Shot Marilyns - portraits

Few faces are as instantly recognizable as Marilyn Monroe's, and Andy Warhol made sure of that. After the actress died in 1962, Warhol began making silkscreen prints based on a single publicity photo from her 1953 film Niagara. He repeated the same image again and again, switching up the colors each time, so her hair might glow yellow in one panel and orange in another, her face shifting from soft pink to bright red. The effect feels both glamorous and a little eerie, like watching fame turn a real person into a product you could buy off a shelf.

The odd name "Shot Marilyns" comes from a strange true story. In 1964, a woman named Dorothy Podber visited Warhol's studio, asked if she could shoot a stack of the Marilyn paintings, and pulled out a pistol. Warhol thought she meant photograph them. Instead she fired a bullet straight through several canvases. The damaged works became known as the "Shot Marilyns," and rather than ruining them, the incident only added to their legend.

This Pop Art approach was Warhol's signature move, taking everyday images from advertising and celebrity culture and treating them like art worthy of a museum wall. By using the bold, mechanical look of commercial printing, he blurred the line between high art and mass production. Today these Marilyns are among the most famous images of the twentieth century, a reminder that Warhol understood our obsession with celebrity long before anyone else did.