[MUSIC PLAYING]
We're here at the Museum of Modern Art,
one of my favorite art museums.
We're going to get a chance to see some of the most
famous works of art.
Let's get inside and get started.
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This episode is funded by the Glick Fund and the Christel
DeHaan Family Foundation, who inspire
philanthropy and creativity.
We are here in front of the-- ah, I'm so excited--
one of my favorite Warhol paintings with Larissa Bailiff.
Thank you so much for taking some time
to talk to us about this.
You're very welcome, Nate.
I am so anxious.
Please tell us about this beautiful, big painting.
Well, in some ways it speaks for itself, right?
This large painting that is suffused with gold
and speaks to the notion of celebrity.
So this was made in 1962.
It's his first Marilyn, and it was made shortly
after she died.
So we're at the beginning of what
we call the Pop Art movement, that wasn't even full blown
at this point.
This idea of pop art that draws on consumer goods, mass media,
and popular culture, just the things
that Andy Warhol was really interested in.
How would he actually apply that paint?
I mean, what am I looking at when I look
at the Marilyn part of this?
So he's covered the surface with the gold first,
so that completely covers the surface and painted that.
And then he's used a process called silkscreen.
So he's working with a photograph that is screen
printed on a piece of silk.
You use glue, and the image is transferred,
and then the ink will avoid where
the glue is and then you've got the transfer of the image.
So that's placed on top, and then he's painted over that.
And you can see that, the sort of dark details
and some blurring, and also where
he's gone over it with paint.
Why the colors that he chose?
I mean, they're beautiful, contrasting against the gold,
but why did he use those colors so often?
Isn't it?
I think it's a really--
it's interesting, it's beautiful,
and maybe in some ways, kind of garish.
I mean, it certainly pops out.
When I look at those colors, I think, wow,
bright very much of the '60s, these dayglo colors.
And I think it's interesting, because in some ways,
he's coloring the face.
Instead of it being just black on gold, we get some details.
He picks up her platinum hair, but he magnifies it.
He shows us the makeup, for instance, she might wear,
although it's kind of messily applied.
But he let certain things pop, and it really
draws attention-- and the bright red lipstick,
for which she was known.
Oh, yeah, and the more I look at it,
it seems like it's, in a way, a shrine, almost to her,
or kind of a memorial.
Absolutely, I mean, knowing that she's just passed away,
and he's honoring her.
He's celebrating her in this portrait.
And she's surrounded in gold, right?
He grew up going to church and often in church
we find things we call icons, the idea of painted
saints sort of floating in painting,
often, in some churches, with a gold background.
So he's enshrined her, as you say.
This kind of face in the center there.
Since he was using a method that could be,
like you said, repeated, I mean, how did the artwork take--
we've got a graphic designer moving into this realm
of like painter?
Well, I mean, it's so very interesting.
And what about a graphic designer
not only moving into fine art, but using a film still, then
silkscreening it.
Yeah, it's kind of a little stealing, but yeah.
It's appropriating, right?
I mean, he's appropriating and pulling this image
and using, reusing it, so to speak, for a portrait.
Right, and what is the notion of a portrait, a one off.
And here, this is something you can potentially mass reproduce.
And in fact, he would go on to make many portraits of Marilyn
and other icons or celebrities, where he would repeat it
over and over again.
So we've got a lot of issues going on.
But to your question of how did the artwork receive this,
it was a little iffy at first.
At first, people said, that's your field.
You're a commercial artist.
Why don't you just stay in that.
Fine art is about the hand touch and the individual quality.
And people were looking to artists
like Jackson Pollock with the idea of abstraction
being this fancy, exalted style that was expressive.
And here Warhol is coming to it with a sense
of visual communication and instant identification
and using those tools of graphic design or commercial
illustration in really interesting ways
and to provoke us.
And so much of Pop Art is about that.
It's kind of exposing consumerism or showing
that things might be more about surface or playing
in between the idea of what is art and what is design
or what is advertising.
But then think about it.
Marilyn Monroe, she was a product in some ways.
She was a celebrity that people felt that they knew.
They knew her through magazines and through movies.
And even here, he's thinking about that idea of surface,
the idea of a film still, of a part that she's playing,
of make up to become something else that we
think that we know.
And some of that has to do with branding and advertising.
So he really allows a certain slippage.
Oh, yeah, definitely, especially with the colors.
In a lot of ways, it feels surreal, like you know her.
But then she's like untouchable.
Right, I mean, absolutely-- we think we know that's Marilyn.
But what is she really?
Is she playing a part?
Who is that?
And then all shrouded in gold, and I almost also
think about the way he's used that silkscreen in the center,
with that kind of roughness to it, the not polished image
there.
Yeah, it's almost got kind of a bleed
through, with this like black.
It's just not-- yeah, it's like he could-- you know,
he could have made it crisp.
He really could.
But it was a choice.
So on the one hand, we have this instantly recognizable.
Then we have this kind of blurriness,
maybe kind of keeping us a little at distance,
or maybe it's like a fade out.
Here she is a golden goddess of the silver screen.
Thank you so much for taking some time
to talk about this painting, Larissa.
It is beautiful.
I so appreciate it.
Thank you, Nate. it's been great fun.
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