On view
Susan & John Diekman Gallery
Blue Marilyn,
1962
More Context
Handbook Entry
Pop artist Andy Warhol was fascinated by celebrities and preoccupied with loss, mortality, and disaster. Warhol began producing his iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe shortly after the troubled actress committed suicide in August 1962. Around the same time, he began experimenting with silk-screening, a technique he used to reproduce existing photographs repeatedly, as if on an assembly line. Silk-screening tends to flatten the resulting image both literally and symbolically. Even the addition of acrylic paint, applied by the artist, does little to animate the Marilyn depicted here. <em>Blue Marilyn</em> belongs to the <em>Marilyn Flavors</em> series, eight of which, including this one, debuted at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1962. Like many of Warhol’s Monroe portraits, they are based on a black-and-white publicity still from the actor’s 1953 film <em>Niagara</em>. Alfred H. Barr, a Princeton alumnus and founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, purchased <em>Blue Marilyn</em> the year it was made and donated it to Princeton in 1978.
More About This Object
Information
1962
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1978," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 38, no. 1 (1979): p. 14-38., p. 21 (illus.)
- American realism of the 20th century, (Morristown, NJ: Morris Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1980), [non–paginated]
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 28 (illus.)
- Kynaston McShine, ed., Andy Warhol, a retrospective, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989), p. 218; no. 208
- Deborah Howes, Scott Sikkema, Charles Stuckey, et. al., Andy Warhol, a retrospective: the Art Institute of Chicago, June 3-August 13, (Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago, 1989)
- Marco Livingstone, Andy Warhol, a retrospective: a guide to the exhibition, (London: Hayward Gallery?, 1989)
- Kynaston McShine, Andy Warhol, Retrospektive, (München: Prestel, 1989)
- Giorgio Verzotti, ed., Andy Warhol, a retrospective: Palazzo Grassi, Venezia 25.2-27.5 1990, (Milan: Fabbri, Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas, 1990)
- Andy Warhol rétrospective, (Paris: Éd. du Centre Pompidou, 1990)
- Jonathan P. Binstock, Maurice Berger and Trevor Fairbrother, Andy Warhol: social observer, (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2000), p. 56, fig. 51
- Mark Rosenthal, Sean Rainbird and Claudia Schmuckli, Joseph Beuys: actions, vitrines, environments, (Houston: Menil Collection; New Haven, CT: distributed by Yale University Press, 2004), pl. 97; p.97 (illus.)
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 242, cat. no. 62; p. 243 (illus.); p. 319, checklist no. 481
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 56 (illus.)
- Johanna Burton et al., Pop art: contemporary perspectives, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT: distributed by Yale University Press, 2007), 142
- Ann Temkin, Color chart: reinventing color 1950 to today, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 56
