You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.
Learn more
Jump to content tickets Member | Make a donation
- The Collection
- The American Wing Ancient Near Eastern Art Arms and Armor The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing Asian Art The Cloisters The Costume Institute Drawings and Prints Egyptian Art European Paintings European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Greek and Roman Art Islamic Art Robert Lehman Collection The Libraries Medieval Art Musical Instruments Photographs Antonio Ratti Textile Center Modern and Contemporary Art
Crop your artwork:
Scan your QR code:
Gratefully built with ACNLPatternTool
Various artists/makers
Not on view
Before he became one of the best known artists of the postwar period, Andy Warhol found great success as a commercial illustrator in New York City. After studying pictorial design and painting at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), he moved to New York City, where he supported himself by producing images for advertising and fashion magazines. He continued to make art, which he exhibited in various small galleries and other venues in New York, yet Warhol viewed his commissioned work as distinct from his artwork, which, at that time, often reflected the legacy of both Abstract Expressionist artists and the influence of more recent figures, such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Warhol found source material for his art from such things as advertisem*nts, comics, and stories from magazines and newspapers. Active brushstrokes combined with drips and splatters functioned as signs not only of the gestural impulse, but also, in a nod to artists of the previous generation, a kind of reference to creativity and originality made visible; yet paradoxically, it was by embracing not only the imagery of mass culture but also its aesthetic and means of production that he developed the qualities that made his art so distinctive and influential.
Around 1962, Warhol adopted a more graphic and detached style comprising bold and often contrasting colors, crisp outlines, and commercial imagery. Screenprinting was well suited for his art as it enabled him to repeat images derived from photographic sources multiple times—even within the same painting or print—in a variety of media and colors. It also allowed him to highlight both the detached quality of the process and the imperfections (such uneven tone, smudges, gaps, and signs of irregular printing) often found in commercial production.
Warhol engaged the image of Marilyn Monroe in variety of works, beginning with Gold Marilyn Monroe (Museum of Modern Art, New York) made in August 1962, shortly after the actress’ death. Rather than using a contemporary image, however, he chose a publicity photograph for the film Niagara (1953), which he then cropped to bring her features into greater focus. While Gold Marilyn Monroe has an almost elegiac feel due to the isolation of the small screenprinted image of the actress against a flat gold background, Marilyn (1967) is shockingly bold, with a palette of bright yellow, acid green, and hot pink, whose graphic power is all the more pronounced because of the small size—6" x 6"—of the work and the lack of margins. The print was created to announce the publication of the Marilyn portfolio (1967), which contained ten screenprints, each of which featured Warhol’s by now signature motif differentiated by a distinctive palette often printed off-register to increase the impression of artificiality and industrial production. The portfolio prints were larger (36" x 36") and more tightly cropped than that of the announcement, making Monroe’s face closer to the edges of the paper, and consequently, the viewer. Warhol used five different screens for the portfolio prints, one more than for the small Marilyn. Marilyn and the Marilyn portfolio were the first prints Warhol produced and published through Factory Additions, New York, a company he created to produce and distribute prints based on the motifs — such as Marilyn, Campbell’s Soup, and Flowers— for which he was best known. Its name makes reference to both Warhol’s studio, known as The Factory, and the aural similarity of "additions" and "editions," the latter being a printmaking term that refers to the number of identical impressions created from a matrix and which are often signed and numbered by artists.
Open Access
As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.
API
Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.
- Download image
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Artwork Details
Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item
Title: Marilyn
Artist: Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc.
Printer: Du-Art Displays
Publisher: Factory Additions
Date: 1967
Medium: Color silkscreen
Dimensions: Sheet: 6 x 6 in. (15.2 x 15.2 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: Gift of Factory Additions, 1967
Accession Number: 67.855
Learn more about this artwork
Timeline of Art History
Essay
Costume in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Essay
Made in Italy: Italian Fashion from 1950 to Now
Essay
Photography in the Expanded Field: Painting, Performance, and the Neo-Avant-Garde
Essay
The Postwar Print Renaissance in America
Chronology
The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.-present
Museum Publications
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Spanish)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Russian)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Portuguese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Korean)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Japanese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Italian)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (German)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (French)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Chinese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Arabic)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
One Met. Many Worlds.
Related Artworks
- All Related Artworks
- By Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc.
- By Du-Art Displays
- By Factory Additions
- By Andy Warhol
- Drawings and Prints
- Printing
- Prints
- Silkscreen
- From North and Central America
- From United States
- From A.D. 1900–present
Double Mickey Mouse
Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
1981
Black Bean from Campbell's Soup I
Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
1968
Beef from Campbell's Soup I
Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
1968
Consommé from Campbell's Soup I
Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
1968
Pepper Pot from Campbell's Soup I
Andy Warhol (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1928–1987 New York)
1968
Resources for Research
The Met's Libraries and Research Centers provide unparalleled resources for research and welcome an international community of students and scholars.
The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can connect to the most up-to-date data and public domain images for The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.
Drawings and Prints at The Met
The Met's collection of drawings and prints—one of the most comprehensive and distinguished of its kind in the world—began with a gift of 670 works from Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Museum trustee, in 1880.