Marilyn Revisited

By the end of the 1970s, Andy Warhol was everywhere.He was endemic, up there with Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola. His silkscreen aesthetic was instantly recognisable - the Warhol look had been used on album covers, in ads and on the cover of Time magazine. By this time,well over a decade after the death of Marilyn Monroe, it was hard to tell who had made who more recognisable: was Warhol famous because of his Marilyns, or was Marilyn still famous because of Warhol? The quintessential Pop artist, Warhol was all too aware that he had himself risen through the ranks of his former muses and subjects; he had his own media apotheosis, entering the gilded Parnassus of the rich, the glamorous, the stars and the superstars. He was a regular at Studio 54, appeared in international social pages, and even had his own magazine, Interview, in which he granted others their own fifteen minutes of fame, waving his own magic publicity wand, enacting that strange alchemy that could make anyone a star.

It was only natural that he now turned to the works that had made him famous and which had become so instantly recognisable as sources for his own special brand of scavenging from popular culture. This resulted in a new series of pictures, the Reversals. In works such as Nine Multicoloured Marilyns (Reversal Series),Warhol was looking towards his own works as inspiration, recognising their own unique place within the strange melting pot of images in his media-saturated age. It is not so much Marilyn who serves as the subject here as Warhol himself.At the same time, the actress’ fame is revived and resuscitated. By presenting the images in ‘negative’, with the majority black and only the detailing captured in vivid colours, he was also lending her a new validity more suited to the aesthetic sensibilities of the disco era. There is an electric vigour to the range of reds, blues, greens and yellows that burst through the dark background like fluorescent will-o’-the-wisps.

That dark background serves to highlight these patches of flaming colour while also hinting at a darker side to Warhol’s Reversals.This retrospective survey of his own career is infused with intimations of mortality, the artist looking back and contemplating his own achievements as he grows older. This inverted, negative image not only adds a ghostly look to the long-dead star, but also shows Warhol reflecting on his own life. The aesthetic at work in Nine Multicoloured Marilyns (Reversal Series) appears similar to that in his celebrated ‘Fright Wig’ self-portraits of 1986, revealing an artist trying to come to terms with his own legacy, looking back on the triumphs of his younger self two decades earlier, revisiting the garish, brightly-coloured silkscreens of his early fame and reimagining them, granting them a new, darker, more sombre incarnation.The pouting face of the long-dead actress takes on the role of the memento mori, revealing Warhol, despite his own disingenuous protestations to the contrary, as an artist of great emotional depth and substance. W.P.

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