Necia Chronister

On Beauty

Andy Warhol�s Marilyn

At first glance, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn series is a colorful, playful take on a pop-culture icon. In this piece, nine images of a coquettish Marilyn Monroe gaze out at the viewer, her hair and make-up in iconic perfection, recreated through screen printing in bright, synthetic colors. As the spectator begins to focus on one or more of the individual panes, however, it becomes clear that this is not the Marilyn Monroe that we know from the movies. Her eyes no longer give that “come hither” stare, but are rather smudged. Her hair begins to look like a bad wig, and her features appear detached from her face. In Marcuse’s terms, the Marilyn Monroe of the silver screen belongs to the “affirmative culture,” meaning that her beauty promises the possibility of happiness without changing the material circumstances of the viewer and without evoking the viewer’s critical consideration of his own place in capitalist society. Warhol’s Marilyn does not belong to this culture. His Marilyn is the icon represented in its facticity: the icon that is totally synthetically constructed by the market. I argue that because Warhol’s Marilyn collapses the distance between the material world and the Ideal, between the facticity of the market and the image of beauty, her image is one that takes a step in eliminating the affirmative culture, and thus performs what Marcuse suggests at the end of his essay.

First and foremost, Warhol’s work comments on the violence necessary in creating the icon of beauty and happiness. He dismantles Marilyn’s image violently, dissecting her facial features from one another through the use of bright, contrasting colors. Her eyes, lips, and hair stand out as the elements most commodified by the affirmative culture. Even in the most realistic of the panes, her hair, lips, and eyes are painted over in wildly synthetic colors. Marilyn’s natural beauty is not enough, but must be covered over by lipstick, hair dye, and eye shadow. Marilyn’s image becomes divorced from her person, indicating the violence done in Hollywood to the person (in this case Norma Jean) behind the icon (in this case Marilyn Monroe). Once the beautiful image is dismantled, we see the means of production of the illusion. Warhol uses the technology of screen-printing—a medium that requires the artist to apply separate colors in different layers and in different processes—to emphasize the disconnectedness of the different facial features and hair. Because of the artificial look produced by screen printing and because the use of synthetic colors, the work calls attention to the process of constructing an image. The viewer becomes aware that Marilyn Monroe (the icon) is the product of many different processes and technologies.

Once we recognize that Warhol’s Marilyn (and by extension the Marilyn Monroe of the silver screen) is pure vacant image, the icon’s “soul” also comes into question. Marcuse discusses the soul as belonging to the realm of the affirmative culture, the only place where feelings of happiness and connectedness can exist in capitalist society. In artistic representations, the soul of the individual is able to connect with other souls (which accounts for the effectiveness of the work of art in an age of the isolated individual). Warhol, however, explodes the possibility of the soul in artistic representation. By revealing Marilyn’s image for what it is—merely constructed representation—he comments on the impossibility of the market to create an image with a soul. We see this in Marilyn’s vacant stare—the person is no longer person, but merely image, merely bright colors on canvas. Subsequently, Marilyn can no longer satisfy the soul, but rather, activates the critical mind.

At the end of his essay, Marcuse calls for a return to true sensuality, that is, for the individual to stop looking beyond the material world for happiness. To be sure, the Marilyn Monroe of the silver screen represents the kind of “timeless beauty” and exalted sensuality that function to distract and satisfy those who look to the affirmative culture for happiness. In Warhol’s piece, this kind of sensuality is revealed for what it is: mere illusion. Her beauty is deflated, reduced to the facticity of the means of its production, as the viewer is reminded of the constructedness of the image. Warhol’s work performs the first step in eliminating the “affirmative culture”: it deflates the illusion of happiness that the “affirmative culture” produces, grounding the viewer again in his/her material world.

Image source: http://neocitrus.hautetfort.com/images/warhol_Marilyn.2.jpg