In a hyper-sexualised fashion Warhol isolates the lips of a super star. Isolated and repeated like the soup cans and coke bottles that he painted in the 60's. As though Marilyn's lips were a product of endless consumption, an isolated consumer gift. Unlike the lips of the Mona Lisa for example - Marilyn's lips chatter like the mobile chattering teeth toy. Yet they are real; as real as realism gets. Painting hasn't seen a smile like this since the Mona Lisa, and hasn't raised a smile since Duchamp drew a moustache on the Renaissance icon. The isolated expression is repeated, like in the glamour magazines, which Warhol really kick started. The human form is reduced to a pair of lips, because that is all we require, Marilyn's face is so familiar to us, even now in the 21st Century, anyone familiar with Warhol will immediately recognise the lips as hers.
The lips of America (not the lips of Russia), have become a commodity, a sex symbol, a major smile in mainstream art. As smiling in painting was not encouraged as it distorted the face, and was difficult for painters to paint the distortions which the smile produced. Marilyn Monroe the Mona Lisa of the Sixties, gave us the lips of America as Warhol gave us the obsession with celebrity. Together they are powerful, alone they are iconic. This Kodak moment can be replayed over and over with some slight variation, to the tunes of the sixties, when sexual liberation was rife, when lips were painted red.
Michael, thanks for the tidbit about the smile being difficult to produce in a painting. I did not know that. I have never been a Warhol fan, nor for that matter a Marilyn Monroe fan. Having grown up in the sixties I found both of them symbols of materialism.
ReplyDeleteThankyou Harley, I find Warhol's work a little shallow, but I think he knew that anyway. As for Monroe I've only seen her in Some Like it Hot, where she gave a mediocre performance. Together though they are icons of the sixties, a decade that shaped the 20th Century. So they both interest me in that way...i'm very interested in smiling in painting and photography and found this a great way to enter the topic. I wonder why it is hardly seen in painting throughout time, and now every amatuer photographer expects you to smile and say cheese.
ReplyDeleteTalking about smiles, Diego Rivera painted a series of murals at the Detroit Art Museum in 1930-31 commissioned by Edsel Ford. He painted the industrial workers at the Ford Motor plant. None of them are smiling. People today interpret that to mean that they hated their work which was not true. Ford discouraged smiling on the job, thinking that it reduced productivity.
ReplyDeleteNo way, I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing, however I cant see how smiling would reduce productivity, I would have thought that smiling would have increased productivity.
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