Crime Story "Turquoise Marilyn": Who and Why Shot at Warhol's Painting

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The work, created after the suicide of the most famous actress of all time, Marilyn Monroe, is one of 27 iconic paintings by Andy Warhol. And a criminal story is also connected with it, because "Turquoise Marilyn" almost fell into the hands of a criminal.

A striking example of Andy Warhol's POP-ART style is the series Shot by Marilyn. These are four pictures of the same type, with the same image of a diva, but with different color schemes. Warhol's "Shot Marilyn" epitomizes everything pop art is. First of all, thanks to a reference to the diva Marilyn Monroe herself, who was a pop culture icon. Pop Art began its movement in London thanks to an independent group of artists who were attracted by advertisements depicting American popular culture. In this regard, everything related to mass culture, be it music, advertising or dance, has become the main theme of British pop art.

The role of Marilyn in the work of Warhol

Warhol's obsession with the actress as a media heroine has led him to create hundreds of variations with Marilyn. The paintings reflected various color schemes throughout his career. Warhol experimented with vibrant hues that became iconic in pop art. Marilyn Monroe personified two of Andy Warhol's favorite themes: the pop-art symbol and the celebrity cult. Over the next two years, Warhol made thirty silk-screen prints of Marilyn, using the same cropped promotional photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. The photographer was Jean Corman and the picture was taken outdoors. A set of nine works by Warhol was released in 1967 with a circulation of 250 copies. Over the next twenty years, Warhol revisited his Marilyn series several times, adding new color schemes: pumpkin, black-brown, blue and bright green.

Golden Marilyn

Particularly interesting is "Golden Marilyn", which became Warhol's first work after the death of a movie star. He used iridescent gold on canvas, and in the center, using silk-screen printing, depicted the face of a star. The Golden Marilyn style is reminiscent of Byzantine Christian icons. Warhol's Golden Marilyn was sold to architect Philip Johnson in 1964 for $ 2,000. He then donated it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the painting is kept to this day.

A tragic and partly criminal story is associated with a series of works by Warhol. One day, a visitor to Warhol's studio fired a revolver into a stack of paintings, leaving only one intact. She was Turquoise Marilyn.

Crime Story

In 1964, Andy Warhol was going to release a new series of works with Marilyn. These were the same images of a girl with different color backgrounds: red, orange, light blue, blue and turquoise. The artist kept them in his studio on East 47th Street in Manhattan.

As Warhol was finishing his new series, an American artist named Dorothy Podber saw the recently completed paintings stacked against each other in the studio and asked Andy if she could see them. Warhol allowed the visitor to view the work. Then Podber pulled the revolver out of her purse and shot four jobs with Marilyn. The perfect shot punched holes right in the center of the forehead of Marilyn's depicted face. Warhol was shocked. The criminal managed to shoot through 4 canvases, and the 5th remained unharmed (at that time it was located in another place of this studio). It was this incident that influenced what Warhol called his episode "Shot by Marilyn."

Who is Dorothy Podber?

Dorothy Podber is a wild child of the 1950s New York art scene. She gained fame for waving a pistol and piercing the forehead of the depicted Marilyn Monroe in the works of Andy Warhol. Prior to the crime, Podber was an independent artist and helped run the Nonagon Gallery in Manhattan, which showcased young Yoko's work. She also organized jazz concerts. There are also many dubious facts in the biography of Podber.

For example, she became notorious as the muse and accomplice of the artist Ray Johnson, with whom she organized impromptu events on the streets of Manhattan. In one, she and Johnson urged people on the street to let them into their apartments, where they then played speech therapists' records containing stuttering patterns. People were pretty confused, which is to be expected. Podber reveled in her reputation as a bad girl. In an interview in 2006, she said: “I have been bad all my life. My profession is to make fun of people."

How did the shot story end?

This incident, of course, spoiled Warhol's work. But the artist was not taken aback. Warhol decided to paint over the sealed bullet holes, keeping the trail of the shot on the canvases. He made this story not only public, but also sold his works for twice as much, renaming them "Shot Merlin."

Now all portraits with the "smell of gunpowder" are in the hands of private collectors. Warhol's clever marketing move led to the fact that for 10 years Warhol's record belonged to the 1964 "Orange Marilyn" silk-screen printing, sold at Sotheby's in 1998 for $ 17.3 million. In turn, "Turquoise Marilyn" - the only work that survived the shot Picked up - was acquired in 2007 for $ 80 million.