Shot Sage Blue Marilyn 1964

Here is Andy Warhol's rendering of Marilyn, a screenprint with bold blocks of colour. I can imagine the act of printing, the squeegee dragging ink across the screen, each layer building the image. I wonder, what was Warhol thinking as he chose these colours? The sage blue background feels cool and detached, a stark contrast to the bright yellow hair and the shocking pink of her face. There's something unsettling about this combination, a tension between the glamorous facade and the underlying sense of alienation. The red lips pop, but the baby blue eyeshadow feels a little off, like a mask slipping. Warhol’s work makes me think about the repetition and seriality in art. He takes an image and repeats it endlessly, but with subtle variations, like a mantra or a song stuck in your head. And I also see him in relation to other artists like Elaine Sturtevant, who re-makes the works of other artists, or Sherrie Levine, who re-photographs famous photographs. Each of these artists is thinking about what it means to make an image, to copy an image, to transform an image. It's all one big conversation!