Gold Marilyn Monroe

1962 · Painting

May one see it?

Yes, receiving visitors

The Museum of Modern Art

New York, United States

RoomMoMA, Floor 4, 420

On public display.

Checked: 11 days ago
Source: The museum's own collection data

On the map Museum page

About the painting

Gold Marilyn Monroe is a screenprint painting by Andy Warhol based on a photograph of the actress Marilyn Monroe's face centered on a large (6 ft 11 in (2.11 m) x 4 ft 9 in (1.45 m)) gold-painted canvas. Warhol used silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. It was completed in 1962, the same year as Monroe's death. The image of Monroe is a direct copy of a close-up photograph, a publicity still from her 1953 film Niagara.

Gold Marilyn Monroe was included in Warhol's first show in New York, at the Stable Gallery in November 1962, where the architect Philip Johnson bought it. He eventually donated it to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, where it remains.

Read on

Marilyn Diptych was another 1962 work by Warhol featuring 50 repeated images using the same photo, half in bright color and half in blurry black and white. In 1967 Warhol used the same photograph again for his Marilyn Monroe portfolio a set of ten brightly and differently colored screenprints.

Wikipedia CC BY-SA

Particulars

Accession number: 316.1962

Sources

The Museum of Modern Art: the museum's own open data · fetched 11 days ago
Image: The Museum of Modern Art — © the artist or rights holder

Meanwhile, in the life of Andy Warhol

The whole life

December 1961
The decision to paint money
After seeing Claes Oldenburg's installation The Store in December 1961, Warhol went home frustrated, feeling his comic-strip paintings were no longer original enough. He accepted Muriel Flatow's tongue-in-cheek advice, given for $50, to paint what he liked most — money — and began painting dollar bills.
1961–1962
Mastering silkscreen
Seeking technical advice, Warhol turned to Floriano Vecchi of Tiber Press, who showed him the basics of silkscreen printing: transferring designs to acetate, preparing screens and pulling ink with a squeegee. The experiments became a turning point and soon led to some of his earliest silkscreen works.
9 July 1962
Soup cans at the Ferus Gallery
The Los Angeles dealer Irving Blum, surprised that Warhol had no gallery, offered him a solo show at the Ferus Gallery. Warhol sent 32 canvases, one for each variety of Campbell's soup; the exhibition opened on 9 July 1962 and marked his West Coast debut.
October 1962
“The New Realists” at the Sidney Janis Gallery
Invited by the dealer Sidney Janis, Warhol took part in the exhibition The New Realists, showing 200 Soup Cans, Big Campbell's Soup Can 19c (Beef Noodle) and Do It Yourself (Flowers). The show was widely seen as a turning point for the acceptance of Pop art: The New Yorker likened its effect on the New York art world to an “earthquake”.
6 November 1962
First solo Pop show in New York
The filmmaker Emile de Antonio introduced Warhol to Eleanor Ward of the Stable Gallery, who agreed to a show in exchange for a painting of a two-dollar bill; the eighteen new works included Marilyn Monroe Twenty Times and Red Elvis. Michael Fried wrote in Art International that of all the painters working in the service of a popular iconography, Warhol was probably the most single-minded and the most spectacular.
1964
The Factory on 47th Street
By 1964 Warhol had moved his studio to 231 East 47th Street, which became known as the Factory; Billy Name covered it in aluminium foil and silver paint. The poet Gerard Malanga helped him with silkscreens and films, and working with assistants became a lasting feature of his method.