The pioneer of pop art, Andy Warhol, and his well-known Marilyn Monroe prints are a perfect example of a work of art that I, nonetheless, consider a work of art and in good quality, but which I do not have much taste in at all. Marilyn is a popular image that pretty much everyone engrossed in American culture has seen at least once in his or her lifetime. It consists up to ten prints that make up different combinations of varying numbers of each. I am focusing on all ten prints as a whole, which were created in the 1960’s using the process of silk screening onto white paper. Each of the original ten prints is square in shape and generally spans thirty-six by thirty-six inches.Marilyn prints of ten are lined up in a rectangular fashion, a row of five directly above another row of five. First of all, every print is the exact same image of the iconic Marilyn Monroe’s face but depicted in different bright color schemes that mark each of her facial features. The image itself is highly contrasted; therefore, each of her major facial features as well as her hair is clearly defined as well as the shadows resting there. She is shown with a subtle open lip smile and low hanging eyelids, as well as her distinctive beauty mark is represented. The first, top far left, print consists of the colors red for her face, pink eyelids and background, white hair, and orange mouth and neck. To the right of that print is one with a white face, a very light aqua color for the eyelids and background, yellow hair, and a red mouth and neck. The next print is in gray scale thus covering shades from black to gray to white. The fourth print however, is in negative or inverted form, thus having more colored aspects to it than the previously mentioned prints. The rest of the prints each feature many different bright colors such as many shades of blue, olive green, light pink, varying shades of red, dark yellow, and even gold and possibly silver amongst many others.
For various reasons, I do regard the Marilyn prints to be works of art as I also recognize that they are good in quality and their effects on the general public. The Marilyn prints are formed by silk screening, a process that can be difficult to master. I have not personally used the silk screening process but watched many fellow students engage in it during my high school art classes. The procedure can easily destroy a work of art if not done correctly, thus does require a relative amount of practice. Because of this, I do admire silk screened artwork and understand its fundamental workings. Not only do I admire the process itself, but also I am fond of the results. I take pleasure in the effects that silk screening creates, such as the crisp separateness of color and shapes as well as the overlap of shapes that create a bigger image. Thus silk screening, once mastered, can create whatever the artist desires in utmost perfection. As I have mentioned in my first paper, I admire and look for “perfection” when it comes to art and thus feel silk screened art falls under that category.
The next feature of these prints that I, personally, find to make it worthy of its good art status is the colorful nature. I enjoy the color schemes and its bright eye popping effects. As well as I like the repetition of the imagery and rotation of the colors across each individual print. I recognize that there was some sort of thought process behind the coloring of each aspect as well as the choices of colors.
Unquestionably the image of Marilyn Monroe holds its widespread popularity as well as a great deal of power. As an icon, she and images of her are statements within themselves. One thing that I admire about Monroe is that she set an ideal beauty standard that is very contrastive to the standard today. Monroe did so by her body type/dress size, she was a size 12, about the average dress size realistically, while women in the media today are constantly portrayed as a size 2 or smaller. It is obvious that I am more attracted to media imagery and symbolism that depicts reality more than those that do not. These prints were also made shortly after Marilyn’s death, which gives these images much more significance and influence over those who view it. Marilyn Monroe continues to live on in Warhol’s art.
Andy Warhol’s art, including Marilyn, make up the pop art movement. Pop art is fascinating because of its representational manner, often of mass-produced commodities and other popular culture themes and images. As its name states, pop art is popular, and is seen nearly everywhere. It is the type of art that almost everyone in America, as well as Britain, are familiar with and is generally well liked and considered works of art. I nonetheless agree that it is, in fact, art. Pop art has a tendency to draw attention to everyday objects, popular images, or celebrities and creates some sort of contemplation and even an inspiration of further admiration for the subjects of the pieces.
My understanding and agreement to the quality, creativity, and popularity of the Marilyn prints aside, I do, however don’t particularly care for the work itself. It is a piece that I would never consider purchasing, displaying, or showing any great extensive interests or inclination to.
To start off, I am personally not a fan of pop art. I can appreciate and even like few works, but as a whole, pop art does not have much of an appeal to me for different reasons. Foremost, as mentioned, pop art tends to already take preexisting images or objects already popularly viewed in culture, which makes many elements of pop art unoriginal. The isolated image itself of Monroe’s face is not one taken or created by Warhol, but taken from popular images elsewhere. I have a great deal of appreciation for original everything, whether it is art, thoughts, and so on. Originality gives art more meaning, in my opinion, as well as more contemplation for the viewers. For instance, if a painting was done in some sort of surrealist fashion of something the viewer has not yet seen before, they will begin to question the choices and ideas of the artist. They will wonder at so many things that this piece represents. Although pop art can still provoke contemplation of why they chose to use a specific object and why they chose those colors and so on, I feel there is less depth to the contemplation as well as the provocation of the pieces. This would boil down to the simple fact that pop art, especially the Marilyn prints, provokes absolutely no emotion in me which results me in finding the work purely boring. I am, by no means, saying that art absolutely must provoke emotion to be art, but I find more satisfaction in pieces that do.
Not only is pop art non-stimulating for me it also lacks a lot of complexity that I enjoy in art. I discussed my admiration for complex patterns and details in my previous paper; those of which I feel are not present in the Marilyn prints. There are no major details, no little hidden objects to search for, nothing that will be noticed upon later viewing. All that you see is all there is, for the opposite is what I enjoy a lot when it comes to art. Even Warhol once said, “I am a deeply superficial person.”
Although I recognize the difficulty of mastering the silk screening process, once mastered it merely becomes a machine that easily does the painter’s work for him or her. I am not saying there is anything wrong with using machines for art, but merely I am more appreciative of art that depicts the organic connection between artist and his or her work. A quote from Warhol states, “"Paintings are too hard. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. I think everybody should be a machine." To be completely honest, I lost a bit of my respect for Warhol after reading this quote. This displays what my expectations are of really good art that is worthy of my appreciation and pleasure. I feel a great part of being an artist is displaying your skills, your handiwork as an artist as well as your flaws, which creates more appreciation from the viewer of those abilities. Using a machine can then be something nearly everyone can do, hence anyone could remake the Marilyn prints if they wished to do so. This further enforces unoriginality to some degree that if generally made by machine and not the individual hand it can lose it ability to be one of a kind, depending on the type of art of course.
As much as I enjoy symbolism, I have no pleasure in those of Marilyn Monroe. The only such piece of admiration I have for her, as previously mentioned, is her more realistic body image in the face of modern culture. That aside, I am utterly uninterested in her and the constant bombardment of her face in our culture. I simply find her quite overrated anymore, a legend who receives very little of my respect, acknowledgement of her impact on culture aside. Hand in hand with my views on pop art, I find Marilyn Monroe’s imagery and symbolism boring and unoriginal in art as well as very unprovoking. I unquestionably appreciate art that strikes the passion in me; Marilyn does exactly the opposite for I have absolutely no passion for this piece. As a very passionate person, I enjoy the things in life that enhance and encourage that passion.
Andy Warhol, a well-respected artist, is completely capable of creating great art that good deal of people can appreciate including myself. Marilyn, however, is a perfect example of a work of art that I can acknowledge its quality but take no personal liking in. Lack of complexity, provocation, messages, contemplation, and originality in art are qualities that definitely determine the level of my inclination towards particular pieces. To best describe his art to me is to use his words, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”
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