The Marilyn Portfolio

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets." 

Marilyn Monroe, 1960

Andy Warhol‘s Marilyn portfolio, released in 1967 as the inaugural project of Factory Additions, represents one of his most iconic achievements, encapsulating his fascination with celebrity, mass production, and the intersection of beauty and tragedy. Using a publicity photograph of Monroe from the 1953 film Niagara, Warhol created ten distinctive screen prints on paper. The series marked his first foray into complex screen printing, which allowed him to reproduce the same image repeatedly with slight variations. These alterations in color and alignment enhanced a sense of artificiality in Marilyn’s beauty, inviting viewers to consider the role of media in creating and consuming celebrity personas. Warhol amplified this effect by using Day-Glo colors, which have a unique luminosity, making Marilyn’s face appear almost perpetually under a flashbulb’s glare—a quality art historian Robert Rosenblum noted as creating a “perpetual illumination.”

This portfolio, created shortly after Monroe’s tragic death, captures the bittersweet allure of fame that Warhol recognized as both captivating and hollow. Monroe’s image embodies the public’s worship of beauty and glamor while hinting at the isolation and unrealized promise beneath her public persona. Through the Marilyn portfolio, Warhol not only cemented his place as a key figure in Pop Art but also offered a provocative commentary on the nature of fame, hinting at the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe but ultimately turning her portrait into a perpetual symbol of beauty. 

If you are interested in the Marilyn portfolio, please contact us. 

Contact