'Obey Marilyn' by Shepard Fairey, 2007
Rare original card from Fairey's show at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
Based on the artist's original 'Marilyn Warhol' from 2003.
Tribute to Andy Warhol's iconic 'Marilyn Monroe' series from 1962.
6 x 4 Inches
15.2 x 10.2 Centimeters
10 x 8 x 0.8 Inches (framed)
Offset lithograph print on cardstock.
Open Edition (Sold Out).
*Note: Float-framed in UV glass with black (or white) MDF frame molding.
ABOUT THE ART
"Andy Warhol was a big inspiration because he made a mockery of the fine art world, taking press stills and household items and turning them into high art. I felt like what I was doing was pop art in a similar vein, but I was taking it even further outside the institutions and straight to the street.
I remember when I was making t-shirts, somebody said, “Isn’t it amazing that you’re taking one of the ugliest images ever and putting it on a shirt, and people are buying it up as fashion?”
I had the idea of taking that a step further by taking Marilyn’s sex symbol face and changing that into Andre’s ugly face. Andre wasn’t a handsome man and he’s even a more hideous woman, but people loved the humor of the poster and snapped it up anyway."
- Shepard
ABOUT THE ART
Shepard Fairey is one of the most prolific and influential street artists working today. Fairey first became known for creating a stencil of the face of wrestler André the Giant that he spray-painted and wheat-pasted on public surfaces in major cities internationally. He later parlayed his reputation as a street artist into art-world recognition.
'Marilyn Warhol' is one of a set of twenty-one prints inspired by a ninety-print grid that was included in Fairey’s exhibition at the ICA. Together these prints demonstrate the scope of his artistic vocabulary, largely based on the legacy of agitprop, and sources of inspiration, taken from the realms of politics, fine art, and popular culture. For 'Marilyn Warhol', Fairey replaces the face of Marilyn Monroe as it appears in one of Andy Warhol’s iconic paintings with that of André the Giant, conflating the two visages above Fairey’s well-known tagline “Obey.” Here, Fairey demonstrates that he can manipulate a signature image by any artist for his own purposes, adding a complex layer to the history of appropriation art and the conversation about image ownership.
This suite of twenty-one prints by the artist in the ICA’s collection offers a dynamic representation of Shepard Fairey's creative output over the last twenty years. 'Marilyn Warhol', in particular, is in dialogue with other works in the collection that instrumentalize found images, such as those by Vija Celmins, Thomas Ruff, Kelley Walker, and Andy Warhol.