MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

In the late 1970s, Warhol began his Reversals and Retrospectives series, which recycled some of his best-known images. Using, and reusing images at will, Warhol was post-modern in his approach, toying with notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and imbuing existing images with new ideas and perspectives. The work Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) from the Reversal Series, uses one of his iconic images, that of Marilyn Monroe. Warhol would look to reflect the optics of fame and celebrity, making portraits of some of the world’s most renowned people, from Monroe to Mao. The ‘surface’ of his images were a part of this critical reflection on the superficiality of the phenomenon and the visual culture that sustains it. Here, as the image is in negative, Marilyn appears black, evoking the dark underbelly of fame.