Andy Warhols Marilyn Diptych - Essay Example

The social relevance of the work by da Vinci is due to the monumentality of this half-figure composition and the delicate modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism. These features were central to the progress of the painting and there is a sense of mystery connected with the work. “Given the fact that Da Vinci manages to capture so many different emotions and character-traits in one painting, it seems natural that every time one looks at the Mona Lisa, one sees something different, irrespective from which direction the painting is looked at.

In that light, her ‘mysterious smile’ seems nothing out of the ordinary.” (Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa) In comparison with this celebrated work by Da Vinci, Marilyn Diptych, the 1962 painting by the American pop artist Andy Warhol, is an illustrious example of silkscreen painting which is important to the pop art style in painting. This work of acrylic and silkscreen on canvas makes use of the juxtaposition of the color images in order to depict the meaning of the artist. “The ‘Marilyn Diptych’ divides into 25 colored Monroes on the left and 25 black and whites on the right, with the image passing through near-total blackening and disfiguration in the seventh column to extreme faintness on the far right.

The more you look at the colored panels, the more the hair, eye-shadow and lips look like paper cutouts that have been stuck on the faces, emphasizing the artificially constructed nature of the Monroe ‘image’.” (Molyneux) Also, the misregistration or the failure of the color to fit exactly with the underlying black and white photography gives the painting its great appeal. Therefore, these visual aspects of the painting illustrate the social factors concerning the art style of pop culture.

Works Cited “Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.” Impact Artists. 01 April 2009. < http://leonardo-da-vinci.paintings.name/>. Molyneux, John. “Art: Top of the Pops?” Socialist Review. Is. 261. 2002. 01 April 2009. <http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr261/molyneux.htm>.