I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever (FS II.5) by Andy Warhol presents one of his earliest and most intimate engagements with Marilyn Monroe, isolating her lips against a stark white field. The image focuses tightly on Monroe’s mouth, cropped so that it floats free of her face. Her lips appear slightly parted, darkly outlined, and sensuous, with visible teeth rendered in grainy contrast. Warhol overlays the image with loose washes of color—turquoise, yellow, and deep red—that drift across the composition like stains or emotional residues rather than descriptive tones. He pares the image down to its most charged element and refuses to decorate it. As a result, the surface feels fragile and raw, with areas of abrasion that heighten the work’s erotic tension. Instead of glamour, the mood is suspended and haunting, as if desire itself has been paused mid-breath.
One Cent Life and Warhol’s Early Graphic Experiments
This lithograph originally appeared in the artist’s book One Cent Life, produced and assembled by Walasse Ting, E.W. Korfeld, and the publisher Bern. Ting envisioned the project as a radically international collaboration, bringing together artists associated with Neo-Dada, Pop Art, and other emerging movements. As a result, the book embraced fragmentation, eroticism, and poetic disjunction. Warhol’s contribution fits naturally within this framework. He treats the page as a site of encounter, not a finished statement. The image does not narrate. Instead, it lingers, allowing form and gesture to carry meaning.
During this period, artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann also explored the fragmentation of the body. Warhol, however, pushed the idea further by stripping away context entirely. In I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever, the absence of Monroe’s face removes celebrity recognition and replaces it with pure suggestion. He strips recognition away and replaces it with suggestion. Consequently, the image oscillates between allure and unease. The viewer is drawn in, yet denied completion.
Marilyn Monroe I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever as Part of Warhol’s Larger Body of Work
I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever does not mark Warhol’s first depiction of Marilyn Monroe, but it stands apart as one of his most graphic treatments of her image. While Warhol began painting Monroe’s full face in 1962, shortly after her death, this lithograph approaches her presence through reduction rather than spectacle. Rather than presenting Monroe as an icon, Warhol fragments her body. He concentrates on a single feature and allows it to stand alone. This strategy mirrors the visual language of advertising, which often builds desire through isolation and repetition. At the same time, the work feels intensely personal. The lips suggest intimacy, secrecy, and longing, themes that recur throughout Warhol’s early graphic experiments.
Within Warhol’s larger oeuvre, this work foreshadows his lifelong engagement with fame, desire, and repetition. It reveals an early moment when intimacy and distance coexist. Even before Marilyn became a global Pop icon in his hands, Warhol understood how little was needed to evoke her presence—and how powerful that reduction could be.
Photo Credit: Preparing a transparent Marilyn for an exhibition, 1967, New York. Photo: William John Kennedy. Image © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London.
