Student Responses: Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol

This article, written by Allison Doyle, an undergraduate at Catholic University of America, is part of an occasional series in which Washington-area university students discuss works on display in the National Portrait Gallery. She writes about Andy Warhol’s 1967 screen print of Marilyn Monroe. The portrait is on display in the exhibition “Twentieth-Century Americans,” on the third floor.

Walking through the National Portrait Gallery gives numerous options on writing about people who made a significant impact on history. Initially, the image of Marilyn Monroe was intriguing because of its colors. The portrait became even more intriguing after more research into the artist and his subject.

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles, California, on June 1, 1926. Norma Jeane was in and out of orphanages for the first eleven years of her life until family friends took her into their home. When she was sixteen she married Jimmy Dougherty, a long-time friend whom she had been dating for several months. After two years of marriage, Doughtery was sent away to fight in World War II. By 1946 Dougherty had returned from the war. Norma Jeane, however, had now become famous from her modeling and photography gigs, and the couple divorced. She changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, and soon her career skyrocketed.  Modeling launched roles in many movies, and her roles landed her a spot as Hollywood’s best new actress in 1953.

On January 14, 1954, Monroe married professional baseball player Joe DiMaggio; however, they were divorced in nine months. Two years later Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller, and by this time she had finished more than twenty major films and had become perhaps the most beloved woman in America.

The marriage turned ugly. Monroe turned to pills and alcohol as an escape from all the chaos, and suffered two miscarriages. On August 5, 1962, she was found dead of a drug overdose in her home. Although it was ruled a suicide, many different theories about her death persist to this day. Monroe was only thirty-six.

Monroe’s screen print in the National Portrait Gallery was created by Andy Warhol in 1962, the year of her death. The picture portrays Monroe with her trademark pouty mouth, emphasizing her sex-symbol status. Warhol highlighted Monroe’s lips and eyes, making them a brighter color than the rest of her face, which drew the viewer to those areas. He also used vibrant greens and yellows to really make the artwork stand out.

Warhol was born on August 6, 1928. Ever heard of the phrase “fifteen minutes of fame”? The quote is from Warhol, who once said that this classic slogan referred to the “fleeting condition of celebrity that grabs onto an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as people’s attention spans are exhausted.”

At the age of twenty-one, the Pittsburgh-born Warhol moved to New York City to pursue an artistic career, working on pictures in magazines, shoe ads, and other promotional pieces. In the late 1950s he moved on to RCA Records, working on album covers and photographs to promote up-and-coming bands and artists. He became widely known in the 1960s and began to make portraits of modern icons, especially of Monroe. 

Warhol’s portrait shouts out the actress’s vibrancy and personality. The colors bring life to the late artist and also capture the beauty and spunk of the late Marilyn Monroe herself.