Why did Andy Warhol paint Marilyn Monroe?

Andy Warhol painted Marilyn Monroe as a commentary on the media and celebrity culture. The American artist was quick to jump on mass media’s penchant for treating glamour and tragedy with equal weight. Monroe’s suicidal overdose in 1962 was ideal fodder, and he reproduced her visage dozens of times, first painting the canvas with splotches of pigment to denote her hair, eyeshadow and lips, then printing the black photographic silkscreen, taken from a 1953 publicity still, on the surface, either alone, doubled or repeated in a grid. By reproducing her image, Warhol sought to show how Monroe's fame and status as a sex symbol transformed her from being an individual person to a mass-market commodity. His work provided a sharp rebuke to the media's obsessive intrusion into the lives of celebrities. On 1stDibs, shop a selection of Andy Warhol art.