526 – Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe

Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Marilyn, 1967
Screenprint on paper
Private Collection

Speaker 1: You know Marilyn Monroe, after her suicide Warhol was very moved by her death, and began painting images of her, and that turned into the Marilyn Monroe series, which was his second major series after the Campbell Soup cans, and really cemented his place in the world of American Art. Throughout the 1960s, Warhol continued to be involved with celebrity. He even created the Factory, which was his studio in New York City. He called it the Factory, which was based on Hollywood’s nickname, the Dream Factory.

Warhol had this vision creating his own version of Hollywood, with his own sense of movie stars, so he pretty much quit the art business in 1965 to focus on filmmaking, because he did want to be a director. Then, throughout the 1970s, he began painting celebrity portraits. He would do celebrity portraits for hire, and the funny thing is he would never sell a single portrait, it would always be a double portrait of a celebrity. The reasoning was he could make twice as much money selling two portraits instead of one.