Andy Warhol Andy Warhol Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol uses repetition in his work. I have chosen to look at 'Marilyn Diptych' 1962.  The reason why I like Andy Warhol prints is because of his repetition. By repeating the iconic image of monroes face it stands out more than just having one print of her because the repeating of her face gives the painting mass and the bigger the mass the more impact it has on the audience.
'Marilyn Diptych' is 50 prints of Marilyn Monroe’s face repeated across a board. 25 of the prints are in colour. Warhol's work is synonymous with pop art which employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. Then the other 25 prints are in black and white which look like they have all been photocopied. The black and white prints don't give use much of an impact then the colour prints do because the colour prints stand out more against the black and white prints.

Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962. In the following four months, Warhol made more than twenty silkscreen paintings of her, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity. By repeating the image, he evokes her ubiquitous presence in the media. The contrast of vivid colour with black and white, and the effect of fading in the right panel are suggestive of the star’s mortality.

Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art for galleries. Nevertheless, Warhol's screen-print images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans and sensational newspapers stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop art. Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In Pop Art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material.

Marilyn Diptych 

Andy Warhol

1962