Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe

It was her fame, eroticism, and mysterious death that fascinated Warhol and inspired a “painted print” series honoring Marilyn Monroe. It was just after her mysterious suicide in 1962 that Warhol started the series. It ironically linked his previous work, which focused on images of death to his next phase: celebrity portraits.

Warhol’s portraits constitute a genuine gallery of the most influential and famous figures of his age. Politicians, movie stars, and art dealers are among the many named in this long list. They were emblems of beauty, glamour, and power.

It is fitting that Miss Beauty and Glamour Herself begins Warhol’s tribute to Hollywood’s celebrities. Like many of his star models, Warhol actually met Monroe in person. “She fascinated me as she did the rest of America,” Warhol was quoted saying in I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews by Kenneth Goldsmith.

The Marilyn series was a reproduction of the famous promotional image for the 1953 film “Niagara.” He made the photo into a silkscreen and screened a single image of her face onto small canvases. He then multiplied her image in Six Marilyns, Marilyn Twenty Times, and One Hundred Marilyns. In some pieces he just painted her ruby lips and blonde hair with contrasting skin colors. In another Marilyn, he took multiple images of her lips, one of her most sensual and familiar features, creating a sort of kissing machine. For the famous Gold Marilyn Monroe, he painted the entire canvas with gold paint with a single picture of her face in the silkscreen depicting her as a goddess of sensuality.

A turning point in Warhol’s career was when Architect Philip Johnson, director of the Architecture and Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased Gold Marilyn Monroe for the museum. This gave Warhol great credence in the art world especially when a panel of critics, curators, and art historians saw his Gold Marilyn in the museum. That day they named the new modern art movement “Pop Art” short for popular, with Warhol as a pioneer.

Through his career, he went on to do portraits of many other well-known figures such as Mao, Jackie Kennedy, Liz Taylor, and Dolly Parton. Even his self-portraits became famous for his unique imagery and conceptual style.

He created his usually larger-than-life portraits by first taking a snapshot of the subject, often with a simple Polaroid camera. He would then blow it up and transfer it in glue onto silk, and then toll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. Using this silkscreen method, you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was simple, quick, and chancy.

It was like an art assembly line, creating works with double or multiple portraits emphasizing the overwhelming presence of his models in popular culture. The multiple images created a sense of a manufactured celebrity made by Hollywood.

The more celebrity portraits he did increased his own fame and wealth. It not only increased the amount of celebrities he actually knew personally but the ease of replicating these portraits gave a boost to his success and profits. Warhol never concealed the fact that the genre had become an easy money-making tool for him.

History of Western Paintings - IV - Minoan Art

The flowering of the Minoan civilization, centred on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, coincided with the New Kingdom in Egypt and the Babylonian period of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia. “Minoan” comes from the name “Minos” the king of Crete in Greek mythology who provided the human-flesh-eating Minotaur, a half-man and half-bull monster, with a constant supply of young men and women from Athens. After the late nineteenth-century discoveries of sites thought to have existed only in the cre­ative mind of Homer, such as Troy in Turkey, and Mycenae on the Greek mainland, the English scholar Sir Arthur Evans set out to discover ancient Crete. Due to the lack of decipherable texts, we know less about Minoan society than we do about ancient Egypt or the ancient Near East and thus Minoan art remains somewhat mysterious. Furthermore, earthquakes and, apparently, warfare with the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland resulted in the destruction of many Minoan palaces and works of art.

The surviving Minoan wall paintings come from the ruins of the palace complexes, the best example of which is at Knossos on Crete, excavated and (over-) restored in parts by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900. It is unclear precisely what functions the palaces served. They seem to have been religious, economic, and administrative centres, as well as the rulers’ homes. The myth of the Minotaur, son of Minos’ queen, Pasiphae and a sacred white bull, describes a labyrinth built by the ingenious Daedalus to contain the mon­ster. The palace complexes are themselves labyrinthine, consisting of many open, airy courtyards, private apartments, storage rooms, shrines and baths. Several wall paintings survive from the palace at Knossos, albeit in a rather ruinous state. Many have been heavily restored, with the lost areas filled in by modern reconstruction. Unfortunately, only a fraction of what originally must have existed remains.

Many Minoan wall paintings reveal the impor­tance of the sea to this island civilization, which had lucrative trading contacts with the Greek mainland, Egypt, and the Near East. The Young Fisherman with His Catch is from the site of Akrotiri on the island of Thera—today, Santorini—a Minoan outpost north of Crete. A violent volcanic eruption around 1620 b.c. destroyed Thera, but many murals from Akrotiri were fortunately preserved in the volcanic ash.

The Minoan peoples traded with the Greek mainland, Egypt and the Near East. They were certainly skilled seafarers. The boats shown here are part of a larger frieze. The attention paid to the details of the boat design and the awareness of the different tasks carried out by the crew members in this mural reveal that the designers of these murals were certainly very knowledgeable when it came to boats. Dolphins, along with other aquatic creatures, are found frequently in Minoan art.

A frieze of boats is also preserved from the same site. The careful attention paid to portraying the different types of boats and the various tasks performed by crew mem­bers reveals that the makers of these murals belonged to the seafaring world they depicted. We know little about the religious practices of the Minoan civilization. The many images of women found in tombs and shrines suggest that the chief deities may have been goddesses. A wall painting from the palace at Knossos shows an elegant woman, possibly a priestess participating in a religious ceremony. The profile view of her face, combined with the large frontal eye, is similar to the treatment of figures in the ancient Near East and Egypt.

Minoan religious practices remain somewhat obscure. This enigmatic scene may be a religious ritual in which male and female participants (females are fair-skinned, as in Egyptian art, indicating their sheltered lives out of the sun) take turns vaulting over a charging bull. The grace, elegance and rhythmic playfulness of both the bull and the bull-jumpers, achieved with curvy, elastic lines, is characteristic of Minoan style.

Perhaps the most famous Minoan mural is one called Bull Jumping, from the palace at Knossos. It is not clear in what context this activity is taking place, although it may be part of a religious ceremony in which male and female acrobats take turns vaulting over a bull. The thin-waisted, elegant, stylized figures with flowing curls are quite different from any of the figures seen in either Egyptian wall paintings or Mesopotamian figural representations, though, despite their energetic outdoor activity, the females have the conventionally lighter skin colour common in Egyptian painting. The weightlessness and playfulness of the bull-jumpers are the antithesis of the timelessly dignified pharaohs adorning Egyptian tombs, while the wonderfully elongated and curved body of the bull, with its long, graceful horns, resembles some of the abstracted animal forms found in paintings and relief sculptures of the ancient Near East. Also of note is the decorative border that frames the scene, serving to complement the rhythmic motion of the bull-jumper.

Several stellar examples of painted Minoan pottery, produced in workshops in the palace complexes, have survived. A vase from Phaistos, Crete, displays bold swirling white and brown patterns on a black background, a less disciplined, more organic design than that found on the beaker from Susa.

History of Western Paintings - III - Ancient Egypt

The civilisation of ancient Egypt was roughly contemporary with the neighbouring cultures in the ancient Near East. While the Mesopotamians were constantly subjected to enemy attacks, however, the fruitful Nile Valley was surrounded by desert and thus not easily reached by invading forces. Furthermore, unlike the politically unstable city-states of the ancient Near East, Egypt remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years under a series of pharaonic dynasties; the term “pharaoh” literally means “palace”, but it used to designate the kings of Egypt. The relatively predictable Nile floods are also in contrast with the unpredictable and violent storms and droughts of Mesopotamia. More secure in this life, Egyptians created works of art and architecture that tend to focus on the afterlife.

The Egyptians spent much of their life on Earth preparing for death and the afterlife. Elaborate tombs were constructed, stocked with provisions and decorated with statues, reliefs and wall paintings. Of course, such luxurious burials were the privilege of pharaohs (kings), their families and officials only. This painting of geese comes from a mastaba, an Old Kingdom tomb form consisting of a rectangular structure of mud brick or stone surmounting an underground burial chamber. It is from the contents of tombs that we have acquired most of our knowledge of Egyptian civilisation.

An Egyptian pharaoh was worshipped as a god not only during his- or very rarely her – lifetime, but after death as well. The Egyptian vision of the afterlife required that the pharaohs, their families, and their privileged officials and attendants be supplied with all the necessities and comforts of this world in the next. Thus tombs were stocked with food, wine, clothing, jewellery, games, furniture, weapons, musical instruments and so on, to provide for the ka, or the spirit of the dead person, for all eternity. In addition, nearly every square inch of the walls and ceilings of tombs was elaborately decorated with painted reliefs, hieroglyphs (the Egyptian system of writing, which has been deciphered by modern archaeologists), and wall paintings. It is from tombs, their contents and decorative programs, that we have acquired most of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture; the Egyptian’s houses, even palaces and other structures, were often made of perishable materials and so have not survived. Life was short for most ancient Egyptians; their emphasis on the afterlife is revealed by their tombs, which were meant to endure, not the structures for this life.

Many Egyptian tomb wall paintings replicate everyday scenes of the inhabitant’s world; pharaohs are shown hunting birds, hippopotami and other animals. Their underlings are depicted carrying out tasks such as ploughing fields and picking fruit that they performed in the service of the pharaoh and other superiors during this life. While these paintings repeated the cyclical pattern of the seasons for all eternity, others are more specifically religious in subject matter, focusing on the other world. Frequently, pharaohs are shown at the own funerary banquets, presenting offerings to gods and goddesses, and on occasion, pharaohs are portrayed in their mummified state, attended by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.

Many images in tombs deal with death and the afterlife. In this image, Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, attends to Sennutem’s mummy. The Egyptians mummified their dead in the hope of preserving the body for eternity so that the ka, or spirit of a person which lives on after death, was provided with a body to inhabit. Mummification involved the removal of the internal organs, placement of the body and organs in a salt-based preservative for a month, or so and, finally, wrapping the body and organs in layer after layer of linen.

Two-dimensional depictions of royal figures in Egyptian art had long been standardised. Typically, pharaohs, queens and members of their families and courts are shown with heads, hips, legs, and feet in profile, while their torsos and eyes are depicted as if viewed from the front, like Mesopotamian depictions of the human form. This combination allowed for the most composite view of the human body.

Non-royal members of Egyptian society, however, are frequently portrayed in more natural poses – as are animals – and often they are shown completely in profile. Royal figures are rarely depicted exerting themselves. Their composite stance does not allow for much movement and thus they stand immobile and perfect for all eternity. In contrast, farmers, slaves – workers in general – are commonly shown in action. They pick grapes, hunt birds and plough fields quite energetically. Royal members of Egyptian society, the pharaohs in particular, thus come across as impervious to the world around them. It is important to recall that pharaohs were divine, and their impassiveness is that of transcendent beings. Regardless of class, women tend to have fairer skin, as befitting indoor people, while men, including kings, are darker-skinned from the outdoor life.

It is not the pharaoh’s individual personalities that re emphasized in painted and sculptural representations, but what might be called their “pharaoh-ness”. Pharaohs simply exist, while their attendants perform. This distinction is maintained, with some exceptions, in many of the works of art created over the course of Egypt’s ancient civilization – almost three thousand years.

The tomb of Nefertari, wife of pharaoh Ramesses II, was discovered in 1904. It was found plundered and with much of the painted surface of the walls flaked off. These paintings, however, have been quite successfully restored. Atum (right), creator of the world, is depicted holding the ankh, the symbol of everlasting life, in his right hand. Osiris (left), ruler of the dead, holds the symbols of kingship, the crook and the flail. According to Egyptian religious belief, Osiris was violently murdered by his brother, thus accounting for his mummy-like appearance.

The discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1922 by Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, resulted in some of the most important contributions to our understanding of the ancient Egyptians’ civilisation in general and their burial practices in particular. This is especially true since the tomb was found almost intact, unlike the many tombs that have suffered significant damage from plundering over the centuries. The tomb of the Boy King (ruled 1335-1327 B.C.) is a treasure trove of Egyptian art and artefacts. The back of Tutankhamen’s throne is an exquisite depiction in gold, faience, glass paste, semi-precious stones and silver of Tut and Queen Ankhesenamen, his sister-wife.

Detail of the back of the throne of King Tutankhamen, from the tomb of Tutankhamen, Valley of the Kings. Carved wood covered with gold and inlaid with faience, glass paste, semi-precious stones and silver. Height of throne 41″ (104cm). Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Among the many luxurious items found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen is a magnificent throne, the back of which is shown here. The relaxed informality of this tender moment between King Tut and Queen Ankhesenamen is somewhat unusual in Egyptian art, but typical of this particular period in Dynasty 18. Under Tut’s predecessor, King Akhenaten, a less rigid depiction of royalty, characterised by fluid, playful lines and elegant, feminine figures, resulted in images of royal figures which were not as static, formal and idealised as were typical depictions of royalty in Egyptian art.

The two figures are depicted in a style first associated more with the reign of King Akhenaton, also known as Amenhotep IV, Tut’s predecessor, who ruled from 1352 to 1335 B.C. During Akhenaton’s reign, representations of the human form, while still displaying an emphasis on line, became more relaxed and informal, less rigid and static. The conventional broad shoulders, narrow hips, and toned musculature that we think of in depictions of pharaohs have disappeared. The curvy, fluid, playful lines and the somewhat elongated, elegant and feminine shapes of Tut and his queen are markedly different from typical Egyptian painted and sculptural representations of royalty, where the human figure is more squarely geometric, compact and stiff, giving the impression of idealised, rational, dignified and eternally existing personages – the gods they were. In contrast, the sinuous naturalism of Tut and Ankhesenamen allows them the freedom of potential movement. As a result, they seem more of our world.

Generally speaking, though, Egyptian artists had little interest in modelling or in the depiction of depth. Royal and non-royal figures alike appear very two-dimensional, made up of flat areas of colour and the frequent inclusion of hieroglyphs in the same space as the figures calls attention to the flatness of the image as a whole.

Many tomb wall paintings show hunting and farming scenes meant to reflect the cycle of the seasons that will repeat for eternity. In this image, sowing and ploughing are depicted. Egyptian painters seem to have had little interest in rendering three-dimensional human forms existing in space. Painted figures are not modelled, made up instead of flat areas of colour contained by line. Background settings are often excluded and the frequent presence of hieroglyphic texts calls attention to the flatness of space. The desire for clarity seems more important to the Egyptian painter than the illusionistic rendering of space and form.

Egyptian painting is also found in the Books of the Dead. The books of ancient Egypt were actually scrolls made from papyrus, the Greek term for the plant that grows plentifully along the Nile and from which the word “paper” derives. Books of the Dead were places inside the wrappings of a mummified body on it’s coffin. Consisting of combinations of spells, prayers and other magical writings tailored to the deceased, they were intended to guide the dead person through the trails of judgement in the afterlife. Most Books of the Dead contain judgement scenes. In some, Osiris, god of the underworld, presides over a ceremony in which the dead person’s heart is weighed against an ostrich feather in order to determine whether he or she will merit eternal life.

Egyptian Books of the Dead were actually included in the wrapping of the mummified body. These books, which were meant to aid the trials of judgement in the afterlife, were actually scrolls of papyrus. The judgement scene illustrated here is typically found in Books of the Dead. The heart of the deceased is weighed against a feather representing truth to determine the deceased’s fate. Ammit, the lion-like monster on the pedestal at the left, awaits the decision; if it is negative, he will devour the heart. The god Thoth, to the left of the scales, records the event. The deceased herself is depicted presenting her offerings before the god Osiris (god of the dead). Behind Osiris stand the goddesses Isis (wife of Osiris) and Nephtys (sister of Isis and Osiris).