Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964


Andy Warhol (After)
American (1928–1987)

Date: circa 1970
Museum reproduction on Masonite
Size: 23.5 x 23.5 in. (59.69 x 59.69 cm)
Frame Size: 24.75 x 24.75 inches

Andy Warhol, After, American (1928 - 1987) - Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, 1964.

Year: circa 1970, Medium: Museum reproduction on Masonite, Size: 23.5 x 23.5 in. (59.69 x 59.69 cm), Frame Size: 24.75 x 24.75 inches, Description: At the end of the Summer of 1964, artist Dorothy Podber walked into Andy Warhol’s studio, pulled a pistol from her bag, and shot at a stack of freshly-screened Marilyn canvases. This had been, according to the account of a friend, the culmination of a play on words that Podber had used on Warhol the evening before. He had asked her, “Can I shoot you?”, implying his interest in photographing her. Podber replied, “Sure, if I can shoot you.” The result of this game was a bullet through the canvas of what is now the most expensive Warhol painting ever sold. The image of Marilyn Monroe used in this piece originally came from a production still for the 1953 film “Niagara”, in which Monroe starred as the lead during the peak of her career. Warhol did not, however, become fascinated in this image until after her death in 1962, when he became obsessed with immortalizing her. For the king of Pop Art, an artist who spent his life dissecting and examining the iconography of popular culture, nothing was more iconic than the legacy of Marilyn Monroe. And so he spent several years and thousands of yards of canvas to reimagine and contextualize her ad infinitum, to the point where his version of this image far outshone the original photograph in terms of public recognition. When writer Sam Hunter chose to use the Shot Sage Blue Marilyn as the cover for his textbook “Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture”, the final piece of this artwork’s puzzle slotted into place. It shot to new heights of fame and became not only Warhol’s most famous artwork, but one of the most defining images of Modern Art.