Marilyn Monroe IV

Andy Warhol found his subject in tragedy. Just weeks after Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, he began building what would become his signature series, pulling from a single publicity photo taken for her 1953 film Niagara. This 1967 print carries his favorite move, a bold reshuffling of color that leaves the star with a green face, blazing golden hair, and a mellow green backdrop. By repeating one famous image over and over in loud, unnatural tones, he was poking at how fame works and how we treat celebrities like products to be endlessly reproduced.

The flat, punchy look comes from silkscreen printing, a method Warhol lifted straight from advertising. That was no accident. He genuinely liked the notion that art could roll off an assembly line the same way soup cans or magazine ads did, and he spent his career smudging the border between fine art and pop culture. If you scan the surface, you will find little slips where the ink shifts or does not quite register. Warhol kept those mistakes on purpose, a small nudge reminding us that even a legend comes down to color pressed onto paper.