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拍品专文
Featuring Warhol’s most enduring subject, Multicolored Marilyn (Reversal) demonstrates the artist’s lifelong obsession with celebrity and his ceaseless innovation in the medium of painting. Executed almost two decades after he first immortalised Monroe’s likeness in Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York), in the present work the artist updates his iconic image of the legendary actress for the disco age. The Marilyns are the first and most powerful of the Reversal series Warhol made between 1979 and 1986. Revisiting his earlier oeuvre and reinventing its already-appropriated imagery for a new generation, they set out a modus operandi which would continue for the rest of his career. Combining Warhol’s insightful examination of the notion of celebrity and relentless painterly invention, Multicolored Marilyn (Reversal) acts as a summation of Warhol’s entire practice.
Pulsating off the surface of the canvas, Monroe’s distinctive features pierce the darkness in electric blue and coral pink. Her pouting lips, distinctive coiffure and beauty spot are immediately recognisable as belonging to one of the twentieth century’s greatest cultural icons. Warhol builds on his foundational use of a pre-existing 1950s publicity photo as his source, depicting Monroe here in a reverse or ‘negative’ version with the tonal values switched. This simple device infuses his familiar image with a new sense of freshness and relevancy. While revisiting his earlier oeuvre, the work’s vibrant transformation also looks forward and speaks directly to a new generation of Warhol’s peers. As the critic David Bourdon points out, ‘By ransacking his own past to produce the Reversals and Retrospectives, Warhol revealed himself to be one of the shrewdest of the new wave of post-modernists. While modernism had been an ideal that survived throughout most of the 1960s, continuing its self-conscious search for new forms of expression, post-modernism, which gained currency in the “pluralist” 1970s, reflected an ironic attitude towards all aesthetic camps and displayed an indifference to the traditional hierarchies of “high” and “low” art’ (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York 1989, p. 380).
Warhol’s remarkable likeness of Marilyn Monroe was the perfect vehicle for his own project of reinvention. She had become one of the most iconic faces of the last half-century, and by the time Pop Art emerged was instantly recognisable around the world. Warhol regarded her as a kindred spirit; a fellow artist who was underappreciated by her peers and whose creative talents were often misunderstood and rarely appreciated for their nuances. The general public was quick to gauge Monroe’s physical attributes but few bothered to praise her talents as an actress and comedienne. Immediately after her tragic death on 5 August 1962, Warhol became so preoccupied by the idea of Marilyn as a media construct that he translated her photograph into an image that would go on not only define his career, but also the actress’s legacy too.
Warhol’s rejuvenation of his own prior work demonstrates his continuing hunger for innovation. Indeed, the last decade of his life was considered by some to be some of the most groundbreaking of his career, and in addition to his Reversals, during this important period of his career we see works that show an artist brimming with ideas, both in terms of content and of technique. Warhol was ahead of his time, just as he was at the dawn of Pop in the 1960s. Multicolored Marilyn (Reversal) exemplifies Warhol’s belief that ‘They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself’ (A. Warhol, quoted in K. Honnef, Andy Warhol 1928-1987 Commerce into Art, Cologne 2000, p. 90).
Pulsating off the surface of the canvas, Monroe’s distinctive features pierce the darkness in electric blue and coral pink. Her pouting lips, distinctive coiffure and beauty spot are immediately recognisable as belonging to one of the twentieth century’s greatest cultural icons. Warhol builds on his foundational use of a pre-existing 1950s publicity photo as his source, depicting Monroe here in a reverse or ‘negative’ version with the tonal values switched. This simple device infuses his familiar image with a new sense of freshness and relevancy. While revisiting his earlier oeuvre, the work’s vibrant transformation also looks forward and speaks directly to a new generation of Warhol’s peers. As the critic David Bourdon points out, ‘By ransacking his own past to produce the Reversals and Retrospectives, Warhol revealed himself to be one of the shrewdest of the new wave of post-modernists. While modernism had been an ideal that survived throughout most of the 1960s, continuing its self-conscious search for new forms of expression, post-modernism, which gained currency in the “pluralist” 1970s, reflected an ironic attitude towards all aesthetic camps and displayed an indifference to the traditional hierarchies of “high” and “low” art’ (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York 1989, p. 380).
Warhol’s remarkable likeness of Marilyn Monroe was the perfect vehicle for his own project of reinvention. She had become one of the most iconic faces of the last half-century, and by the time Pop Art emerged was instantly recognisable around the world. Warhol regarded her as a kindred spirit; a fellow artist who was underappreciated by her peers and whose creative talents were often misunderstood and rarely appreciated for their nuances. The general public was quick to gauge Monroe’s physical attributes but few bothered to praise her talents as an actress and comedienne. Immediately after her tragic death on 5 August 1962, Warhol became so preoccupied by the idea of Marilyn as a media construct that he translated her photograph into an image that would go on not only define his career, but also the actress’s legacy too.
Warhol’s rejuvenation of his own prior work demonstrates his continuing hunger for innovation. Indeed, the last decade of his life was considered by some to be some of the most groundbreaking of his career, and in addition to his Reversals, during this important period of his career we see works that show an artist brimming with ideas, both in terms of content and of technique. Warhol was ahead of his time, just as he was at the dawn of Pop in the 1960s. Multicolored Marilyn (Reversal) exemplifies Warhol’s belief that ‘They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself’ (A. Warhol, quoted in K. Honnef, Andy Warhol 1928-1987 Commerce into Art, Cologne 2000, p. 90).