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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 11
Lesson 2: American and European Pop art- Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?
- Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America
- Warhol, Marilyn Diptych
- Why is this art? Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans
- The Case For Andy Warhol
- Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe
- Fashion and alienation in 1960s New York, Marisol's The Party
- Claes Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
- Oldenburg, Floor Cake
- James Rosenquist, "F-111," 1964-65
- Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V
- Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags
- Pop and after
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Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe
Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe, Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 71.25 x 57 in. (211.4 x 144.7 cm), 1962 (MoMA). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- I am curious to know where this Warhol work sits on a timeline of his work? For Example, Where Campbell Soup cans was at the beginning, was this Marilyn before/after the multi Marilyn pieces? What significance was this gold one to him in relation to the other Marilyn's.. Is this the ONLY print/graphic he made in gold?(12 votes)
- Campbell's soup cans were before Marilyn. His first solo show was in West Hollywood, 32 Campbells soup cans were on display. I think 2 of them sold.(1 vote)
- How can a printed picture and a soup can be called art?(3 votes)
- Because it shows freedom of expression in new ways(17 votes)
- I get what your saying but comparing Marilyn to the Virgin Mary, really? Did Warhol make that comparison? That's what I want to know.(6 votes)
- No he didn't he could use facts to find that out though due to him not knowing her personally(0 votes)
- When I looked at a book about Andy I saw another pic. about her called Lavender Marilyn Monroe. It looks the 95% same but in the video it's bad in the book it says it's good?
Why is this?
PS this pic is the one that I saw not to be confused in the others http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/11978/12119816_1.jpg?v=8CEC8C9CA3A78F0(1 vote)- An important thing to remember when studying art and reading/listening to other people talk about it is how subjective viewing art can be. Someone else looking at the picture you linked might find those colors beautiful. I don't know what book you were reading, but I do want to note that in this video, the speakers refer to the coloring as "horrible" but consider the overall effect of the work "good." It could be that in your book, the colors are considered "good" because of the effect that they have, and your book and this video are in agreement.(5 votes)
- Pop art really change the culture in the art world including in the area of Marketing today Social Media is used widely including illustrations often for example "Fanart" are some general ideas is the internet and graphic design artists today changing the Art Culture and is there works being displayed and are famous?(2 votes)
- and if im going to be honest, i really do not know why he really had to print it to even call it a so called "painting", and it has no work to it either, this just makes this whole picture a waste of time.(2 votes)
- If this was actually a newspaper cutout that had just been painted over in color, couldn't that in some way have been considered a form of plagiarism?
The same general concept is seen all the time in writing. One person will get general ideas from another person's work. Write nearly the same ideas with only minor modifications.(2 votes) - I want to know how does the texture give the history of Gold Marilyn Monroe. Here's an example of what I'm sayng:The campbell soup painting showed he loved campbell's sops.(2 votes)
- Yes I agree with WesJohansen- but you also have to look at it in context of Warhol's death and disaster series!(1 vote)
- Some historians believe that Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide. Instead, there is a popular belief that shed was either murdered in her star turn of fame, right at the highest peak of glory. She could have been poisoned or drugged. From some sources, I think that Monroe drugged herself after eating too many pills to cure her depression. She may have reached a point where her depression burst and decided she did not want to live anymore.(2 votes)
- Whether those who do not believe that Ms. Monroe committed suicide are, indeed, historians or not is at issue here. These are people, to be sure, but to cast doubt on the police report is just irresponsible fake news.(0 votes)
- Can some one answer this question for me? Why and when did Marilyn monroe committed suicide?(1 vote)
- Here, this website will help you with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marilyn_Monroe(1 vote)
Video transcript
SPEAKER 1: The Fourth Floor
of the Museum of Modern Art, in the room devoted to pop art. And we're looking at a
really great painting. SPEAKER 2: It's actually
a really large painting. SPEAKER 1: And it's not
really a painting, entirely. It's called "Gold Marilyn"
as in Marilyn Monroe. It's from 1962. And it's not only that it's
big, but it feels expansive, because most of the
canvas is covered with this kind of slightly
metallic bronzish gold paint. SPEAKER 2: Marilyn's
head sort of floating-- SPEAKER 1: In a
rectangle in the center. SPEAKER 2: In the
very center of it. SPEAKER 1: Too small. I mean, really sort
of weirdly isolated within the plane of the gold. But look at Marilyn's head. First of all, this is
interesting because it was from, if I
remember correctly, the last photo session
that she vetted and she sort of approved. And if you look at it, it's
actually terribly printed. It's not painted at all. SPEAKER 2: No. It's a print, right? SPEAKER 1: Yeah, from
a newspaper, right? From a photograph from
a newspaper that's been blown up, printed in
black, and then really garishly over-printed with
bad registration with these horrible
colors that came right out of Dick Tracy comic strips. This yellow on top of the
black for the hair, right? SPEAKER 2: And the red for the
lipstick, and the green eye shadow. SPEAKER 1: Oh, god. This turquoise. It's just awful, isn't it? And then, really,
the most glamorously garish, the red of the
lips over the black. Now, this was right
after her suicide. So this is very powerful stuff. So this is almost in memorial. I think it's got
religious overtones. I think this is a kind of icon. I think that the
gold is functioning like the gold in a
Byzantine painting, and she's replaced
the Virgin Mary. She is, in our consumer culture,
in our culture of glamour, of fame, which was incredibly
important to Warhol, she is now-- SPEAKER 2: Well,
that is our culture. That is who we are. SPEAKER 1: And that's
Warhol's brilliance, that he's not thinking about
the history of art so much as what is authentic to now. And in fact, let's go back
to the printing issue. Warhol, I think, makes this
really interesting assessment, which is that painting is no
longer an entirely authentic process in 1962, when
we live in a world that is a world of manufacture,
of mass production. Then he steps back
and he stops painting. He starts making prints,
which are in multiple. He starts hiring people to
make his prints for him, and he does this in a studio
which calls the factory. This has got to have been
upsetting, in fact, to people who were still looking
for the craft of painting. SPEAKER 2: Painting. SPEAKER 1: And worse than that,
what pop's main issue was, turning the still life, the
landscape, traditional history painting, what was
left of it, all of those, in a sense ancient
traditions, on its head and looking to popular culture. I mean, painting no longer
the Virgin Mary but a pop icon is an incredibly
powerful, aggressive statement against Western culture. It was Lichtenstein who was
asked in-- I think it was 1961 or '62-- what was pop art? And he said after
abstract expressionism, we could take an oil-soaked
rag, put it on the wall, and somebody would
call it a work of art. We were looking for something
that was still despicable. And he said the thing that
was still really despicable was popular visual culture. SPEAKER 2: Right. SPEAKER 1: Was the stuff
of our commercial world. SPEAKER 2: The low culture. To me this opens
up a whole issue about identity and the
way we assume identity. SPEAKER 1: This is not Marilyn. In fact, we don't have any
access to who she actually is at all. SPEAKER 2: Exactly. SPEAKER 1: What we
have here is her mask.