Marilyn Diptych

A 1962 painting by Andy Warhol pairs repeated, brightly colored images of Marilyn Monroe with a grid of fading black-and-white portraits. Its two panels contrast glamour with visual deterioration.

Silkscreen printing: A printing process that pushes ink through a mesh stencil onto a surface. Warhol used silkscreening to repeat Monroe’s photograph while allowing ink density and registration to vary.
Andy Warhol: An American artist and filmmaker associated with Pop art and images drawn from mass culture. Warhol made the painting as part of his early-1960s exploration of celebrity and mechanical reproduction.
Tate Modern: A modern and contemporary art museum in London, opened in 2000. The museum holds the Marilyn Diptych and displays its two-panel structure.
Celebrity culture: The social system that produces, circulates, and consumes public images of famous people. The painting presents Monroe as both a person and a mass-circulated image.
Mao (painting): A series of 1972 Andy Warhol paintings depicting Chinese leader Mao Zedong in repeated, brightly colored portraits. Its political subject contrasts with the entertainment celebrity at the center of this diptych.
Marilyn Monroe: An American actor and cultural icon whose film career peaked in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her publicity portrait supplies the image repeated across both panels.
Pop art: An art movement that drew imagery and methods from advertising, consumer goods, and popular culture. The painting turns a widely circulated celebrity image into a fine-art subject.
Tate Collection: The collection of artworks held by Tate, the United Kingdom’s national institution for modern and contemporary art. The painting entered the collection through a 1980 donation.
Memento mori: An artistic reminder of human mortality, often expressed through images of death or decay. The fading portraits have often been read as reminders of Monroe’s mortality.
Campbell's Soup Cans: A 1962 Andy Warhol artwork consisting of thirty-two paintings of Campbell’s soup varieties. It applies serial repetition to consumer packaging rather than a celebrity face.

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Postmodern artBroader topic: Its repetition turns a mass-media portrait into an emblem of postmodern image culture.