Shot Marilyns

"The Shot Marilyns" is a work of art produced in 1964 by Andy Warhol. It consists of four canvases, each a square measuring 40 inches and each consisting of a painting of a Marilyn Monroe, each shot through in the forehead by a single bullet.

Warhol actually painted five colored Marilyns in 1964 with different colored backgrounds: red, orange, light blue, sage blue, and turquoise and he stored them at The Factory, his studio on East 47th Street in Manhattan. Dorothy Podber (1932-2008), a friend of Factory photographer Billy Name, saw the recently completed paintings stacked against one another at the studio and asked Warhol if she could shoot them. Warhol agreed. Podber doffed her pair of white gloves, withdrew a small revolver from her purse, and fired a shot into the stack of four "Marilyn" paintings, which became known as "The Shot Marilyns." (The fifth painting with the turquoise background was not in the stack.)

The Ray Johnson biography "How to Draw a Bunny" describes this event as a performance piece by Dorothy Podber. After she'd shot the Marilyns and left, Andy Warhol purportedly asked Billy Name to please ask Dorothy not to do that again. [Walter, John W. (dir). "How to Draw a Bunny", 2002]

References

* Livingstone, Marco (ed.), "Pop Art: An International Perspective", The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1991, ISBN 0-8478-1475-0
* Stokstad, Marilyn, "Art History", 1995, Prentice Hall, Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, ISBN 0-81091960-5
* Vogel, Carol (1998). [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505E1DF143AF933A05752C0A96E958260 "The New York Times": INSIDE ART; Perhaps Shot, Perhaps Not ] . Retrieved January 4, 2008.
* Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett, "Popism: The Warhol Sixties", Harcourt Books, 1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1
* Watson, Steven, "Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties", Pantheon Books, 2003.

External links

* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/22/db2202.xml Dorothy Podber obit]
* [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/dorothy-podber-witch-who-shot-warhols-marilyns-794931.html The Independent: Dorothy Podber: 'Witch' who shot Warhol's Marilyns]