askew. So instead of the same form repeated over and over, Warhol exploited the possibility of finding difference in sameness. Moreover, the use of intense flat but vibrant color often printed off-register heightens the sense of artificiality even beyond what he achieved in his paintings. According to Roberta Bernstein, “these are typical of Warhol’s portraits, which are almost always about surface appearance… they show what the public wants or needs to project onto people who become transformed into cultural symbols: people whose ‘faces seem perpetually illuminated by the afterimage of a flashbulb.’” (Ibid.) With the Marilyn portfolio, Warhol both elevated Marilyn’s iconic persona and at the same time made her more accessible to the viewer and to the public.
The present lot comes from the Collection of Barbara Spiegel Linhart. Moving to New York in 1965 with her son, Mrs. Linhart quickly became a major presence in the 1960s Contemporary Art scene. One of her dearest friends was art book publisher Harry Abrams, who first brought her to the Factory and introduced her to Andy Warhol in 1967, sparking a lifelong fascination with the artist. Mrs. Linhart purchased Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) in 1969 directly from David Whitney, who oversaw the production of the prints and selected most of the colors used in the portfolio. This exceptional provenance, combined with the vibrant colors of this particular set and very good condition present the best possible example of this important set of screenprints, arguably the most important suite in Warhol’s oeuvre.

Nota do blog: Vendido na Sotheby's por USD 3,045,000.