Andy Warhol Was Right

May 30, 2023

Who?

Andy Warhol was an artist who worked in many different media such as paint, sculpture, film, etc. He is most widely known for his work in & influence on the pop art movement of the 1950s & ‘60s. It is fitting that some of his best remembered works in pop art feature a pop icon; Marylin Monroe. Over time, Warhol did many screen prints using an old publicity photo of Monroe from her movie “Niagara”.

What?

Screen printing, sometimes called silkscreening, is at least 1,000 years old. Fine mesh is used to make a stencil, which then has ink or paint spread thinly over it. Multiple stencils & multiple layers eventually create a picture. Warhol worked with professional screen printers such as Michel Caza to create many of his signature prints, including multiple Marylin Monroe series.

My little mermaid prints My version of this iconic celebration of publicity photos

Why?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Even I, a person who did not go to art school, can name quite a few of Warhol’s iconic pieces. This month I have been participating in MerMay, a 31-day Mermaid themed art challenge. Yesterday’s theme was Barbie. I decided that the 90’s Little Mermaid Barbie of my childhood was another classic icon which deserved a similar treatment as Marylin Monroe. In true Warhol fashion, I appropriated someone else’s photograph. Warhol was sued & ultimately settled with the photographer whose publicity photo he used for the print. Hopefully whoever took this Barbie photo is more understanding; I used a straightforward photo that had been reposted so many times I couldn’t find its source! I don’t have screen printing supplies, so I used a digital art program called Krita to color the Little Mermaids instead.

It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. ~Andy Warhol, as quoted in “Popism: The Warhol Sixties”

This is how Warhol described his screen printing work. Instead of trying to control every aspect, he embraced how the “chancy” nature led to imperfections & irregularities in his work. Some artists may have seen the prints as flawed, he saw how they made each piece unique. I’ve been thinking about this quote since I first read it. There’s an urge to keep fixing something until it’s exactly what we want, & to throw out what we can’t fix. There’s a need, especially on social media, to pretend that we are perfect beings who never make mistakes! I’m working on embracing my mistakes. I’m starting to realize that sometimes they aren’t mistakes- they’re just a different form of success than I had anticipated.

Karin Wanderer Learns