Marilyn Monroe 24 by Andy Warhol presents Marilyn’s face in stark grayscale against a deep black ground. Her features appear softly blurred yet sharply cropped, with heavy shadows gathering around the eyes and hairline. The absence of color heightens contrast and mood, giving the image a somber, almost ghostly presence. Subtle variations in ink density flatten her expression, creating a quiet tension between glamour and erasure.
Marilyn Monroe 24 is a screenprint from Warhol’s 1967 Marilyn Monroe Complete Portfolio. Warhol’s Marilyn images rank among his most successful works, presenting the actress as the quintessential modern celebrity. Through repetition and serial imagery, Warhol helped define Pop Art while securing his own place within it.
This work is often called the black Marilyn or black and white Marilyn. Its greyscale palette distinguishes it from the portfolio’s brighter colorways. As a result, the portrait feels markedly introspective. Among the repeated images, this version appears especially brooding, suggesting a deeper emotional gravity behind Marilyn’s polished screen persona.
Repetition, Appropriation, and the Marilyn Image
All of Warhol’s Marilyn prints derive from a single publicity photograph taken by Gene Korman in 1953 for the film Niagara. Warhol’s reuse of this image sparked debate about artistic appropriation. However, repetition served a deliberate purpose. By reproducing the same face again and again, Warhol mirrored how mass media circulates celebrity images until individuality dissolves into symbol.
Through this process, Marilyn becomes less a person than a surface. Her image functions like a brand, endlessly replicated and consumed. Consequently, Warhol’s Marilyns raise lasting questions about authorship, originality, and the commodification of identity.
Stardom, Death, and Memorialization
Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962 intensified Warhol’s fascination with her image. In the weeks following her suicide, he produced works such as the Marilyn Diptych, which contrasts fading color with stark black and white. These works transform Marilyn into both icon and memorial, balancing visibility with disappearance.
In Marilyn Monroe 24, the dark tonal range amplifies this tension. The image feels suspended between presence and absence, beauty and loss. Even so, Warhol avoids sentimentality. Instead, he presents Marilyn as a fixed image shaped by reproduction and desire.
Marilyn Monroe 24 in Warhol’s Larger Body of Work
Warhol consistently compared celebrity to consumer goods, equating faces with products like Campbell’s Soup or Brillo boxes. Likewise, Marilyn’s image operates as both cultural symbol and marketable object. This logic extends across Warhol’s celebrity portraits, including Liz Taylor, Mick Jagger, and Mao Zedong.
Marilyn Monroe 24 stands out for its restraint. Without color’s distraction, the image confronts viewers with the cost of fame itself. As such, it remains one of the most psychologically charged works in the portfolio and a defining statement within Warhol’s exploration of fame, repetition, and mortality.
Photo Credit: Warhol Holding Marilyn Acetate I, 1964. Photo by William John Kennedy.
