The Death of Glamour
Jackie (The Week That Was) 1963

Warhol; Jackie The Week That Was 1963 © 16

In this painting, Warhol's use of repetition of serial imagery has an immediately powerful impact on the viewer set within this highly emotive context. His choice and arrangement of images show the passage of feeling from one point in life to another. We see an image of Jackie before the tragedy, smiling for the camera, juxtaposed with images of Jackie in mourning. These faces of Jackie are offered to us for consumption, for study, again and again. In the lower right quarter of the painting we are given two views of the same image of jackie in mourning - solemn yet dignified - but in one we are brought closer to her face as though Warhol is trying to get closer to Jackie and her grief. These views are deeply penetrative, encouraging us to engage with her emotion while contemplating the tragic event that merely time divides. In the top right corner, again we see a set of images that are almost identical, except for the presence of a soldier in the first and his absence in the second. His absence in the second is the result of Warhol's easing of hand pressure when making the print and a traditional interpretation might easily translate the effect as a metaphor concerning Jackie's sense of being alone at a time when all eyes, the world over, are focusing on her.

Interpretations like this are inevitable and mostly spring from the viewer's own associations with the image. But in this case, Warhol has been more than the passive machine he claimed to be , having so carefully and selectively approached his subject in locating his protagonist within a narrative setting. MARILYN