The Death of Glamour
Marilyn Monroe;"Marilyn Diptych"and "Gold Marilyn"

Warhol's paintings of Marilyn have attracted much commentary from critics attempting to discern any complexity of thought or feeling in Warhol's treatment of the original image. Thomas Crow, in one of the most influential critiques on Warhol entitled "Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in early Warhol"11. , confidently interprets how Warhol has laid out: "a stark and unresolved dialectic of presence and absence, life and death", meditating on the conflict between Marilyn's immortality as a movie star, whose image and being lives on, captured for all eternity on rolls of film, and the real life death of Norma Jean.

Warhol; Section of Marilyn Diptych 1962 (Large version) © 11

Warhol;Gold Marilyn 1962 © 39

But Warhol was not naive about the possible implications of his artistic choices. In the case of the "Gold Marilyn", one of several variations, there is an obvious intention to portray her as some kind of religious icon, whose public image had achieved a universal visual strength parallel to that of the Madonna. In the "Gold Marilyn" shown here to the left he has transferred the image on to a tondo painted gold, which is perhaps reminiscent of the Madonna and Child tondos of the High Renaissance. The inclusion of the second tondo seems to underline Crow's analysis of the "Marilyn Diptych", as suggestive of presence and absence. However, Warhol's cynicism as heavily publicised, renders this canvas merely as an extra in the name of financial profit.

JACKIE