Season
Season 5 Episode
- Season 1 Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (short version)
- Season 1 Picasso’s Guernica
- Season 1 Michelangelo's David
- Season 1 The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault
- Season 1 Frida Kahlo's 'The Two Fridas"
- Season 1 The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck
- Season 1 Artemisia Gentileschi
- Season 1 Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych
- Season 1 Monet's Water Lilies
- Season 1 Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals
- Season 1 The Thinker by Rodin
Great Art Explained - Season 1 Episode 8 Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych
0.00 48 minutes Andy Warhol made “Marilyn Diptych” in 1962, right after Marilyn Monroe’s death. By the 1960s Marilyn’s film career as a sex symbol was all but over. Warhol would effectively immortalize Marilyn as the sex symbol of the 20th century. The seductive blonde Marilyn with the heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips is frozen in time. She is transformed into the personification of the allure and glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Marilyn would make Warhol a household name, and Warhol would make Marilyn an icon. Marilyn Diptych is perhaps his greatest canvas, bringing together celebrity, death and exposure. It is both a warning and a love letter to America. Warhol, who is often criticised as vacuous or superficial, produced art, that is profoundly subversive and quite simply a perfect mirror of our times. Andy Warhol and Marilyn Monroe were both the embodiment of the American dream. They also, both projected a vacant persona that made sure no-body knew the real person behind the mask.
