One day in 1964, an artist named Dorothy Podber walked into Andy Warhol’s New York studio and demonstrated why she earned her reputation as a “wild child.”
Dressed in black motorcycle leather and accompanied by her Great Dane Carmen Miranda, Podber noticed a stack of four large, bright Marilyn Monroe artworks leaning against a wall and asked if she could take a picture of them.
Warhol, suggesting that she intended to photograph the photographs, gave his consent.
Podber removed her gloves, pulled a small pistol from her purse, and took aim at the painter for a moment before turning the pistol towards the screen print and opening fire, shooting Marilyn right between the eyes in the forehead.
“She returned the gun, pulled on her gloves and left,” recalled Warhol’s assistant, professionally known as Ultraviolet (Isabelle Dufresne), who was present that day.
“This stylish event was regarded as an “art happening”.
Now, almost 60 years later, the portraits that have come to be known as “The Shot Marilyns” may once again spark an explosive “happening” as one of them, “Shot by Sage Blue Marilyn”, goes under the hammer at Christie’s.
Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe, due for auction in May.
The auction house has announced that a 40-inch square silkscreen image of the actress, created by printing ink on a screen over stencils, will be valued at $200 million (£151 million) when it goes on sale in New York in May.
If he achieves this, it would be a record price for any piece of 20th-century art sold at auction.
The image is instantly recognizable as a pop art depiction of Monroe from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol completed the work in five color variations.
The lot in question features the star wearing bright blue eyeshadow, acid yellow hair, red lips and hot pink skin against a vibrant blue-green backdrop.
And this does not devalue the value of the bullet hole, which went through all but one of the stencils (which was not in the stack), and is still faintly visible, despite Warhol’s best efforts to hide it with light makeup. paint – added to the price of many millions.
High-end auction houses do not know how to exaggerate, and Christie’s described “Blue Marilyn in a Sage Frame” as one of the “rarest and most transcendent images in existence” along with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.
Auctioneers are also clearly confident that it will beat Warhol’s current auction record of £65.5 million, set nine years ago for his Silver Car Crash (Double Crash), as well as the current record for a 20th-century work of art set by painting by Picasso. Femmes d’Alger ‘Version O’ sold in 2015 for £102 million.
Andy Warhol stands in front of his double portrait of Hollywood movie star Marilyn Monroe at the Tate Gallery.
Surprisingly, although Warhol was known for mass-producing his work using commercial printing techniques, experts say Christie’s will have no problem meeting or exceeding the estimate.
“Marilyn Shot” is the gold standard of Warhol’s work: blue eye shadow, golden hair, parted lips. They are so iconic,” says Warhol researcher Professor Jean Wainwright.
“It’s a really special work because it was damaged in a very Warholian incident.” Warhol, who himself was wounded and badly wounded by radical feminist writer Valerie Solana just four years after Podber stabbed his Marilyns, produced some 8,000 paintings and sculptures between 1952 and his death in 1987.
He was obsessed with cultural icons and also drew Liz Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley and the Queen, although he could often be heard saying that all of his characters were the same in his eyes.
But buyers clearly disagree, as his Marilyn has always been his most expensive work — and while this has never been officially confirmed, hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin is rumored to have privately paid for the property of Conde Nast publishing mogul C. I. Newhouse over £150 million for the orange version of Shooting Marilyn in 2017.
And for these mind-boggling prices, the art market has not only gun-packing Dorothy Podber to thank, but Warhol’s practice of stamping his paintings on a production line so cynically detached from him that they were sometimes printed and even signed by his employees. .
Thus, the “Shot Marilyn” has a guaranteed authenticity, rare in Warhol’s work. Just two years after his death, the painting “Red Marilyn” was sold at Christie’s for a then-record £3 million.
American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987), pictured in 1981, seated in a red velvet chair
Peter Brant, a businessman friend of Warhol’s, was only 20 years old when he bought the blue version for less than £4,000 in 1967.
If that sounds cheap, Brant, who still owns the work, pointed out that it was then more than the cost of a Cadillac luxury car.
Obsessed with fame and celebrity, Warhol found a natural subject in Monroe, although he only began painting her after her suicide in 1962.
He began with a series of small photographs of Marilyn in different color palettes, which he called “flavors” such as “mint” and “lemon”. “Shot Marilyns” should have been much larger.
Warhol was reportedly horrified by Dorothy Podber’s gun stunt, told his subordinates that she was “too scary” and demanded that they never let her in again.
If he knew what she would do for them, he might have been more grateful, given his healthy respect for money.
He once said that “being successful in business is the most exciting art form.”
However, he resented the fact that he had to share the glory of the Shot Marilyns with Podber, who was even more of an exhibitionist than he was.
Podber was born in the Bronx, New York, after surviving her mother’s attempted abortion by throwing herself down the subway stairs. She has been a troublemaker since her school days, when she organized mass student strikes.
A self-proclaimed witch, she was once jailed for running an illegal abortion business from her apartment before—with the advent of the avant-garde scene in the late 1950s—she realized she could continue wreaking havoc, but now calls it art. .
She staged existential “happenings” with fellow performance artist Ray Johnson, such as inviting herself into people’s homes and then reenacting the shower scene from Hitchcock’s horror film Psycho.
Another prank involved showing potential tenants a supposedly empty Manhattan apartment and then charging them out of the closets.
She had three husbands and many lovers, including a banker with whom she only had sex while lying on the banknote-strewn floor of his vault.
However, she was often short on funds and resorted to such unorthodox methods of collecting them as cleaning doctors’ offices, which was primarily a way of stealing the keys to their medical offices, the contents of which she then sold. .
“I have been bad all my life. My specialty is playing pranks on people,” she said shortly before her death at the age of 75 in 2008.
Of course, the art world will be watching with great interest what happens with Shot Sage Blue Marilyn.
After all, Warhol’s art is auctioned so regularly – averaging about 200 pieces a year – that he is seen as something of a leader in the entire art market. But not every item sold is so special.
As the amounts changing hands become more and more staggering, usually making the very wealthy even richer, the sale of Shot Sage Blue Marilyn at least provides some comfort as she won’t line another billionaire’s pockets.
The painting belongs to a fund set up by Zurich-based art dealer Doris Ammann and her brother Thomas, a merchant who helped catalog Warhol’s work after his death.
Both are now dead, and all proceeds from the sale go to international medical and educational programs for children.
As for where the work would hang, who knows where it might end up – but perhaps the bank vault where Dorothy Podber liked to spend her evenings would be the safest place.
Why, this time, is it really worth the crazy price
Richard Polsky for the Daily Mail
When a painting sells for a huge sum, it’s hard to separate the headlines from its value as a work of art.
Of course £151 million – the amount that Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is predicted to bring in – is staggering, but surprisingly many people can afford it.
But are they just buying into the hype and marketing? In this case, no. This is really a great picture.
All Shot Marilyns are beautiful, but Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is the prettiest of them all. Despite its rather modest size, it has the “strength of a wall” – it radiates energy and attracts it like a magnet.
Part of that power lies in the colors that Warhol used. His talent for combining vibrant colors is what makes the painting so captivating.
With Roy Lichtenstein, he founded the pop art movement, which used bright colors rather than realistic ones; hence Marilyn’s bubblegum pink skin.
This also has a piquancy. Blue can be seen as sad or beautiful – like a summer sky. Marilyn’s death in 1962 at the age of 36 was a tragedy, but here he dwells on the beautiful.
Her yellow hair looks almost sticky, and the blue eyeshadow, red lips, and that pink skin give the picture an artificial look, perhaps reflecting the fact that Marilyn embodied the illusion of the movies.
Hollywood took the young brunette Norma Jean Mortenson and turned her into Marilyn Monroe, an exaggerated, artificial version of herself with platinum hair.
The painting emphasizes both her beauty and craftsmanship. So it’s powerful on its own and iconic because of Marilyn’s mystique.
Warhol’s process was also unique. He printed the image on a silk screen before stenciling the paint through the silk onto the painting.
All great art convinces you to see the world differently, and this piece does just that.
Shot Marilyns have stood the test of time. Whoever buys this will receive a piece of history and timeless beauty.
Like Marilyn, she has become an icon in her own right.