Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
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CECILE WHITING
A painting of a person's face may have nothing to do emphasised the 'brand-face' of his stars by mini-
with the sitter's personality: Andy Warhol portrayed mising detail, emphasising outline, and exaggerat-
Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor in the early ing expression. In Marilyn Monroe, for example, he
1960s strictly in their role as public icons. In con- focused on the surface features by which we recog-
trast, the popular press, from which Warhol pro- nise the blonde star hair, lips, eyeshadow even
cured the photographs for his silkscreens, never to the verge of caricature: Monroe's hair becomes a
relinquished its claim on these women's private straw-yellow cap, sharply outlined and stiffly
selves, even while it maintained their public iden- sculpted, resting firmly upon her forehead. In a
tities as movie stars. Popular periodicals, movie similar spirit, in Liz, Taylor's red lipstick extends
magazines and tabloids still publish photographs prominently beyond the outline of her lips, and her
and articles portraying the scandalous romances blue-green eyeshadow takes the form of two cut-out
and extravagant lifestyles of stars in the hope of shapes haphazardly pasted across her eyelids and
uncovering the private self that propels the public eyebrows. In both portraits Warhol insisted upon
star. Warhol denied the existence of a private self the exterior physical signs by which their subjects
lurking behind the facade of the public celebrity and are recognised.
he took effacement of the private even further by Warhol signalled his reliance on mass media
severing the connection between painted image and imagery in a second way by emphasising the formal
private artist as that relationship exists in both high- aspects of mass media photography the black/
art portraiture and in Abstract Expressionism. The white contrasts, garish colour, graininess which
negation of the private individual self in both act as the transmitters of the public star image. The
Warhol's portraits and his own public persona in the grainy shadows on Monroe's cheek and neck and
early 1960s had far-reaching political implications the way in which broad streaks of white show
because it subverted the principles cherished in the through Taylor's hair emulate the low resolution of
1950s by anti-communist liberal intellectuals and newspaper photographs. Warhol clearly imitated
the artists to which the critics among these intellec- the way the popular press presents movie stars, but
tuals lent their support. he exaggerated the appearance and style of both the
Warhol based his paintings not on Monroe and subjects themselves and the mass-produced photo-
Taylor's private lives but upon their public images as graphic images by which they are known. Warhol's
stars in the movies and mass media. In his painting paintings are not, therefore, about Taylor and
Marilyn Monroe (Fig. 1), Monroe appears in the guise Monroe as real people at all, but about their public
of a Sex Goddess with her famous sculpted hair, image in its purest form.
heavy eye shadow, and full lips. Even though Despite the fact that Warhol's paintings of
Warhol painted Monroe in the early 1960s after her Monroe and Taylor rely on mass-produced photo-
death, he selected as his model publicity stills of her graphs, the rhetoric of his paintings differs radically
from the early and mid 1950s when she reached the from that of the popular press. Warhol's paintings
height of her career in the role of the Blonde Bomb- are at odds with the popular mythology according to
shell. Likewise, Warhol depicted Taylor either as she which a star's 'true' identity lies trapped within a
appeared in movies of the late 1950s in works such as public image. The existence of the public image in
Liz (Fig. 2), with her teased jet black hair and sultry the mass media rests upon the foundation of this
smile, or in her most renowned role as Cleopatra, supposed private life, a private life which legitimises
Queen of the Nile in Liz as Cleopatra. Warhol made the reality of the public image. The popular press of
no effort to obscure the fact that the sources for his the 1950s and early 1960s ventured to unmask the
paintings of Monroe and Taylor lay in some of the private individuals who lay behind the public
most widely known photographic images of these personae of Monroe and Taylor by publishing inter-
women published in popular magazines such as views, articles and, aided by the perfection and avail-
Life, images which established their fame and iden- ability of telephoto lenses after the Second World
tities as stars. One of the reasons that we imme-
diately recognise the women in Warhol's paintings
without having to read their titles is that the mass
Fig. 7. Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe, silkscreen
media have so successfully typecast their appearance
as stars that their 'brand name' is a public self, an and oil on canvas, 84 X 46 ins., 1962. Rene de
immediately identifiable face and figure. Warhol Montaigue collection, Paris, courtesy of the Leo
Castelli Gallery.
War, photographs of stolen moments from their coin-operated photo booth, the photographs show
private lives. During Monroe's life, the press, driven her in a variety of poses: in one her head is turned, in
by the question 'What is Monroe really like?', another she has her finger in her mouth, in another
exposed her fickle nature, her insecurities, her she growls and grimaces. The photographs, because
marriages and her mental breakdown in 1961.' Up they appear to catch her in spontaneous and natural
to the week before her suicide the photographs poses, are meant to give us the sense that we are
which accompanied most articles tended to capture glimpsing the private, fun-loving Monroe, just as the
the kittenish, private Monroe. In a set of photo- interviewer, serving as an alter ego for the reader,
graphs by Alan Grant (Fig. 3) illustrating an inter- promises to bridge the unbridgeable distance
view with her entitled 'Marilyn Lets Her Hair Down between the private Monroe and the public reader-
About Being Famous', she appears smiling and ship.
playful. Stacked like a series of snapshots taken in a Likewise Taylor provided a constant dose of
private scandal for the popular press based upon her
diamond necklaces, her million dollar contract for
the movie Cle@atra, her affair with co-star Richard
Burton at the Cleopatra set, her five marriages, and
her near death in 1961.' Alongside articles about
Taylor's tumultuous career and love life appeared
-
photographs of her, usually arm in arm with one of
her paramours, snapped on and off the movie set
and at all times of the day and night. As Vogue
magazine wrote in 1962 during the production of
Cleopatra : 'The papers are full of Liz; and the Queen
of the Nile coiffure can be felt at least as far north as
Parky3 The combined photographs and texts
t
published in popular newspapers and magazines
flaunted Taylor's and Monroe's capricious person-
-
alities, adulteries, marriages, and divorces, trans-
forming the private lives of these female stars into
public spectacle.
The mystique of the public persona depends,
however, on the supposition that a star's private life
always remains at least partially unrevealed by the
publicity pages. While each revelation converts a
piece of private life into public commodity, it also
increases the drive for more information. Each new
sensational photograph or item of startling gossip
only pushes back the ever-receding horizon of the
unrevealed private life. Here the press engages in an
undertaking whose ongoing success depends on the
ultimate futility of its goal. The very fact that there is
always something left unrevealed and beyond the
" - 1 - -- 7 public's grasp gives the press reason to continue
trying to uncover the star's private self and the public
reason to continue to buy its wares. The photo-
graphs of Monroe in the famous nude swimming
scene shot for the movie Something's Got to Give
(Fig. 4) published in the June 1962 issue of Life, a
magazine meant for a broad, family-oriented
audience, function as a thinly disguised metaphor
for the effort to uncover the true private M ~ n r o e . ~
Yet precisely at this point where she is most
'revealed', the failure of the public press to unmask
the private self becomes all too evident. The image of
the semi-naked woman standing by the pool pulling
on her robe, half turned towards the viewer, with
tousled hair and tongue between lips, automatically
falls into the public category of the consumable
nude, well-rehearsed by centuries of painting and
pornography; Monroe in the nude embodies not the
private self but instead the woman posed and objec-
tified by the male ga2e.j And, as in pornography, the
exposed Monroe can not satiate male desire since
the moment of nearly complete physical revelation
only highlights the fact that the male viewer can not
actually consummate the relationship in reality. The
dynamic of the popular press operates like a strip
tease, promising access to the private self but never
delivering it.
& Monroe and Taylor were - perhaps unwittingly
THEOXFORD
ARTJOCRYAL - 102 1987
Warhol did more than simply avoid the private denied the very possibility of discussing the private.
self; he actively transformed the mass media's inter- Whereas pictorials in the media transformed the
play between the public and the private into a purely private into public spectacle. Andy Warhol dis-
aesthetic phenomenon. He disembodied mass- played the public symbol as straightforward aesthetic
produced photographs of his stars from their textual spectacle. He did not reveal the private, he elided it.
source whether newspapers or publicity stills This same device of effacing the private and pre-
and silkscreened them as either single or multiple senting the public operates in other Warhol paint-
images painted with bright metallic colours. The ings from the same period. The paintings which
differences between Warhol's many single-image come closest to those of Taylor and Monroe, of
Monroe canvases lie in the various colours or the course, are his images of male stars like Elvis Presley
graininess of the paintings, not in the various and Marlon Brando. Here the same rhetoric applies
emotional states of the sitter. Our impulse may be to except that these paintings lack the added punch of
read the variations in these images as representative evoking the woman-as-sex-commodity tradition
of different moods.14 But in Warhol's canvases there from popular culture. None the less these men come
is no correlation between changes in colour or as close as male subjects can to the Taylor and
shadows and the feeling or emotions of his model. In Monroe model because both Elvis and Brando were
each image Monroe's face is essentially the same; it famous in the 1950s as sex symbols, that hybrid
lacks any significant change in facial expression or in category which casts the male body into a tradition-
the positioning of the head. Warhol has simply ally female role. In the case of his paintings of food
applied different colours to the same basic face. products Campbell Soup, Heinz Tomato
Moreover, he has selected psychedaelic and metallic Ketchup, Coca Cola Warhol treated not the
colours which, in their newness and artificiality, dynamic of public and private within the popular
resist attachment to human emotions. If anything, press but that of image and product in American
the namesake colours in Warhol's Gold Monroe and advertising. Advertising rhetoric is virtually identical
Silver Monroe paintings refer more to the monetary to that of the mass media because a real product is
value of the public image than to the mood of the assumed to stand behind each advertisement image,
private sitter. and it is that product which is meant to legitimize
the product's public image. In Warhol's pictures,
A composite image of Monroe, such as Marilyn
however, the presentation is the product; there is
Monroe, might seem more likely to come into line
nothing behind the label. Warhol's aesthetic varia-
with the mass media's public/private dynamic, since
tions thus tend to efface the relationship of advertis-
it promises an emulation of the popular press's
ing image to actual product, much as it eliminated
strategy of presenting serial images of the star in the private self behind the public star.
order to gain insight into the multiple moods of the
individual subject (c.f. Fig. 3). We have already seen, Warhol's series of paintings of Jackie Kennedy
for example, how an artist such as Gill adopts the painted after the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
strategy of differentiation within repetition to imply would seem to be a blatant exception to his usual
a contrast between the public and private self. But operation of effacement. These canvases appear to
the images in Warhol's composite paintings lack any catch her at a moment of private grief mourning the
such distinctions. Warhol differentiated his multiple loss of her husband in the prime of his life and seem
stacked Monroe images with nothing more than the to penetrate to the real woman behind the public
aesthetic characteristics of the pictorial form. All role of the First Lady. But in fact Warhol's elimina-
twenty images in Marilyn Monroe are based on the tion of the private took its most extreme form when
same photograph and each is distinguished from its he adopted this subject since the funeral of the
neighbour only by the fact that some are blurred, President was the premier instance of the public
others streaked, some washed out, others darkened. presentation of private emotion in Warhol's lifetime.
Each representation of Monroe is simply an aesthetic Both the printed media and television converted the
contrivance, for all appearances the mere result of a funeral and the family's private grief into a spectoral
sloppy application of his silkscreen technique. public ceremony.13 Jackie Kennedy herself laid the
Variation in Warhol's pictures thus occurs only in ground for this press extravaganza by personally
the public realm of visual aesthetics. He pointed out helping to plan the details of the funeral which she
the pure image value of the public self by submitting modelled on Abraham Lincoln's: the press amply
the photograph of the public star to aesthetic play. publicized her central role in doing this, characteris-
To this end the use and emulation of publicity ing her as being as courageous and as dignified as
the tragic Mary Todd Lincoln. The parallel between
photographs in his painting makes perfect sense:
the Kennedys and the Lincolns shows the extent to
Warhol's paintings are not showing us any real or
which the funeral and Jackie Kennedy's public
private Monroe or Taylor, rather they depict the
display of grief followed an established protocol.16
public image of these stars as given by the popular
The nation witnessed the pageantry and emotions of
press and make us conscious of them as images or the funeral on live television and relived the event
symbols through the manipulation of colour and through the print media which published photo-
shadow. Warhol sliced off the private side of the graphs of the ceremony in chronological sequence.
dichotomy between the public and private self and
used in the painting were taken in a coin-operated gesture which connotes a different mood. Even the
photo booth, that popular and inexpensive machine fact that although there are 35 panels, Warhol titles
found in bus stations and department stores all his painting Ethel Scull 36 Times, suggests that his
across America. In using these four-frame serial painting functions like a portrait-pictorial in the
images as the basis for the portrait of this relatively popular press. All 35 panels together constitute a
unknown person, Warhol employed the multiple mosaic, a 36th portrait, of Scull. Thus he directs his
image rhetoric by which the tabloids and popular sources in popular culture to obtain the goal of both
magazines presented famous stars. Ethel Scull 36 popular portrait pictorials and high-art portraiture
Times includes over thirty separate images each of that of capturing the sitter's personality.
which is differentiated by physical pose and/or In the 1970s Warhol began to accept commis-
psychological expression (the work also includes a sions for portraits on a regular basis. These works,
few reflected image repetitions but these are well- while still recognisably in his style, entail a
hidden). In each of the thirty-plus images she has a commodity relationship between portraitist and
new facial expression, turn of the head, or hand client and fall entirely back into the tradition of
high-art portraiture.39 He depicts the wealthy and 3. 'The New Cleopatra Complex', Vogue, 139 (15 January 1962),
well-known, including Brigitte Bardot, Yves St. p. 40.
Laurent, Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, and Philip 4. 'They Fired Marilyn: Her Dip Lives On', Life, 52 (22June 1962),
pp. 87-9.
Johnson, most often in single (not multiple) images 5. See Geraldine Finn, 'Patriarchy and Pleasure: The Pornographic
titled either by 'Portrait of. . .' or by the sitter's full Eye/1', in Feminism Now: Theory and Practice, Montreal, 1985, pp. 81-95.
name. In these commissioned portraits the subjects 6. Richard Meryman, 'I Refuse to Cure my Public Image', Life, 57
appear in a variety of poses frontal or from the (18 December 1964), p. 74.
side, their heads turned or tossed back, smiling or 7. Ibid., pp. 81-2.
serious the standard conventions, in other words, 8. Richard Meryman, 'A Long Last Talk with a Lonely Girl', Life, 53
(17 August 1962), pp. 32-3, 63-71.
for suggesting real personality captured by the 9. 'I Love You . . . I Love You', Newsweek, 60 (20 August 1962),
portrait. In one, Portrait of Yves St. Laurent, for pp. 30-1; Clare Boothe Luce, 'What Really Killed Marilyn', Life, 57
instance, the designer appears dressed in a striped (7 August 1964), pp. 68-72.
blue shirt, bow-tie, and jacket, his cheek resting on 10. 'Marilyn Monroe', Vogue, 140 (1 September 1962), p. 90.
his fist, his eyes cast downwards with a serious and 11. Norman Mailer, Marilyn: A Biography, New York, 1973.
12. 'The Growing Cult of Marilyn', Life, 54 (25 January 1963),
contemplative expression on his face. The fact that
pp. 89-91.
St. Laurent, like Warhol's other sitters from this 13. Jean Stein, Edie: An American Biography, New York, 1982, p. 192.
period, is dressed in his own clothing and seated in 14. See, for instance, Roberta Bernstein, 'Warhol as Printmaker',
a 'spontaneous' pose is meant to suggest that in Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne, ed. Frayda Feldman
Warhol has succeeded in conveying his own and Jorg Schellmann, New York, 1985, pp. 15-16; David Antin,
personal sense of profound self, not a flattened 'Warhol: The Silver Tenement', Art News, 65 (Summer 1986), pp. 47-8,
58-9.
image of the public figure.
15. Warhol himself comments: 'I'd been thrilled having Kennedy as
But it is not just the private sitter who re-emerges President; he was handsome, young, smart but it didn't bother me
in these portraits of the 1970s; Warhol, the private that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way the tele-
vision and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad.' Andy
artist, surfaces as well. The style here has changed, Warhol and Pat Hackett, Popism: The Warhol '60s, New York, 1980,
for Warhol has reincorporated the verve of the p. 60.
Abstract-Expressionist gesture in order to signal the 16. See, for instance, 'President Kennedy is Laid to Rest', Life, 55
presence of his own artistic personality. Although (6 December 1963), pp. 3847; Dora Jane Hamblin, 'Mrs Kennedy's
the basic images in these works were still produced Decisions Shaped all the Solemn Pageantry', Life, 55 (6 December
1963), pp. 48-9.
by silkscreens, Warhol superimposed bold, painterly
17. 'President Kennedy is Laid to Rest', p. 38.
strokes of colour upon this visual foundation. In the 18. Warhol, Popism, p. 22.
portrait of St. Laurent thick strokes of paint appear 19. G. R. Swenson, 'What is Pop Art?', Art News, 62 (November
around the sitter's head and his left shoulder. 1963), p. 25.
Warhol's commissioned portraits, therefore, not 20. Warhol, Popism, p. 7.
only show a more private view of the sitter, they also 21. Jack Kroll, 'Saint Andrew', Newsweek, 64 (7 December 1964),
p. 102.
index the private artist, definitively converting his
22. See 'Soup's On', Arts, 39 (May-June 1963), pp. 16-18.
images back into the high-art portrait tradition. 23. Peter Gidal, Andy Warhol, London, 1971, p. 9.
The paintings of the 1960s which ride the line 24. Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back
between so many rhetorical forms collapse back into Again), New York, 1975, p. 7.
25. See 'Modern Living', Time, 66 (27 August 1965), pp. 65-6.
the banality of conventionalised portraiture in the
26. Warhol, The Philosophy, p. 33.
1970s. Yet at the same time the commissions for the 27. Stein, Edie, p. 182 and p. 250.
portraits during this later period depend on 28. One can infer the possibility of love from the Philosophy in which
Warhol's avant-garde status and style which was Warhol writes about Edie (she is named Taxi in the book) in a chapter
established by his early 1960s paintings. The recipe entitled 'Love(Prime)'.
of the 1970s is as clear as it was lucrative: to a solid 29. Stein, Edie, p. 247. In the Philosophy Warhol used the adjectives
'fascinated-but-horrified' to account for his reaction when he described
avant-garde reputation Warhol added the indi- this scene. Warhol, The Philosophy, p. 36.
viduating signs of private artist and private sitter 30. Gidal, Andy Warhol, p. 9.
which gave his paintings the added value of being 31. Richard Morphet, Andy Warhol, Tate Gallery, London, 1971;
unique commodities. Robert Rosenblum, 'Pop Art and Non-Pop Art', in Pop Art Redefined,
eds. John Russell and Suzi Gablik, London, 1969, pp. 536.
32. Morphet, Andy Warhol, p. 8.
33. See articles by Greenberg and Rosenberg from the 1930s, 40s and
50s, many of which have been collected in Clement Greenberg, Art and
Notes Culture and Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New and The Anxious
Object. See, as well, analyses of their intellectual development by Serge
My thanks to Anne Higonnet, Cat Nilan, Lisa Tiersten and, above all, Guilbaut, How New Tork Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism,
Jim Herbert, for their comments on this paper. Freedom and the Cold War, Chicago, 1983; Fred Orton and Griselda
1. See, for instance, Alice T. Mclntyre, 'Making the Misfits or Pollock, 'Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed', Art History, 4
Waiting for Monroe or Notes from Olympus', Esquire, 55 (March 1961), (September 1981), pp. 305-27; James D. Herbert, The Political Origins of
p. 74; Richard Meryman, 'Marilyn Lets Her Hair Down About Being Abstract Expressionist Art Criticism: The Early Theoretical and Critical
Famous', Life, 53 (3 August 1962), pp. 31-4; David Zeitlin, 'Powerful Writings of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, Stanford Honors Essay
Stars Meet to Play-Act Romance', Life, 16(15 August 1960), pp. 64-71; in Humanities, Number XXVIII, Stanford, 1985.
'Marilyn's New Role', Time, 11 (17 February 1961), pp. 39-40. 34. See the special issue of the Partisan Review: America and the Intellec-
2. An extremely serious strain of staphylococcus pneumonia almost tuals: A Symposium, Partisan Review Series #4, 1953.
killed Taylor in March of 1961. 35. Eva Cockroft, 'Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold